INFORMS Video

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) has released a new video: “O.R. & Analytics: Saving Lives, Saving Money, Solving Problems.”[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkVDcwzs6Ik]

-Updated by Jay Rosenberger

USA Science & Engineering Festival

UT Arlington graduate students Shirish Rao and Hadis Anahideh from Industrial Engineering, Hoda Rahimi from Civil Engineering, and Takuma Mitani from Architecture were awarded a People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Phase I grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Pictured below are Takuma, Hoda, Hadis, and Shirish.

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This student competition grant provided funding to showcase their research using decision analytics in green building design at the EPA’s 14th Annual National Sustainable Design Expo.   The UT Arlington student team and IMSE faculty mentor Victoria Chen participated in the expo, which was held April 7-8 at the 2018 USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC.

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Their exhibit, entitled Better Buildings for Sustainability, included hands-on activities, software demonstrations, and Takuma’s own balsa wood building model.

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About 500 kids and adults kept them busy at their booth.  Kids were challenged to build a stable structure with toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, and the best structures were kept on display at the booth.

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Dishita Mehtalia Awarded COSMOS Scholarship

The Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, & Statistics (COSMOS) awarded Ms. Dishita Mehtalia the 2018 COSMOS Scholarship. Dishita will be graduating this semester with a Masters in IE. She has been assisting IMSE Professor Victoria Chen and IMSE Ph.D. students Khan Haque and Li Zhang on research on prediction-led policing. Their work uses 911 call data from the Arlington, TX Police Department, and Dishita has spent countless hours processing and analyzing these data for building crime rate prediction models to be used within a discrete-event simulation studying dynamic policing strategies. At the IMSE Awards Banquet below, Dishita is in the center surrounded by COSMOS faculty (from left to right) Bill Corley, Shouyi Wang, Aera LeBoulluec, Victoria Chen, Jay Rosenberger, and Chen Kan.

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-Posted by Victoria Chen and Jay Rosenberger

The IMSE Dept. Celebrates the Fourth Annual Awards Banquet

The Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering Department hosted the 4th Annual Awards Banquet to honor graduating students as well as outstanding undergraduate and graduate students with awards and scholarships on Thursday, April 28th at 6pm in the Nedderman Hall Rady Room. The approximately 100 guests included the faculty, staff and members of the advisory board.  All guests enjoyed a formal, catered dinner. The wonderful evening concluded with a few brief comments from our graduating seniors and a final congratulation to award winners and graduates of the past year. Below are the six scholarships and names of awarded students.

The G. T. Stevens, Jr. Endowed Alumni Scholarship which was established in 1998 to honor the IMSE Department’s former Chair is awarded to outstanding Industrial Enginnering students. Dr. Stevens passed away this year therefore his children Mr. Bob Stevens and Ms. Bartlett Barry presented the scholarships. This year’s recipients were Ms. Tyka Do (Senior), Ms. Jasmine Lucero (Senior), Mr. Anoop Kulkarni (Graduate) and Mr. Alexander Thomas (Graduate).

 

The Keith and Carolyn Weiss Industrial Engineering Scholarship, which is given to deserving Industrial Engineering undergraduate students who are working to support their education. This year’s awardee is a senior, Ms. Griselda Sanchez.

The Weiss Family Endowed Scholarship is an award distributed by the UT Arlington Alumni Association to award a junior or senior undergraduate who have been working to support their education. This year’s recipient is senior Mr. Joshua Bolton.

The John and Pat Priest Family Endowed Scholarship is awarded to Industrial Engineering undergraduate students that have an interest in manufacturing. This year we have two awardees, Mr. Patrick Coursey and Ms. Mary Rangel.

The RFID and Auto ID Labs Outstanding Research Scholarship recognizes students conducting outstanding research in RAID Labs. This year’s recipients were Ms. Mary Rangel (Undergraduate), Ms. Isra Elamin (Graduate) and Mr. Raghavendra Punugu(Graduate).

The newest scholarship, The COSMOS Scholarship recognizes a student for his/her voluntary contribution to COSMOS research. This year’s awardee is Mr. Rajesh Sugumar.

