SmackDown 2013

The annual International Simulation Smackdown invites University teams from across the world to build simulations in space (sisosmackdown.com).  Held this year in San Diego, USA, the event is sponsored by the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO), the Society for Computer Simulation, NASA and several companies. Teams from universities in the USA, South Korea, Italy and the UK built simulations of spaceships, satellites, asteroids, lunar mass drivers and a moonbase.  The moonbase was “sited” in the Aitken basin on the moon.  Led by Dr Simon Taylor (School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics), Brunel’s team was the first ever to take part from the UK and developed an Oxygen Factory using model running in a specially adapted version of the simulation package Simul8.  Supported by Anastasia Anagnostou, Athar Nouman and Dr Navonil Mustafee from Exeter University (a Brunel Alumni and long time collaborator), the Brunel Factory successfully interacted with the MIT simulations to supply oxygen.  Brunel won the award for Best Newcomer thanks to the novel approach used by the team. 

Undergraduates from The School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics will be invited to join the team for the 2014 competition.