Congratulations!

Dr. Ozgecan Uluscu defended her PhD dissertation, Performance Modeling and Risk Analysis of Transit Vessel Traffic in the Istanbul Strait: Studies on Queues with Multiple Types of Interruptions, on April 2, 2008. She has accepted a job as Consultant for C-1 Consulting.

ISE Annual Student Awards:

• Qi Wen is awarded 2008 ISE Outstanding Junior Award,
• Carl Pankok and Kelly Delpome are awarded 2008 ISE Kuebler Memorial Award,
• Student design team, Pooja Singh, Delia Rios, Anand Patel, Joseph Butewicz (not in the picture), is awarded 2008 Material Handling Awards.
• Christopher Krieger (not in the picture) is awarded 2008 ISE Outstanding Sophomore Award.
• Alvaro Sevilla (not in the picture) is awarded 2008 ISE Outstanding Senior Award.

From Left to Right: Prof. Art Chaovalitwongse, Carl Pankok, Prof. Tom Boucher, Pooja Singh,
Prof. Basily Basily, Delia Rios, Anand Patel,
Prof. Elsayed Elsayed, Prof. Hoang Pham, Kelly Delpome, Qi Wen

Yada Zhu, ISE PhD student, received a Student Travel Award to attend NSF Grantees Conference in Knoxville in January 2008. She will present her research work under Dr. Elsayed's supervision at the conference.

The Rutgers University IIE Chapter # 841 is the recipient of a Gold Award in the 2006-07 Chapter Recognition Program. Ms. Dana Wexler served as Student President and Dr. Luxhoj served as Faculty Advisor.

Dr. Jose Espiritu defended his PhD dissertation, System Reliability Estimation & Component Replacement Analysis for Electricity Transmission & Distribution Systems, on July 19, 2007. He has accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Industrial Engineering at University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) starting Fall 2007.

Dr. Yigit Karpat graduated in the Fall of 2007 and accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Department Industrial Engineering of Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

Dr. Heidi Taboada defended her PhD dissertation, Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithms Considering Objective Preferences & Solution Clusters, on April 25, 2007. She has accepted a job as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) starting Fall 2007.

ISE Senior Design Team won 1st place in the IIE National Competition 2007.

Project Title: Fully Automated Seed Planting System
Team Members: Adrianne Gabriel, Sonya Manzoor, Andres Portilla, Kevin Shaw, and Cristian J. Vergara

Supervising Professors Dr. Elsayed, Dr. Boucher and Dr. Basily.

The presentation file can be found here.

SE Senior Design Project Teams won 1st and 3rd places at the IIE Region I Student Technical Paper Competition held at the Rochester Institute of Technology on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007.

The team of Cristian Vergara, Kevin Shaw and Sonya Manzoor placed 1st for their project entitled "Automated Seed Planter" that involved the design and implementation of a fully automated seed planting system that included optimized routing of the planter.

This project now advances to the IIE National Student Competition to be held at the IIE Annual Conference in May 2007.

The team of Dana Wexler and Nicole Setzer placed 3rd for their project entitled "Voice Activated Automated Baby Rocker" that featured wireless voice activation of multidirectional motion and different audio files to automatically rock a baby to sleep as well as continuously monitor a baby's breathing rate.

Both projects were developed through the ISE Senior Design Project course under the supervision of Professors Elsayed, Boucher and Basily.

Mr. Yigit Karpat, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, is to receive Italian Machine Tool Technology award for North American Students. The award is given to the students from premier North American engineering programs with best papers. The award includes a one-week trip to Italy in September 2006 to visit top Italian companies in the machine tool industry.

ISE Senior Design Teams won the top two awards at the IIE Region I Student Technical Paper Competition held at the University of Buffalo on March 24.

The winning teams are:

1st place - "The Dynamic Decision Response System for Rutgers University Transportation Services"
- Team Members: Vikrum Ingle, Michael Hornby, Michael Chou and Nana Gyamera -

2nd place - "Automated Car Parking Garage System"
- Team Members: Nicolas Morillo, Charles Guiliano and Abhinav Jha -

The 1st place team will now compete at the IIE National Student Technical Paper Competition to be held in May.

Congratulations to all team members for a job well done!

Mr. Ahmet Oztekin, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, received a best paper award for his paper entitled "A Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) Approach for Representing and Indexing Aviation Accidents". This paper was presented in the Management Information Systems session at the 9th World Multi-conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI 2005) held in Orlando, Florida during July 10-13, 2005. The paper is co-authored with Dr. James T. Luxhoj from the ISE Department.

The following two design groups won the regional IIE Technical Paper Competition.

They are placed in their respective ranking 1 and 2 respectively.  

Congradulations to the students and to Dr. Elsayed and Dr. Basily who spent a lot of time with them.

