Industrial Engineering Department Takes Spotlight at National Conference

The Department of Industrial Engineering was well represented at the annual Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering conference held May 31-June 3 in Atlanta. Faculty, students and alumni of the program were recognized for their contributions to the discipline.

Kim LaScola Needy, dean of the College of Engineering, was recognized with the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the institute. It recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the welfare of mankind and distinguish themselves in the field of industrial and systems engineering. The award is presented for contributions of the highest caliber, nationally or internationally recognized. Read more about Needy being honored.

Department alumnus Jen Pazour, professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was elected as fellow of the institute. Pazour completed her master's in 2008 and Ph.D. in 2011. Fellows are recognized as 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.

A team including recent doctoral alumni Mahboubeh Madadi and Ashkan Heydari, along with Lisa Maillart from University of Pittsburgh and U of A faculty members Richard Cassady and Shengfan Zhang, received the IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Operations Engineering and Analytics Best Paper award for their paper, "Erlang Loss Systems with Shortest Idle Server First Service Discipline: Maintenance Considerations."

A team of industrial engineering students advanced to the semi-finals of the Capstone Senior Design Competition. The team of Luke Haskins, Mackenzie Johnston, Javier Muriel Coscio, Thatcher Hagen and Nathan Shipp completed a project for ABF Freight titled "Standardizing and Automating Yard Capacity Estimation." The project brought the team the Project of the Year award last semester in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Analytics Capstone Experience course.

A team of graduate students received second place in the Logistics and Supply Chain Division Case Competition. Polash Kumar Guptho, Md Asif Khan Sharon and Shantonu Mitra solved a problem presented by the competition. The team developed a three-stage approach to select the optimal freight facility location. Sandra Eksioglu, professor and associate dean for research, mentored the team.

Lastly, Luke Kim, recent graduate of the U of A Data Science program, was a finalist in the Quality Control and Reliability Engineering track best paper competition. His research was supervised by associate professor Kelly Sullivan, professor Haitao Liao and Graduate School and International Education Dean Ed Pohl. The title of the paper was "Simulation-Enhanced Bayesian Optimization of System Designs Using Hybrid Physical and Computer Experiments."