Michael D. Watson is the INCOSE President-Elect and the Systems Engineering Director for the Leidos Defense Systems Sector. He is responsible for the application and execution of systems engineering across the Defense Systems Sector. He is focused on advancing systems engineering and realizing more complex systems through the application of systems engineering. He previously served as the Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I) Branch Manager in the Leidos Dynetics Space Division. He served as the Lead Systems Engineer (LSE) for the Leidos Dynetics Human Landing System and served as LSE or advisor for other defense projects. At INCOSE, he previously served as Chair of the Complex Systems Working Group, and he chaired the Systems Engineering Principles Action Team, which updated the systems engineering principles and released them as an INCOSE publication in August 2022. 

Dr. Watson graduated with a BSEE from the University of Kentucky. He obtained his MSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  

Dr. Watson retired from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) as the Advanced Concepts Office Technical Advisor responsible for systems-level assessments. He led the NASA Systems Engineering Research Consortium, defining advanced systems engineering approaches and basis, and was the NASA Systems Engineering Technical Discipline Team Research and Technology lead. He also was the Joint Army Navy NASA Air Force (JANNAF) Modeling and Simulation Subcommittee (MSS) chair from 2014 to 2022. He has been the Space Launch System (SLS) Lead Discipline Engineer for Operations Engineering. He served as Chief of the Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) and Sensors Branch and led a NASA team defining Vehicle Management System capabilities for human missions to Mars. Before this, he served as Chief of the Optics Branch, responsible for fabricating large X-ray telescope mirrors, diffractive optics, and telescope systems. He started his career with NASA, developing International Space Station (ISS) operations capabilities. He also worked to develop remote operations support capabilities for the Spacelab Program in Europe, Japan, and the United States.