UCF Joins Digital Twin Consortium as Regional Organizer

The Digital Twin Consortium (DTC) has announced that UCF has become an official member of the organization and will serve as a regional branch organizer for the southeast United States.

The DTC, established in 2020, has members who coordinate academic, industry and government efforts to promote consistent standards in areas such as interoperability, vocabulary and architecture related to digital twin technology.

DTC is also part of a bigger organization, Object Management Group, a nonprofit consortium of 27 countries that seeks to develop consistent standards and harmonize terminology to ensure their relevance and applicability for evolving technologies.

The agreement between the university and DTC is set to last 3 years, and then it will come under review.

Senior UCF leaders have recognized this collaboration as a step forward in leveraging digital twin technology, according to DTC.

“With UCF having a digital twin initiative, I think it’s very important to be connected to the broader community,” says Soheil Sabri, an assistant professor in the digital twin initiative at UCF’s School of Modeling, Simulation and Training. “DTC has more than 200 members around the world. Being part of DTC is helping UCF understand all the challenges in the current state of industry.”

“With ‘digital twins,’ there are a lot of different definitions, and different groups have their own perceptions of what that concept is,” Sabri adds. “Some think digital twin is a tool or a product, and others think it’s a methodology or a process. DTC’s working groups are trying to contribute to the entire community’s understanding of the digital twin and its value to their own sectors.”

Sabri believes UCF can play a leadership role in the DTC domain because of its digital twin initiative.

“It’s a big deal for us to be a part of this consortium and play a leadership role in supporting industry, government, and other academic institutions to implement and leverage the work we are doing and collaborating on,” he says.

As a consortium regional branch organizer (RBO), UCF has accepted certain duties in working with its partners, including executing conferences, meetings and awareness efforts.

The university will also help facilitate innovation and ideas by helping develop the digital twin workforce to the market.

“In this region, you can imagine the importance of the digital twin in relation to Kennedy Space Center, the entertainment industry and the defense industry,” Sabri says.

With UCF’s recent addition to DTC, Sabri explained that the university would announce a regional plan to support industry requirements through awareness programs, workshops and professional development in the near future.

“We hope to bring industry’s challenges into our group and make a connection between different industries and the government so we can coordinate innovation in digital twin technology and address some of the challenges those industries are facing,” he says.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.