Historically, chief engineers and project managers have 
estimated and managed risk using mostly human judgment 
founded upon years of experience and heritage. As the 21st 
century begins to unfold, the design and engineering of 
products as well as the control of plant and process are 
increasingly relying on computer models and simulation. 
This era of virtual design and engineering opens the 
opportunity to deal with uncertainty in a systematic formal 
way by which sensitivities to various uncertainties can be 
quantified and understood, and designs and processes 
optimized so as to be robust against such uncertainties. 
Human judgment will always play an important role, but 
leading companies in many fields of engineering are 
increasingly aware of these possibilities and uncertainty 
quantification is beginning to feature strongly in their 
strategic aspirations. Thus this is a very opportune moment 
to introduce a two- day awareness course on this emerging 
topic. The aim is to share the aspirations and requirements 
of leading companies in the fields of aerospace, energy, 
transport and chemical process; review emerging methods and 
techniques and how these are being deployed; and define the 
current state-of-the-art and map out-near term future 
possibilities.

Uncertainty quantification has become a critical feature of 
a computational methodologies which will be utilized within 
an engineering design process. There has been considerable 
progress in this field at both the national and 
international level. The purpose of this two-day short 
course is to bring some the most promising approaches and 
developments in this field to the attention of researchers 
and engineers from academia, industry and research 
laboratories.

A recent development has been a short course arranged by 
Dr. Charles Hirsch of Belgium, who has organized an 
ERCOFTAC short course, entitled “Uncertaintly Management 
and Quantification in Industrial Analysis and Design” which 
was delivered in Munich, Germany on March 3-4, 2011. 
ERCOFTAC is a European-based association of research, 
education and industry groups in the technology of flow, 
turbulence and combustion. The name stands for European 
Research Community on Flow, Combustion and Turbulence. Dr. 
Hirsch is the President of NUMECA International, a CFD 
software firm. He is also a Professor Emeritus of the 
Faculty of Applied Sciences of Vrije Universiteit Brussel 
and is an internationally-known expert in CFD.

Speakers:
·      Prof. Charles Hirsch, Numeca International, Belgium
·      Prof. Anthony Hutton, Chairman, ERCOFTAC, UK
·      Dr. Alberto Pasanisi, EDF, France
·      Dr. Bernhard Eisfeld, DLR, Germany
·      Dr. Jacques Peter, ONERA, France
·      Dr. Gilbert Roge, Dassault-Aviation, France
·      Dr. Allain Dervieux, INRIA, France
·      Dr. Thomas Zang, NASA Langley Research Center, USA
·      Dr. Andrew Booker, The Boeing Company, USA
·      Prof. George Karniadakis, Brown University, USA
·      Dr. Karl Alexander, Rolls Royce, USA