January  2021                                                                                                 Newsletter 
Message from the Division President

Dear fellow QCRE members,

Happy New Year! Wish you a happy and prosperous 2021. Reflecting on the past year, despite all the challenges and difficulties we faced, 2020 was a productive year for QCRE.
Some of the highlights of 2020 include (1) successful organization of the QCRE Track at the 2020 IISE Annual Virtual Conference, (2) successful launch of the QCRE Teaching Award, (3) Successful launch of the new initiative for Membership Growth, (4) successful launch of the new initiative for improving Industry Relationship, (5) successful launch of QCRE LinkedIn and Twitter Accounts with steadily increasing members, and (6) organization of three high quality and well-attended webinars. On behalf of the QCRE board of directors, I would like to congratulate everyone for such a successful 2020 and thank you for your continued support of our division.
Looking ahead to 2021, it is an exciting time to be a member of QCRE and get involved while the planning of activities for the new year is well underway! The QCRE board will continue to organize the QCRE track at the 2021 IISE Annual Conference, which will be held in virtual during May 22-25. The division is sponsoring two best paper awards: The Best Student Paper Award and The Best Track Paper Award. The QCRE division is also hosting the QCRE Data Challenge Competition. Additionally, the division is planning a workshop on Deep Learning. Furthermore, the QCRE division is organizing an industry panel discussion with panelists from the industry. I invite everyone to stay connected with us at IISE Connect and our social media and get involved with the division's new initiatives or ongoing activities, as we strive for continued excellence and promote our QCRE division as a premier community for researchers and practitioners in the field quality and reliability.
Please do not hesitate, reach out and get involved. Your inputs, contributions, and participation in our year-round activities are critical to the division's success. Please feel free to contact me (adel.alaeddini@utsa.edu) if you are interested in organizing new activities or serving on division committees.

Sincerely,

Adel Alaeddini, Ph.D.
IISE QCRE Division President
 2021 IISE Conferences are Virtual!
 
Call for Nomination for QCRE Board of Directors and President-Elect
The QCRE Nominating Committee is making a call for nominations for four directors (two-year terms), and the position of president-elect (three-year term and must be a current or past board member). All nominees must be current QCRE members of IISE.
The new term will begin on June 2nd. Board members are expected to be an active participant in monthly board conference calls and to participate in various initiatives, some of which are led by committees working in partnership with the full board.
Board members are also expected to attend the IISE Annual Conference and to participate in the Town Hall meeting held during the annual conference.
To submit a nomination, please send the nomination form to Trevor Craney (trevor.craney@collins.com) and Kathy Gamboa (kgamboa@iise.org) by Jan 31, 2021.
Please contact Trevor Craney (trevor.craney@collins.com) if you have any questions about the positions and responsibilities. Please consider giving back to your profession through a QCRE leadership position.

