Systems engineering has traditionally been an interdisciplinary discipline dominated by aerospace and defence. But there are challenges today that current systems engineering practises fail to meet. A dramatic example of such a failure is the recent cancellation of the U.S. Army $161B Future Combat System, which was the second largest defence programme in the world. Expensive large scale systems are becoming unaffordable. Ever greater efficiency and agility are needed. Systems engineering and defence systems are in a time of change. The community is actively rethinking its concepts and practices as it undergoes dramatic growth. The emergence of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) over the past decade and recent initiatives for model-based systems engineering (MBSE) will play heavily in how the practice of architecture and systems engineering evolves. MBSE has the potential to address the challenges faced by systems engineering, reducing both development time and cost. Put simply, it is an evolution from a document based engineering style to one that is based on formal, traceable, machine readable models developed and used in electronic engineering environments. The MDA paradigm is already delivering significant benefits within software engineering. Cost savings of 30 to 60% have been demonstrated in software development life cycle costs by using MDA instead of traditional methods. Cost savings are just one reason that MDA has been successful in software engineering. Speed and agility in system design, better configuration management, and re-use of models are amongst the other reasons.The RAEng Systems Engineering Research Programme will build on the advances made by MDA in software development over the past decade and apply these advances to MBSE to produce a Next Generation capability that will have far more speed and agility than can be realised by systems engineering today.The Research Chair is properly positioned in the international community to influence the future of systems engineering and is already doing so. The Next Generation of systems engineering is here and now. It is not some future concept; it is not an academic exercise. Advances are already being made by the Research Chair in model driven and transformational methods for architecture and systems engineering that will help to bring MBSE more quickly to the point of practical realisation.