Dr. Li Zeng’s Last Day

Dr. Zeng's Last Day // Photo by: Cassandra Toney
(L to R) Dr. Componation, Dr. Ferreira, Dr. Rosenberger, and Dr. Zeng enjoy a farewell lunch for Dr. Zeng’s last day // Photo by: Cassandra Toney

After serving our department as an Assistant Professor for the past five years, Dr. Li Zeng will be leaving UT Arlington.  During her time at UT Arlington, she was very involved in COSMOS (Center on Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, and Statistics).  Her research focused on statistical modeling, applied statistics and analysis and control of complex manufacturing processes.  She also taught classes on Engineering Probability, Applied Regression Analysis, and Statistical Process Control.  We wish her all the best in her future endeavors and career.

New Ph.D Graduate Will Return Home and Find Solutions

A few years ago, Na Wang found problems in her career as a mechanical engineer in China. Now, Dr. Na Wang finds solutions through Industrial Engineering.

Na Wang earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the IMSE Department in the Spring 2015.
Na Wang earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the IMSE Department in the Spring 2015. //Photo provided

I am from the middle part of China. I received my Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from the North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power. I received my Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing. After graduation, I worked as a mechanical design engineer and was responsible for designing various types of equipment for a cold rolling production line.

Gradually, I felt there were some inefficiencies in the production line. However, I didn’t realize the root cause behind the inefficient phenomena at that time.

With my preliminary research, I found that studying Industrial Engineering would improve the inefficiencies.

Thus, I started my Ph.D study at UT Arlington’s IMSE department. After over four years of studying optimization under the supervision of Dr. Jay Rosenberger, I have learned the knowledge to make improvements in different applications. I have applied the knowledge in air traffic flow and pain management problems.

I will definitely miss the lovely environment in the IMSE department, and I will keep these precious memories forever.

My research interest is in statistical analysis, building prediction models, and optimization of MILP and MINLP models. I really enjoyed studying in the COSMOS Lab in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department. My advisor, Dr. Jay Rosenberger, taught me so much. He is so knowledgeable and creative. In the past four years, his outstanding guidance made me feel that I was on a pleasant journey. I also learned a lot from Dr. Chen, Dr. Zeng, Dr. Corley, and Dr. Wang.

Other staff members in the IMSE department, like Julie, Kim and Richard always offered their help when I needed it. After finishing my Ph.D degree, I am planning to move back to China to be with my family.

Written by Na Wang

Na Wang graduated from the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington in May 2015 with a Ph.D in Industrial Engineering.

COE Thanks Dr. Chen with Reception

The College of Engineering hosted a reception in honor of Dr. Victoria Chen to thank her for her two-year service as the Interim Chair of the IMSE Department. Dr. Chen stepped in as the Interim Chair in 2012 when Dr. Don Liles retired as the chairperson. The IMSE Department hired Dr. Paul Componation as the new Chair in July. Under Dr. Chen’s leadership, the department has grown in the number of students enrolled and in the amount of research funding received. Current and former students, along with faculty, staff, and Dr. Chen’s family attended the reception on July 18. It was held in The University Club on the the campus of The University of Texas at Arlington.

Photos of the event can be viewed on the IMSE Department’s Facebook photo album: Dr. Chen Thank You Reception.

Congratulations to Spring 2014 Graduates

The College of Engineering Commencement Ceremony was held on Saturday, May 10 at College Park Center to honor the Spring 2014 graduating class. Krish Prabhu, President and Chief Technology Office of AT&T Labs, presented the commencement address.  In honor of all the Spring 2014 IE graduates, the IMSE Department would like to congratulate each one of them for a job well done. The Spring 2014 IE graduates, as published in The Shorthorn are:

Ph.D in Industrial Engineering

  • Sulaiman Hamad Al Jedaie, Dissertation Title: Inventory Pooling in Petroleum Upstream Logistics Network
  • Mohammed A. Al-Mansouri, Dissertation Title: Facility Capital Equipment and Labor Decision Support System Using a Discrete-Event Simulation and Bottleneck Detection Approach
  • Asama Kulvanitchaiyanunt, Dissertation Title: Design and Analysis of Computer Experiment-Based Approach to Approximate an Infinite Horizon Dynamic

Master of Engineering in Industrial Engineering

  • Shui Biu Ho

Master of Science in Engineering Management

  • Ravi Teja Doppalapudi
  • Surya Deep Gunnam
  • Steve V. Illyes
  • Dhaneesha Lanke
  • Praneeth Chandra Movva
  • Joseph Michael Munn
  • Esteban Pedraza
  • Hemaraj Sampath Kumar
  • Sheng Hsuan Wu

