2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

1. Dr. Amy Thompson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0330-6625 University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. Amy Thompson joined UConn in August 2017 as an Associate Professor-In-Residence of Systems Engineering and as the Associate Director for the Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering at the University of Connecticut. She currently teaches graduate-level engineering courses in model-based systems engineering and systems engineering fundamentals, and coordinates the online graduate programs in Advanced Systems Engineering for the UConn IASE. Prior to joining UConn, she received her B.S. in Industrial Engineering, M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering, and Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems from the University of Rhode Island. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked in industry as a manufacturing engineer, process engineer, and production maintenance supervisor, and led efforts to develop and scale-up new production facilities and production lines. Her current research portfolio includes the application of model-based systems engineering for the design and optimization of complex systems, model-based fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) for HVAC-R systems; design of smart manufacturing systems, facilities, and buildings; supply chain design; and undergraduate, graduate, and online systems engineering education development and assessment. In 2018, she started the SmartBuildings CT program at UConn with funding from Eversource and the United Illuminating Company. She is part of the leadership team at the University of Connecticut that leads the newly awarded US Department of Energy’s Southern New England Industrial Assessment Center and that offers no-charge energy audits to 20 manufacturing facilities in CT each year to help them lower their energy usage and costs. Dr. Thompson was the recipient of the US EPA Environment Merit Award, Region 1 (2017).

2. Prof. Matthew D. Stuber http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8435-9552 University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. Matt Stuber is an Assistant Professor with the Dept. of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and the Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his BS from the University of Minnesota – Twin cities, both in chemical engineering. In his post-doctoral work, he cofounded a water-tech start-up company focusing on developing flexible high-efficiency solar-driven desalination technologies for diverse applications where membrane technologies prove inadequate. At UConn, his core research focus is on optimization theory, methods, and software for modeling and simulation, robust simulation and design, and controls and operations. His application interests lie in addressing challenging and timely applications from a spectrum of industries including food, energy, water and natural resources, chemicals, finance, and healthcare. The systems-level thinking combined with quantitative rigor enables the development of novel solutions to emerging and intractable problems across these diverse areas.

3. Dr. Song Han University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. Song Han received the B.S. degree in computer science from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, in 2003, the M.Phil. degree in computer science
   from the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Texas, Austin,
   TX, USA, in 2012. He is currently an Associate Professor and Castleman Term Professor in Engineering Innovation in the Department of
   Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA. His research interests include cyber–physical systems, real-time and embedded systems, and wireless networks. He is an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems.

4. Dr. Abhishek Dutta http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5145-098X University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. Dutta is a Professor and Researcher with sustained international recognition who has risen to the top of his field of endeavor, that being in cybernetics and systems medicine. Dr. Dutta joined the University of Connecticut as an Assistant Professor since August 2016 and now serves with concurrent appointments at Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Pratt and Whitney Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering, Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering and the Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Dr. Dutta is one of a handful of experts currently leading the international community in the control of infectious diseases. Dr. Dutta is the recipient of the AI 2000 most influential scholar award in recognition of outstanding and vibrant contributions to the field. He attained an Erasmus Mundus Master of Science with distinction from the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in 2007, where his thesis received the Informatics Prize for Outstanding Thesis. He attained his Ph.D. in Electromechanical Engineering at Ghent University and as a junior member of Wolfson College Cambridge in 2014. Dr. Dutta then moved on to a Postdoctoral Research Associate position in the Coordinated Science Laboratory within the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

5. Dr. Hongyi Xu University of Connecticut [biography]

   Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

6. Dr. Shengli Zhou University of Connecticut [biography]

   Shengli Zhou (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering and information science from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota (UMN), Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 2002. He is currently a Full Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut (UCONN), Storrs, CT, USA. His general research interests lie in the areas of wireless communications and signal processing. He received the 2007 ONR Young Investigator Award and the 2007 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He was an Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS from 2005 to 2007, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING from 2008 to 2010, and IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING from 2010 to 2016.

7. Dr. Qian Yang University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. Qian Yang is an Assistant Professor with the Computer Science & Engineering Department and the Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering at the University of Connecticut. She received her PhD in Computational and Mathematical Engineering from Stanford University and her BA in Applied Mathematics with computer science focus from Harvard College. Prior to her academic career, she worked in industry with a startup developing AI-driven diagnostics for fall detection, and an established software company in the healthcare space. At UConn, her lab’s research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning with physical sciences and systems, with the ultimate goal of enabling scientific discovery through new data-driven paradigms for modeling and computation.

8. Dr. Fei Miao University of Connecticut [biography]

   Fei Miao is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, a Courtesy Faculty of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut since 2017. She is also affiliated to the Institute of Advanced Systems Engineering and Eversource Energy Center. She was a postdoc researcher at the GRASP Lab and the PRECISE Lab of the University of Pennsylvania from 2016 to 2017. She received the Ph.D. degree and the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in Electrical and Systems Engineering, with a dual M.S. degree in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. She received the B.S. degree in Automation from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research focuses on reinforcement learning, robust optimization, uncertainty quantification, and game theory, to address safety, efficiency, robustness, and security challenges of cyber-physical systems. Dr. Miao is a receipt of the NSF CAREER award and a couple of other awards from NSF, including awards from the Smart & Autonomous Systems, the Cyber-Physical Systems, and the Smart & Connected Communities programs. She received the Best Paper Award and Best Paper Award Finalist at the 12th and 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS) in 2021 and 2015, respectively.

9. Dr. George M. Bollas University of Connecticut [biography]

   Dr. George Bollas is the Pratt & Whitney Endowed Chair Professor in Advanced Systems Engineering with the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department at UConn. He is also the Director of the Pratt & Whitney Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering at UConn. Prior to joining UConn, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and before that he received his BS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. His interdisciplinary research merges the fields of energy technology, process systems engineering and model-based systems engineering. His laboratory pursues a balanced approach to information theory for the design, optimization, control, operation, and maintenance of cyber-physical systems, with applications on energy, chemical industry, manufacturing, naval and the aerospace industry. Dr. Bollas is the recipient of the NSF CAREER and ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator awards; the UConn Mentorship Excellence award; the UConn School of Engineering Dean’s Excellence award; AIChE Teacher of Year award; and the Chemical & Biomolecular Department Service award. He was a member of the 2016 Frontier of Engineering Education of the NAE and was elected as member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering in 2020. He has partnered with over 100 industry professionals and executives in generating and managing funding for UConn that exceeds $40M leading to joint R&D, technology, patents, and professional training programs. He manages a portfolio of over $7M in research projects, while his Institute manages active research funding that totals over $30M.

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