Our nation's success in pioneering the next generation of aerospace and other high tech engineering systems depends in part on our ability to integrate and deploy the most advanced computational, communication, networking, human performance and other revolutionary and leading edge technologies into the analysis, design, testing and manufacturing process. This can be accomplished by developing intelligent engineering environments to allow diverse teams to work together and share information, in a synergistic manner, to develop efficient virtual prototypes of complex engineering systems. The environments can significantly reduce development times, lower life-cycle costs, and improve the quality and performance of future engineering systems.

Leading this effort with funding from NASA is the Old Dominion University's Center for Advanced Engineering Environments. Center staff work closely with researchers from NASA, other universities, and with many major software vendors to incorporate new developments into commercial systems, making research advances available to industry in a timely manner.

Created in January 2001, the Center for Advanced Engineering Environments (CAEE) serves as a focal point for the diverse research activities pertaining to Collaborative distributed Engineering Knowledge discovery and exploitation, Intelligent synthesis, and advanced learning technologies, and their application to complex engineering systems. These activities include the synergistic coupling of modeling, visual simulations, intelligent agents, multimedia and synthetic environments, human-computer interactions, computational intelligence, computational, information and collaboration technologies in the multidisciplinary analysis, sensitivity studies, optimization, design and operation of complex engineering systems. The Center is located at the Old Dominion University Peninsula Higher Education Center in Hampton, Virginia and is an Enterprise Center of the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology of Old Dominion University. The Center has the following five specific objectives:

1. Conduct innovative research on applications of collaborative distributed engineering Knowledge discovery and exploitation, visual simulation, intelligent synthesis, and their applications to aerospace and other complex engineering systems.
2. Develop innovative technologies, strategies and approaches for advanced learning environments/networks.
3. Act as pathfinder, by demonstrating to the research community what can be done (high-potential, high-risk research).
4. Help identify future directions of research in support of the aeronautical and space missions in the next decades.
5. Help in the rapid transfer of research results to industry and in broadening awareness among researchers and engineers of the state-of-the-art in collaborative distributed engineering Knowledge discovery and exploitation, intelligent synthesis, and advanced learning, as well as in other technology areas which can impact these activities.

In addition to research, the activities of the Center include forming partnerships and collaborative agreements with leading universities, industry and software vendors who are developing collaborative distributed engineering Knowledge discovery and exploitation tools, and intelligent synthesis environments for future aerospace and other high-tech engineering systems; organizing workshops and national symposia; and writing state-of-the-art monographs and special publications on timely topics.