New Faculty Members to Join Industrial Engineering Department

Photo Submitted

Right to left, top: Shen, Curry and Squires. Bottom: Melton and Paulus

The Department of Industrial Engineering is excited to announce the arrival of five new additions to its award-winning faculty. With a commitment to advancing knowledge and innovation in the field, these new faculty members bring a wealth of expertise and fresh perspectives that will enrich the department's academic environment.

Haoming Shen
Shen joins the department as an assistant professor. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial and operations engineering, a master's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to his graduate studies, he earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University. Shen actively engages in diversity, equity and inclusion events and received the Rackham Professional Development DEI Certificate.

His research focuses on data-driven decision making under uncertainty and its applications in power grids, transportation systems and robotics. By leveraging limited information in data, he uses tools from stochastic optimization and integer programming to study how to make well-informed and strategic decisions in complex and uncertain environments. Shen has received the Rackham Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and his research was recognized with an honorable mention in the 2022 INFORMS Optimization Society Best Student Paper Competition.

Rob Curry
An alumnus of the department, Curry joins the department as an assistant professor. He received his Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Clemson University, his master's in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida and his bachelor's in industrial engineering from the U of A. Before joining the U of A, he was an assistant professor in the Mathematics Department at the United States Naval Academy for the past five years.

Curry's research involves methodology for modeling and solving large-scale network optimization models having applications in defense settings, sensor networks and cyber-physical infrastructure settings. His work has been published in high quality journals such as IISE Transactions, Networks and Naval Research Logistics, and his research has been sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. His teaching experience and interests lie in linear and integer programming, network optimization modeling and algorithms, and applied probability and statistics.

Alice Squires
Squires joined the department in May as a teaching professor contributing to the Master of Science in Engineering Management and Operations Management programs. She received her Ph.D. from Stevens Institute of Technology, and she holds an MBA from George Mason University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland.

She has served as author, editor, manager, professor and systems engineer with 40 years of combined experience in industry and academia. Squires is the founder of the INCOSE's Empowering Women Leaders in Systems Engineering Initiative (see incose.org/EWLSE). She is an INCOSE Expert Systems Engineering Practitioner with Acquisition, a PMI Project Management Professional and an ASEM Certified Professional Engineering Manager. IEEE-USA published her e-book Dandelion Wishes: A World Where We Collaborate as Equals (Book 21) in 2018 that describes her engineering journey.

Squires was co-editor and co-author of the 2019 INCOSE Insight Diversity in Systems Engineering themed edition, the 2022 INCOSE published Letters to My Younger Self: How Systems Engineering Changed My Life e-book and the 2022 Springer Emerging Trends in Systems Engineering Leadership: Practical Research from Women Leaders book.

Kerry Melton
Melton joined the department as a teaching associate professor. He received his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and management from Oklahoma State University. Before joining the U of A, he was an adjunct professor for the Supply Chain Department and Operations Management program at the U of A. He also worked in industry for 25 years at J.B. Hunt Transport, Walmart Inc. and FM Corporation.

Melton's teaching experience is in operations management, forecasting and inventory analytics, supply chain and transportation strategies, engineering economic analysis, engineering statistics, manufacturing processes and data analytics. His research area is in supply chain management focusing on transportation and logistics systems. More specifically, he investigates how to plan and develop more cost-efficient methods to improve distribution networks using heuristics and mixed integer programming. His research is featured in the International Journal of Applied Industrial Engineering and the International Journal of Supply Chain Management.

David Paulus
Paulus joins the department as a professor of practice. For the past nine years, he has been a clinical associate professor in engineering and technology management at Washington State University. For the previous 10 years, he was an associate professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University and both an M.S. in industrial engineering and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Tennessee. He is a Professional Engineer in the state of Arkansas, a Certified Professional in Engineering Management and a Certified Human Factors Engineering Professional.