Penn State IME - Winter 2017 Newsletter

Inge Marcus, wife of the late Harold "Hal" Marcus, was presented with an Honorary Membership Award by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) in recognition of the tremendous support she and Hal provided to the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME) at Penn State. Former IISE presidents Alan Soyster (who is also a former IME department head) and Susan Steadman ('83 IE, '89 MBA), along with Peter and Angela Dal Pezzo Department Head Janis Terpenny, presented Inge with the award prior to the Celebration of Life that Penn State hosted for Hal on October 20. >>

WINTER 2017

FEATURES

Conquering traffic congestion with mathematics

The National Science Foundation has awarded more than $446,000 for a new collaborative engineering project that will allow drivers to make more informed travel decisions and allow government organizations to better regulate travel within heavily congested major metropolitan areas.

Terry Friesz, Harold and Inge Marcus Chaired Professor, is the principal investigator on the two-year

study dealing with "Statistical Learning for Dynamic Traffic

Assignments."

Alumnus turns job with struggling railroad into vibrant career

During the course of his 50-plus year career, Penn State alumnus John Samuels ('68 M.S., '72 Ph.D.) only missed two days of work due to sickness. A mixture of his work ethic and his willingness to take chances, Samuels left the safety of his tenured professorship to work for a struggling railroad. >>

Can computers be creative?

Researchers from Penn State, including Associate Professor Conrad Tucker and Morrow Professor Tim Simpson, have received nearly $1 million to teach computers how to generate original design ideas and then determine if those ideas are technically feasible which, in terms of national security, would give the United States a considerable competitive advantage in our technology industries. >>

Industrial engineers explore drone-enabled services

Industrial engineering graduate students on a Service Engineering Academic Learning team explore drone-enabled services with a new initiative called SmartPark. This drone-based intelligent parking system aims to revolutionize the parking industry by identifying the nearest vacant parking spot in real time using an innovative mobile app. >>

The move to lighter, stronger, cheaper materials for transportation

Materials processing is as old as civilization, but since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing technology has gone through three distinct phases. The current phase is cyber/digital, which is anything related to computer-aided design and information sharing, according to Jingjing Li, William and Wendy Korb Early Career Professor (associate professor) of industrial and manufacturing engineering. >>

NSF grant supports research to define creativity in engineering design

Scarlett Miller, associate professor of engineering design and industrial engineering, will use a $399,999 grant from the National Science Foundation to evaluate how creative ideas in engineering design are gauged, in order to create a unified measurement system. >>

RECOGNITIONS & AWARDS

Voruganti part of first-place team at 3M Invent a New Future Challenge >>
PSIMES presented with Penn State Alumni Association's Membership Award >>
Tucker helped organize artificial intelligence event in the U.K. >>
Hoffman awarded NIST Fellowship >>
Ravindran co-edits new book on business operations >>

ALUMNI UPDATES

Rohan Shirwaiker ('11 Ph.D., '07 M.S.) elected the new president of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers' Manufacturing and Design Division
Omar Ashour ('12 Ph.D. IE and OR, '10 M.S.) is president of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers' newest division, Modeling and Simulation
Nicola Palmer ('90 IE) spoke about her role in crisis situations as chief network officer at Verizon Wireless >>
Rob Carringer ('81 IE, '82 M.Eng.) spoke at the Turnaround Management Association's 29th Annual Conference >>
Dika Handayani ('17 M.S.) accepted an assistant professor position in the Department of Engineering Technology at Texas State University (she will graduate with her Ph.D. from Penn State later this month)
Richard Tannenbaum ('92 IE) is senior vice president for Mills Fleet Farm, an outdoor living retailer