Professor Sondoss El Sawah

Professor Sondoss Elsawah is a Professor of Systems and Computing and University of New South Wales Canberra. She is also the Director of the Capability Systems Centre, a boundary organisation with the mission to connect science, engineering, policy, and industry to address complex societal problems. Sondoss served as the Systems Engineering discipline leader (2017-2021). She is a member of the UNSW academic board and academic quality committee.

Sondoss’ academic program has been driven by the vision to advance and accelerate the science of knowledge integration and interdisciplinary problem-solving as key mechanism to drive innovative solutions to systemic problems and transformative change. To realise this vision, Sondoss has targeted her contributions towards progressing the field’s three pillars of research, practice, and education.

Her research program focuses on the design and application of collaborative and model-based problem solving approaches to support decision making in complex and multi-stakeholder decision contexts. She has applied her research program in many critical and high impact application areas, such as sustainable development, national security, and emerging technologies. Examples include the design of decision support systems to inform the Australian Government on the acquisition of large-scale Defence investments. Sondoss’ research has been widely published in high impact and interdisciplinary scientific outlets. She has been awarded research funding from government, industry and the Australian Research Council. She is the co-editor of Chief of the International Journal of Environmental Modelling and Software. Sondoss’ research leadership is recognized by the Dorothy Green Award for excellence in Research Leadership in 2022.

Sondoss is a passionate educator who loves to stretch the mental models of her students to think in systems which extend beyond narrowly defined and technically focused boundaries to more holistic view of the social, cultural, and ethical aspects. She has extensive experience in designing and delivering customized systems thinking courses for executive and middle level managers. The excellence and impact of her teaching has been recognized by multiple awards.

Sondoss serves the Vice President of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australian and NZ, and the International Environmental Modelling and Simulation Society. She is a Fellow of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australian and NZ and the Peter Cullen Trust for leadership in bridging science-policy gap. Sondoss is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.