2020 IISE Annual Conference & Expo QCRE Award Winners 
Winner of the 2020 QCRE Best Track Paper Award
"Rare Event Estimation of High Dimensional Problems with Confidence Intervals"
Dr. Pingfeng Wang
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Winner of the 2020 QCRE Best Student Paper Competition
"Two-Dimensional Variable Selection and Its Applications in the Diagnostics of Product Quality Defects"
Cheoljoon Jeong
North Carolina State University
Advisor: Dr. Xiaolei Fang
Call for Papers: QCRE Best Student Paper Competition
The QCRE division of IISE is sponsoring a student paper competition. The purpose of this competition is to honor outstanding papers in the field of quality and/or reliability engineering research and practice. Awards will be presented at the QCRE town hall meeting during IISE Annual Conference & Expo May 22 - 25, 2021 (Virtual Conference). The winners will be acknowledged in the QCRE newsletter and website.
Entrants must submit a blinded and unblinded version of the paper along with a formal signed statement from the student's advisor, all in electronic format (PDF files ONLY) to both coordinators, Dr. Chenang Liu (chenang.liu@okstate.edu) and Dr. Haitao Liao (liao@uark.edu), NO later than Feb. 15th, 2021. Late or incomplete submission will be ineligible for the competition. For the details and updates, please check the IISE website (https://www.iise.org/Details.aspx?id=29058), IISE Connect (in QCRE Library folder), our social media pages (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) and upcoming emails.
Call for Participation: Best Student Poster Competition
The QCRE and DAIS division of IISE is inviting QCRE and DAIS student members to participate in the Best Student Poster Competition at IISE Annual Conference 2021. The competition will be held virtually. Interested students should send their posters to the session chairs by May 20th and should give a 4-minutes presentation of their work during the live session. A winner will be selected by a panel of judges and awarded a certificate. If interested, please use the following link to register: QCRE Best Student Poster Competition Registration
Participation in the best student poster competition session is free of charge if registered for the conference. For inquiries and registration, please contact the chair of Best Student Poster Competition Dr. Mostafa Reisi at mreisigahrooei@ufl.edu and Dr. Mingyang Li at mingyangli@usf.edu.
Call for Participation: Student Introduction and Interaction Session
The QCRE and DAIS division of IISE is inviting QCRE and DAIS student members to participate in the Student Introduction and Interaction Session at IISE Annual Conference 2021. This session is designed for QCRE and DAIS student members to build their professional network, show up their talents, and learn from invited guests. Each student will be given three minutes to deliver a brief speech about his/her research interests and accomplishments. Senior QCRE and DAIS members will be invited to discuss opportunities for students, job market preparation (academic vs. industry), and interact with the attendees.
Participation in this session is free of charge if registered for the conference. The session plans to have around 12 student speakers due to the limited capacity. Students who are on the job market and/or have poster presentations will be given higher priority. For inquiries and registration, please contact the chair of the Student Introduction and Interaction Session Dr. Hongyue Sun at hongyues@buffalo.edu and Dr. Mahboubeh Madadi at mahboubeh.madadi@sjsu.edu.
QCRE Member Spotlight - Dr. Xiaolei Fang
In each issue of the QCRE newsletter, we feature one outstanding QCRE member who has
demonstrated excellence in the QCRE related fields, and the member can be from academia, industry or a student.
In this issue of QCRE newsletter, we feature our outstanding junior faculty member, Dr. Xiaolei Fang, who is an assistant professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing in 2008, his M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. His research interests lie in the field of industrial data analytics for High-Dimensional and Big Data applications in the energy, manufacturing, and service sectors. He specifically focuses on addressing the analytical, computational, and scalability challenges associated with the development of statistical and optimization methodologies for analyzing massive amounts of complex data structures for real-time asset management and optimization. He is a winner of the Data Mining Best Paper Award from the Data Mining Section of INFORMS, the winner of the Alice and John Jarvis Ph.D. Student Research Award from the ISyE department at Georgia Tech, and a winner of the Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis Award from Georgia Tech.
Here is Dr. Xiaolei Fang's Story with QCRE.
 
What is your current position and role?    
I am an assistant professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University.

What are your experiences with QCRE division at IISE?
I have been a member of the QCRE division since 2014 when I was a graduate student. I served as a session chair at the IISE annual conference in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. I also served as the co-organizer of the QCRE Best Student Paper Competition at the IISE annual conference in 2019.

How have these experiences helped you in preparing yourself for your career?
QCRE has provided me with a large number of great opportunities to interact with colleagues in the quality control, reliability, diagnostics, prognostics, and industrial data analytics areas. This significantly helps me learn frontier research in these areas and broaden my vision. In addition to research, QCRE also provided great opportunities for networking, making friends, and job hunting, etc.

What are the achievements you are proudest of?
I am proud that I have started to get involved in some of the services in the QCRE division. I hope that I can contribute more to the QCRE division in the future.

Any suggestions to future fellow students?
I suggest that fellow QCRE members keep getting involved in the activities such as attending the webinars and presenting their work at the IISE annual conferences.
The Connect App is Here! 

Logging into Connect in now a click away. 
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Have you Signed Up for Mentor Match in Connect? 

IISE has launched a Mentor Match program. This unique online networking and career development tool helps you find, connect and share experiences with others. Your mentor or mentee can be in the same city or on the other side of the world. Both mentors and mentees fill out a profile to which both parties can search for a match. Once connected they're able to communicate and develop a mentorship. Read more here to participate in this program. 
 
Contact Kathy Gamboa  if you have any questions regarding this exciting mentor program.
Call for Entries to the Division's Quarterly Newsletter

The division is publishing its quarterly newsletters and hereby soliciting news entries. This is a great opportunity to showcase interesting yet impactful researches, professional practices and educational efforts within the division. The solicited story will go into the following blocks in the newsletter: Research on the News, Practical Applications, and Education and Outreach. It would be great if you could:
(1)  Prepare your story write-up within 300 words (write it in plain language for diverse audiences);
(2)  Provide a nice picture together with the story;
(3)  Provide a link (if possible) to a detail version of the story (hyperlink to your project public webpage, etc.).

Please email your information and materials to Dr. Chenang Liu and your entry will appear in the next available division newsletter.
PDF version of our newsletters are available for our members on the IISE Connect (QCRE division Library folder), as well as:

Have you considered a corporate membership? If not, why? Companies large and small enjoy the benefits. Include your entire team and receive all the benefits of individual membership, plus lowest rates to attend the Conferences and much more.
 
Contact Doug Long, IISE Global Director for Strategic Alliances for more details.