Dr. Shafagh Jafer is an Associate Professor of Software Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, FL. She received her Ph.D. Degree in Computer Engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 2011 where she was awarded the Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement for her doctoral thesis on large-scale parallel simulation. For the past eight years she has been conducting research on discrete-event modeling and simulation, distributed and parallel simulation, software engineering, and integrated modeling environments. Dr. Jafer has been previously involved in projects dealing with modeling and simulation of natural disasters as well as emergency response to natural fire. She is currently conducting research in disaster engineering, modeling and simulation in aviation, and large-scale NAS (National Airspace System) data analysis. 

Dr. Jafer has served as committee member and organizer of the Annual Spring Simulation conference, and she is now the co-chair of the Annual Simulation Symposium (ANSS). She will be serving as the Proceedings Chair of the Spring Simulation 2015 conference. Dr. Jafer values and promotes women in Science and Technology and is an active member of the SWE and IEEE WIE.