Industrial Engineering Research Team Recognized With International Paper Award

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From left: Cesar Ruiz, Ed Pohl and Haitao Liao.

An industrial engineering research team has been selected for a national prize for their work to optimize maintenance practices in complex systems.

The team — including recent doctoral graduate Cesar Ruiz, professor Ed Pohl and professor Haitao Liao — was selected for the William A. Golomski Award at the 2021 Reliability and Maintainability Symposium. The Golomski award recognizes an outstanding research paper from the symposium's proceedings.

The paper "Selective Maintenance of Multi-Component Systems with Multiple Failure Modes," was presented at the group's conference in early 2020.

Ruiz is a recent graduate of the Department of Industrial Engineering. During his time as a graduate student, he published numerous journal articles and was featured in many refereed conference proceedings. The recipient of numerous awards throughout his time at the University, he was a two-time finalist for Best Student Paper in the QCRE division of IISE. Ruiz is conducting post-doctoral work at the University of Southern California.

Pohl, who is head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and holds the Twenty-First Century Professorship in Engineering, also earned the Golomski Award in 2011. His primary research interests are in risk, reliability, engineering optimization, healthcare and supply chain risk analysis, decision making, and quality.  He is a Certified Professional Engineering Manager and Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt.  Pohl is a Fellow of the Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineers, the American Society of Engineering Management, and the Society of Reliability Engineers.

The prize marks the third time Liao has received the Golomski Award. His research interests include reliability models, applied statistics, maintenance and service logistics, prognostics, probabilistic risk assessment, and analytics of sensor data. His research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and various industry partners. Liao is a Fellow of IISE.

Kim Needy, dean of the College of Engineering, praised the team's efforts.

"This award is a significant recognition of the high-quality research taking place in the Department of Industrial Engineering," she said. "The fact our researchers have been repeatedly awarded this prize reflects the sustained excellence present in the department. Congratulations to Drs. Liao, Ruiz and Pohl."

The award will be presented at the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium 2021 conference, which is scheduled to be held Jan. 25-28 in Orlando.