Cris Kobryn - Bio

Chronological Bio

Academic & Military Service (1970-1984)

Kobryn received B.A. in Natural Science/Geochemistry from Colgate University in 1974, after which he served as a commissioned officer in both the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. During his military service Kobryn was infantry, armor, airborne, and Special Forces qualified. After graduating at the top of his class ("Commandant's list") at the Special Forces Officer Course ("Q" Course) at Fort Bragg, Kobryn was awarded a NDEA Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to study anthropological linguistics at UCLA. While pursuing graduate studies at UCLA Kobryn found that mathematical and computational linguistics better suited his talents and interests than anthropological and traditional linguistics. Consequently, he left UCLA to pursue graduate studies in computer ccience and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he studied with Vernor Vinge, a computer science professor and renowned science fiction writer. While pursuing his graduate studies at SDSU Kobryn received the NCR Corporation Award for “Excellence in Computer Science”.

Software & Systems Engineering Career (1982-present)

While pursuing graduate studies in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at SDSU during the early 1980s, Kobryn mastered the Lisp and Prolog programming languages that were essential to Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research & Development (R&D) at the time. Subsequently, the Naval Ocean System Center (NOSC) in San Diego hired Kobryn as an AI programming expert to help the Navy build Knowledge-Based Expert Systems for defense applications. Kobryn excelled in this work and senior technical positions as a software engineering and AI programming expert at VERAC, SAIC, and Harlequin followed.

In 1994 Kobryn was recruited by SHL Systemhouse (later MCI Systemhouse), a Canada-based systems integrator, to join its elite TechNet (Technology Network) of mobile technology experts who were deployed throughout North America to build fault-tolerant distributed systems for business applications on early intranets and the nacsent Internet. Kobryn excelled in this work and was rapidly promoted to Chief Scientist and then Chief Architect of Systemhouse's TechNet. While working with Kobryn was a Systemhouse technical liaison with both Microsoft and Rational Sotware (Rational) to track their emerging software technologies.

In 1996 when Rational organized the UML Partners consortium to define the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard, they asked MCI Systemhouse to join as the sole systems integrator member, with Kobryn providing his expertise in architecture modeling of fault-tolerant distributed systems. Kobryn distinguished himself in his work on the UML 1.0 specification, and the "Three Amigos" at Rational (object methodologists Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobson) subsequently asked him to lead the Semantic Task Force to define the formal semantics for the UML 1 specification, which was eventually adopted by the Object Management Group (OMG) in September 1997 as UML 1.1 standard. In recognition of Kobryn's contributions to the UML, MCI presented him with its MCI Masters Award for “Outstanding Performance” and its MCI Systemhouse Award for “Thought Leadership” in 1997. Later, in 2000 the OMG presented Kobryn with its Distinguished Service Award.

In 1999, Telelogic, Inc. recruited Kobryn to lead the UML2 Partners consortium to define the syntax and semantics of the UML 2.0 major revision, which included expanded semantics for Round Trip Engineering (RTE) of models and sofware code. After the OMG voted to adopt the UML 2.0 major revision in 2003, Kobryn was asked by the International Council of Systems Engineers (INCOSE) and the OMG to organize a consortium of vendors and users to define a profile (customized dialect) of UML 2 for systems engineering applications.

In 2003 Kobryn founded PivotPoint Technology Corp., a software and systems engineering services company specializing in leveraging advanced technologies to solve tough ("wicked") engineering and business problems. During this same year Kobryn organized the SysML Partners consortium as an open source specification project, coined the language name "SysML" (short for "Systems Modeling Language"), and personally designed the original SysML logo. The OMG voted to adopt the SysML 1 specification in 2006. In acknowledgement of Kobryn's contributions to the SysML the INCOSE presented him with its Outstanding Service Award in 2006, and the SD Times technology publication awarded the SD Times 100 Modeling category award to the SysML Partners open source specification project in 2007.

After the adoption of SysML as the de facto industry standard for MBSE applications, as the CTO of PivotPoint Kobryn extended the UML + SysML language family with two proprietary general-purpose profiles and model libraries: AgileML™ (Agile Modeling Language™) and CyberML™ (Cyber Modeling Language™). AgileML is a UML/SysML profile and model library which supports recursive System Analysis, System Design, and System Architecture patterns for Agile MBSE applications. CyberML further extends AgileML with recursive network design and cybersecurity patterns for fault-tolerant distributed systems that are also cybersecure.

Kobryn has used his broad expertise in Modeling & Simulation to advance a rigorous Model-Based Digital Engineering™ (MBDE™) approach to solve wicked problems in engineering and business. MBDE is the fusion of two complementary technologies that emphasize MODSIM: Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Digital Engineering (a.k.a., Digital Twins).

Selected Honors & Awards

• SD Times 100 Award for "Modeling" category, 2007.
• INCOSE Outstanding Service Award, 2006.
• OMG Distinguished Service Award, 2003.
• MCI Masters Award for “Outstanding Performance”, 1997.
• MCI Systemhouse Award for “Thought Leadership”, 1997.
• NCR Corporation Award for “Excellence in Computer Science” (SDSU), circa 1983.
• NDEA Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (UCLA), 1981.
• Commandants List, Special Forces Officer Course, 1981.

Selected Boards

• Gentleware AG [German software tool vendor] Board of Directors, 2000-2007.
• Corporate Advisory Board for International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), 2002-2005.
• John Wiley & Sons, Inc., OMG Press Advisory Board, 1999-2003.

Selected Committees

• Co-Chair of Analysis & Design Platform Task Force, Object Management Group, 1999-2005.
• Chair of Systems Modeling Language (SysML) open source project, 2003-2005.
• Chair of U2 Partners’ UML 2.0 Submission Team, 2000-2003.
• Chair of UML Revision Task Force, Object Management Group, 1997-2002.
• Member of Program/Steering Committee, International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS), 1998-2007. (General Chair, 2001)
• Member of Java Community Process expert group for UML/EJB Mapping Specification, 1999-2000.
• Member of the Program Committee, International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, EDOC 1997-2003. (General Chair, 1998)

Selected Editorial Positions

• Contributing editor of Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM) journal, 2001-2007.

Selected Publications & Specifications

Mr. Kobryn has authored numerous technical papers and articles, and has edited a book and several international standards for visual modeling languages (UML 1, UML 2, and SysML).

• Selected publications: http://kobryn.com/cris-kobryn-publications/
• Google Scholar citations: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6CzJPlkAAAAJ&hl

Professional Associations

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE)
• American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)