Shima Mohebbi, graduated from ISE in 2015, currently a postdoc fellow at the University of South Florida, will be joining the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma as an assistant professor, in the fall of 2017. Her advisor at UT was Dr, Xueping Li. Mohebbi has been conducting research on improving resiliency of critical infrastructure at USF. She is a co-PI of a project entitled “Integrative Decision Making Framework to Enhance the Resiliency of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures,” funded by the NSF CRISP program ($1.96M, #1638301). During her time at UT she received the Chancellor’s Extraordinary Professional Promise Award and the Chad/Ann Blair Holliday Fellowship. Mohebbi was a finalists for the 2014 IIE Gilbreth Memorial Fellowship. She was nominated by IISE in 2015 for the New Faces of Engineering national program, and was featured on discovere.org.

. Nelson Granda is now an Assistant Professor at West Carolina University while continuing his PhD work at UT. His research is about additive manufacturing and sustainability. His advisor is Dr. Mingzhou Jin.

Dr. Seyed Ahmad Niknam

is now Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering & Engineering Management at Western New England University.

2017 IISE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, welcomed students from nine universities around the region for the Institute of Industrial and System Engineers (IISE) Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference February 24-26, 2017. The event was hosted by UT’s IISE chapter at the Holiday Inn Knoxville. “The IISE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference is a weekend full of networking events, team building activities, a job fair catering specifically to industrial engineering students, as well as successful keynote speakers from the local Knoxville area,” said Hannah Jarrett, one of the conference’s three co-chairs.

Kylie White, a conference co-chair and senior in ISE, believes this was a great opportunity for the department and its students. “One of the benefits of hosting the conference is having students from other universities visit Knoxville and be exposed to our growing ISE undergraduate and graduate programs,” said White. “Also, hosting the conference at UT makes it exceedingly cheaper and easier for UT ISE students to attend.”

The weekend began with an opening banquet at the Foundry in Knoxville on Friday. Ken Pittman, Plant Manager at Fresenius Medical Care, served as the keynote speaker for the dinner. Following dinner, students played “Minute to Win It” games as icebreakers to get to know one another better. Friday also offered students the chance to tour Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, CVS Pharmacy’s Distribution Center, and the Southern Impact Research Center.

Conference speakers included Wayne Davis, dean of the Tickle College of Engineering, John Kobza, head of the ISE department, Jordan Spradling, Director of Transportation and Logistics at Flying J, and Eric Zeanah, President of American Accessories International, LLC. The speakers and plant tours featured a wide range of industries—a calculated move by the conference co-chairs. “The co-chairs strategically chose speakers and plant tours that represent a variety of industries: research laboratories, e-commerce industries, production and manufacturing, health-care systems, entrepreneurship techniques, and logistics engineering,” Frech said. “With the diversity of the sessions, I hope that we catered to each student’s personal interests at some point throughout the weekend.”

This IISE conference, the first UT has hosted in six years, attracted students from Clemson University, East Carolina University, Francis Marion University, Methodist University, North Carolina A & T, North Carolina State University, West Virginia University, and Virginia Tech. “The conference had an excellent turn out! There were almost 180 students and 25 company representatives in attendance, and the students actively interacted and networked with the professionals at the career fair and in the breakout sessions,” Frech said. “It was a rare opportunity to bring our region’s greatest leaders and aspiring young professionals together, so it is an honor that we could accommodate them here in Knoxville.”

2017 Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Award

Students who nominated Rupy Sawhney for his award say he’s a dynamic teacher who demonstrates his commitment to their future success by taking them on industrial visits, incorporating real-life examples into their lessons, and keeping them involved through games and projects. Because Sawhney is so involved in creating ties between the community and the university—in 2015, he was appointed to the Mayor’s Council on Disability Initiatives—he is a natural at encouraging students to understand how their engineering skills can be used to enhance society. One student observed, “The most important lesson he has taught is what our passion must be—to be of service to mankind.”

2017 Chancellor’s Extraordinary Professional Promise Award

This prestigious award was given to two ISE PhD Students:

Wolday D. Abrha and Roshanak Akram

The inaugural recipient of the Dr. Kenneth E. Kirby Endowed Faculty Award is Dr. Mingzhou Jin, professor and associate head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE). The Dr. Kenneth E. Kirby Endowed Faculty Award is presented annually to a faculty member who displays excellence in teaching, research, and contributions to the mission of the ISE Department.

The Dr. Kenneth E. Kirby Endowed Faculty Award recognizes faculty excellence in teaching, research, and contributions to the mission of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering . The endowed award was established by Joe Fareed (BS/IE ’85), Mike Zill (BS/IE ‘85), Mike Ray (BS/IE ’81), Greg Carpenter (BS/IE ’88), Randy Carson (BS/IE ’84), and Mike Evans (BS/IE ’85) to honor Dr. Kirby, Associate Professor Emeritus, for his impact on the academic experiences and subsequent careers of hundreds of ISE alumni.  Dr. Kirby is a three-time UT alumnus, having earned a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Industrial Engineering in 1962 and 1979, respectively, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering Science in 1979.

Chattanooga State  Community College
engineering students now have a pathway to a bachelor’s degree from University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s industrial engineering program while they work on their associate degrees locally.
The new 2+2 program, lets students study at Chattanooga State for two years and then enter UTK as a junior for their remaining years. Participants would graduate with an associate degree in applied science–general engineering and a Bachelor  of Science in industrial engineering. Tim McGhee, Chattanooga State engineering technology division dean, said that while the community college has existing partnerships with UTC, it’s their first partnership with UT, Knoxville.  “Local students interested in one of the most sought after engineering fields now have a “direct line” with the state’s flagship university,” McGhee said. “Industrial engineering is one of the highest-demand professions in Tennessee, and UT Knoxville has the only industrial engineering degree in Tennessee,” McGhee said.
Dr. John Kobza, head of the UT Knoxville Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, said “The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at UT Knoxville is excited to be partnering with Chattanooga State Community College
to provide a pathway to our industrial engineering degree, Chattanooga State is well known for their strong technical programs, and we feel their general engineering students will be extremely well prepared to transfer to UTK and succeed in
our industrial engineering program.”
Current Chattanooga State sophomores can begin applying for the 2+2 program this spring, officials said. To be eligible, Chattanooga State students must graduate
with an associate degree in general engineering with no less than a 3.0 GPA, officials said.

Article reprinted from nooga.com, written by Matt Pulford