Margaret L. Loper is the interim Director for the Information & Communications Laboratory (ICL), where she serves as the Associate Director for Operations. She joined GTRI in 1995 as a Junior Faculty Leader Fellow in Modeling and Simulation (M&S). Margaret has more than thirty years of M&S experience, specifically focused on parallel and distributed systems. 

She is a founding member of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) and received service awards for her work with the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and High Level Architecture (HLA) standards and the DIS/SISO transition. Her research contributions are in the areas of temporal synchronization, simulation testing, and simulation communication protocols. 

Margaret is a founding member of Georgia Tech’s Professional Masters in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) degree program, where she taught the core M&S course for 13 years. She also created an M&S professional education certificate and has taught courses for GTPE for 18 years. Margaret edited a book on M&S in the Systems Engineering Life Cycle in 2015, based on the lectures from her classes. She previously served as ICL’s Chief Scientist, and has served in GT campus roles related to Internet of Things, Information Security and Privacy, Smart Cities, and Research Next. 

Margaret was named a Regents Researcher by the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents. This title represents the highest academic and research recognition bestowed by the USG. She currently serves on the board for The Link Foundation, where she is the director for the M&S PhD Fellowship program. Margaret holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University.