Industrial Engineering Students and Faculty Recognized at National Conference

Industrial engineering students and faculty received a variety of honors at the national conference of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, held May 21-24 in Seattle.

Sandra Eksioglu, the Hefley Professor in Logistics and Entrepreneurship, was awarded the title of Fellow of the institute. This honor recognizes outstanding leaders of the profession who have made significant, nationally recognized contributions to industrial and systems engineering. A Fellow is the highest classification of membership in the institute.

From left: Eileen Van Aken, Bopaya Bidanda, Sandra Eskioglu and Amanda Mewborn.

A member since 2004, Eksioglu has served the organization in numerous roles from co-chairing individual tracks to her service in a three-year rotation as president-elect, president and past president of the Operations Research Division. In 2016, she and her colleagues established the Energy Systems Division, where she served as a board member for two years. She continued to support the division by co-chairing the Energy Systems track and chairing the student paper competition. In 2018, she chaired the institute's Pritsker Doctoral Award committee.

Eksioglu is also a member of the American Society for Engineering Education and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

From left: Eileen Van Aken, Harry Pierson, Hieu Bui, Bopaya Bidanda and Amanda Mewborn.

Other awards from the conference included a Best Application Paper Award for doctoral candidate Hieu Trung Bui with co-authors Harry Pierson, Sarah Nurre Pinkley and Kelly Sullivan. The award recognizes outstanding research papers published in IISE Transactions, the flagship journal of the institute. The title of Bui's paper was "Toolpath planning for multi-gantry additive manufacturing."  Bui is advised by Eksioglu.

A team of master's students that included Rajon Paul Pantha, Dhiraj Pokhrel and Matthew Walters, advised by Eksioglu, received the Logistics and Supply Chain Division Student Case Award for their study providing a solution to a problem focused on "Coastal Shipping for Automotive Distribution." This was an international competition open to any student team.

We had four doctoral students who participated in the Doctoral Colloquium and the Doctoral 3-minute Pitch Competition: Neel Chanchad, Fan Bu, Maryam Alimohammadi and Maryam Kheirandish.

Junior Abby Harris received the UPS Scholarship for Female Students. Harris was nominated by the Department of Industrial Engineering faculty. Trustees review the nominee's scholastic ability, character, leadership and potential service to the industrial engineering profession. Harris was chosen as one of only two recipients for this award for the 2022-2023 academic year. In addition to her scholarship, Harris was one of three undergraduate students to take part in the Undergraduate Symposium. The others included Marshal Ray and Wesley Tate.

Spencer Loper was one of 12 finalists selected to compete in the IISE Capstone Competition. Loper served as project manager for his capstone team, which included team members Henry Ward, John Santine, Luke Rafie and Cody Parrish. Their project, "Data Synthesis and Visualization for Near Real-Time Analysis of Final Mile Delivery Routes," for consulting firm Latrobe LLC received the Impact Award at the 2022 Capstone Symposium at the U of A.