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering

  • Neim Aiderous Abubeker
  • Santosh Adivi
  • Seepong Aiumjaroen
  • Shanmukha Srinivas Badam
  • Karthika Harini Boobathy
  • Robert Wallace Combs
  • Sri Harsha Raju Datla
  • Banuchandar Esakkimuthu
  • Shalini Jagata
  • Holta Karruli
  • Mitali Prasad Khadilkar
  • Veneesha Kimmireddy
  • Jay Amit Oza
  • Srikar Krishna Rajagopal

Master of Science in Logistics

  • Mrugank Nandan Borgalkar
  • Elena Ogorodnikova

Master of Science in Systems Engineering

  • Leonard Best
  • Matthew Lee Craig
  • Jazmin Adriana Guzman
  • Ashok Sisodia

Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering

  • Rohit Prashad Acharya
  • Ahmad T. Alsmadi
  • Harrison D. Armstrong
  • Angela Colleen Bradshaw
  • Yazmin S. Chalico
  • Eryka Dira
  • Vanessa Duran
  • Mekdes A. Girmash
  • Benjamin William Howison
  • Anna T. Mai
  • Walter J. Mulflur
  • Santosh Paudel
  • Gustavo A. Robles
  • Muhammet U. Sarilar
  • Loc Vinh Truong
  • Jarrett Kale Walden
  • Mewan Wijemanne
  • Ting Xiao

Congratulations to all these graduates!

In case you missed the ceremony, you can view the video and photos of the event online.

Featured Alumni: Piyush Kumar, Ph.D.

I came to UT Arlington to pursue my master’s in August 2007 in Industrial Engineering. I was a life-long student having never worked in the industry, so it was not a very big jump to go from B.Tech to a master’s and then on to a Ph.D. which I completed in December 2013. The operations research courses attracted me the most in my master’s, especially the ones taught by Dr. Corley, Dr. Rosenberger, and Dr. Chen. Even though I made some B’s, I had a lot of fun learning some amazing mathematics and statistics.

As a part of my master’s, I undertook research projects under Dr. Jay Rosenberger which gave me my first exposure to Ph.D. level research. The projects were done by previous students in the Center On Stochastic Modeling, Optimization, & Statistics (COSMOS) . My first impression of joining the COSMOS lab was when I peeked through the door and found that Spock from Star Trek was looking straight at me, disapprovingly. I started smiling when I realized it was only a life-sized replica. I was relieved to see that even though I was jumping into some serious research, there was still an element of humor to lighten the somber mood of the lab. Even though, quite frustratingly, when my own lack of knowledge and ignorance was brought into sharp focus, I looked at those times as a great learning opportunity. I worked on a nurse optimization project which was entering the testing stage at HEB hospital. After my master’s, I joined the Ph.D. program as a natural extension to my research work. Around that time, Dr. Anjomani came to Dr. Rosenberger for optimization of urban planning. The problem was to choose which would be the best land use to assign any given land piece. Each land piece would be given a certain rating regarding various land uses, e.g., high residential, low industrial, open areas, etc. It was a simple assignment optimization problem. We tried to use the methodology that was used for nurse optimization for urban planning optimization, but we hit a block which did not allow us to make any progress due to symmetry issues.

Given that we recognized we would not be able to make progress in the research in the direction we were headed, we decided to switch directions. I extended the simple land use optimization problems with more constraints by taking into account urban sprawl. After literature review, I recognized that urban sprawl had a lot of research towards solving it but there were not many comprehensive optimization models. So, the next step was to construct a mathematical model which would address all the various factors contributing towards urban sprawl. After the model was constructed, it was so large that CPLEX, an optimization software, would not even accept the model. It allowed us to experiment with Benders Decomposition method to reduce the model size and allow us to solve the model.

I also worked as a teaching assistant for the IMSE Department when I joined the master’s program. I sincerely enjoyed my time at UT Arlington since it gave me an opportunity to try a variety of things, e.g., salsa, yoga, aikido, etc.

I am currently working as a software engineer for E2open as their optimization specialist.

Written by Piyush Kumar, Ph.D. Industrial Engineering
IMSE Alumni 2013