1. Color Blind and Color Coordination Assistant
   Iyadi Adi, John K Fischer, Dariusz M Karpiuk, John-Fayek R. Michail
   
   The objective of the Colorblind and Color Matching Assistant (CCMA) is to develop a system that identifies the color of clothes and matches them with other clothes. The system ranks the quality of the match as either 0 (not a match) to 1 (a match), and the result of the identification and match are provided to the user with a vocal output. This is accomplished through integrating a digital flatbed scanner, computer control of the scanner, and software. The software provides color analysis of the image, identification of the color, matching the color of clothing with other clothes, a graphical user interface, and a vocal output. The CCMA also has the capability to solely identify the colors of clothes and solely match colors of two articles of clothing, as opposed to doing both processes. The user simply places their clothes on the scanner, goes through the graphical user interface to start the program, and the results of the CCMA are both displayed on screen and spoken to the user. After completing numerous trial runs, the CCMA consistently identifies and matches two articles of clothing with solid colors, defined as clothing with small variation in color.
2. Fully Automated Stand Alone Mailboxes
   Adam J. Diener, Jonathan D'urso, Kathlene W. Lechner, David W. Wong

   This project deals with the design and implementation of a Fully Automated Stand-Alone Mailbox (FASAM) in order to provide postal services to business and residential customers at all times, and to notify the post office when a parcel is ready for retrieval. More specifically, the FASAM weighs, dispenses the proper amount of postage for, and stores a package or letter for retrieval. It is intended to achieve these objectives through integrating the hardware components of the mailbox with computer control and software code. The FASAM includes an easy to use interface and accepts a credit card payment from customers. It also incorporates a scale, a parcel guiding system, and computer control for the detection of packages and or letters. Our extensive research strongly suggests if implemented, this product would bring about many benefits for United States Postal Service.

Ms. Debbie Cabezas was presented with ISE’s Outstanding Juniors Award for demonstrating exceptional performance in her junior year.

Mr. Dariusz M. Karpiuk, Mr. Jonathan D’Urso and Mr. Adeola B. Olabisi were recipients of the Material Handling Award of Excellence.
This award is presented to students who have been able to incorporate the knowledge and skills they have gained as a student in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering in designing a working model. These students proved that they could utilize their theoretical knowledge to design and construct a successful working model.

Mr. Nathan Greenhut is the recipient of a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP) Fellowship. Since 1980, the NASA GSRP is helping to meet the continuing needs of the nation’s aeronautics and space initiatives by increasing the number of highly trained scientists and engineers. Mr. Greenhut received his award in the amount of $24,000 through the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA and he is designing a prototype Executive Information System (EIS) for the Aviation System Risk Model (ASRM) being developed at Rutgers University. Dr. James T. Luxhoj is serving as his M.S./Ph.D. advisor. 

Mr. Dustin Runkle received the Alfred A. Kuebler Award.
The Alfred A. Kuebler Award for outstanding industrial engineering students was established in the memory of Professor Kuebler who provided the inspirational force for the establishment of Industrial Engineering as a separate discipline at Rutgers University. The annual awards are provided by a fund that was established in Professor Kuebler’s memory by his family, colleagues and many friends and each year it is given to a student with a high academic standing and involvement in a sports activity.

Ms. Cara Lee was the recipient of the United Parcel Service Scholarship for a Minority Student.
The IIE Women and Minority Industrial Engineers Outreach Program awards $4,000 scholarships annually to outstanding female and minority students. The 2003-2004 winners included students from Kansas State University, Oklahoma State University and Rutgers University. “UPS and its employees have a longstanding commitment to the communities where we live and work. Philanthropy and employee volunteerism are a part of the company’s culture,” said Evern Cooper, president of The UPS Foundation and vice president of UPS corporate relations. “Together with our nonprofit partners, we work to make a positive impact on the lives of people in need. UPS’s support of the Institute of Industrial Engineers signifies our shared focus and commitment to improve our communities.”

Dr. Peng Wang graduated in the Spring of 2003 and accepted a position in United Technologies.

Senior Ryan Dickey received a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP) Award in the amount of $24,000 from the NASA Langley Research Center for the period of June 1, 2003 – May 31, 2004.

Junior Ada Barlatt was the recipient of the IIE’s United Parcel Service Scholarship for Minority Students Ada also received the Outstanding Junior Award from ISE and was a member of the team that received the Materials Handling Society Award for the best Senior Design Project.

Junior Elvis Herrera was the recipient of the David Chen Memorial Award.

Junior Ari Genaur received the Kuebler Award given to him for his excellent academic standing and participation in an athletic activity. Ari is in the Frisbee team of Rutgers.

Chintan Bhatt, Kevin G. Welly and Ada Batlatt received the Regional MHS award for their successful design projects.