Industrial Engineering Faculty and Students Honored at Conference

Photo Submitted

From left: Haitao Liao, Nikesh Kumar and Ed Pohl.

Faculty and students from the Department of Industrial Engineering received prestigious recognition at the 2025 Reliability and Maintainability Symposium held Jan. 27-30 in Miramar Beach, Florida.

The symposium is a globally recognized meeting that has been bringing together experts in reliability and maintainability since 1954. The annual event alternates between the east and west coasts of the United States, serving as a premier platform for researchers and professionals in the field.

From left: Cesar Ruiz, Farid Hashemian and Haitao Liao; nt picture: Jose Azucena.

At this year's conference, the Society of Reliability Engineers presented the Douglas J. Ogden Award to a team from the U of A for their paper, Modeling the Impact of Corrosion Orientation and Location on Pipeline Reliability. The award-winning authors included Nikesh Kumar, a current doctoral student; Jose Azucena, a recent alumnus and now an assistant professor at North Carolina A&T State University; Haitao Liao, professor; and Ed Pohl, professor and dean of the Graduate School and International Education.

Additionally, the winner of the 2024 Thomas L. Fagan Jr. Reliability and Maintainability Symposium First Place Student Paper Award was announced at the conference after a year-long evaluation process. Cesar Ruiz, an alumnus and current assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, along with co-presenter Farid Hashemian, a doctoral student, and Haitao Liao, professor, received the award. Their paper titled "Reliability Prediction via Accelerated Testing with Imperfectly Controlled Conditions" was published in the 2024 RAMS Proceedings.

Chase Rainwater, head of the Department of Industrial Engineering, commented on the news of the awards: "It is impressive to see our current students, recent alumni and current faculty all being recognized for their work in one year. It speaks to the high level of research in reliability and maintainability that is happening at the University of Arkansas."

About the Department of Industrial Engineering: The Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas was founded in 1950, led by department head John L. Imhoff who believed deeply in the global impact of industrial engineering. Today, the department averages over 200 undergraduate students and over 40 doctoral and master's students. In addition, the department has three online master's degrees: the Master of Science in Operations Management, Master of Science in Engineering Management and Master of Science in Operations Analytics. These three programs alone enroll over 600 students each academic year. To learn more about the Department of Industrial Engineering please visit our website.