Art Pyster

Throughout his career, Art Pyster has played leading technical, management, and executive roles in the telecommunications, aerospace, defense, air traffic control, education, and computing business sectors. 

Pyster’s proudest professional accomplishments prior to coming to Mason are: (1) standing up and operating the Systems Engineering Research Center, which is a University Affiliate Research Center and the largest and most impactful academic research program in systems engineering in the nation, (2) leading the development and operation of the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK), whose articles are accessed 80,000 times monthly and is arguably the most widely read source on systems engineering in the world, (3) applying novel engineering processes at Digital Sound Corporation to develop extremely low-defect commercial telecommunications systems; and (4) as the Federal Aviation Administration’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, leading its information security efforts, software research program, and IT policy development, and serving on the FAA's investment review board which oversaw more than $3 billion annually.

At Mason, Pyster is a professor of systems engineering, but his primary role is associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC). In that capacity, Pyster oversees the CEC research portfolio which has rapidly grown to an anticipated value of over $400M with annual expenditures approaching $70M. Pyster continues to oversee the SEBoK which is sponsored by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the IEEE Systems Council, and the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is an INCOSE Fellow, Founders Award recipient, and Pioneer Award recipient. Pyster has authored more than 70 papers and two books.

Degrees

• PhD, Computer and Information Sciences, The Ohio State University
• MS, Computer and Information Science, The Ohio State University
• BS, Mathematics, University of Illinois