Strategic directions in simulation research (panel)

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Association for Com puting Machinery, Volume 28, Number 4 of ACM Computing Surveyswas released entitled, “Strategic Direction in Computing Research.” Notable—to attendees of W ter Simulation Conference at least—among the topics covered was computer simulation. One may reasonably ask why this is so. Are there unanswered questions remaining in computer simulation? computer simulation an unimportant topic? Does simulat not have relevance as a computing discipline? Should rather be considered solely in terms of operations resea statistics or mathematics? Arguably computer simulation is quite relevant to tec nological advance in many arenas. Modeling and simu tion are playing key roles within industry, academia a the government. The papers appearing in these Proceedings