Dr. Burak Eksioglu, Assistant Professor of ISE, is principal investigator of a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to study aspects of the furniture industry in Mississippi. The $62,000 grant was facilitated by MSU’s Franklin Furniture Institute directed by Dr. Steve Taylor. Dr. Eksioglu and co-principal investigators Dr. Jilei Zhang from Forest Products, and Drs. Sandra Eksioglu and Mingzhou Jin from ISE are identifying the impact of outsourcing the manufacture of components and products on the performance of the furniture industry supply chain.
In the furniture industry, many U.S. companies see outsourcing as an option to remain competitive. For example, it is reported that the cost of buying a product from China is 20% to 30% less than the cost of producing it in the U.S. However, the cost difference does not fully capture all costs and risks associated with outsourcing furniture and furniture components. Therefore, the economic models created through this research will capture the key relationships among participants along the supply chain and the uncertainties related to lead time, defect rates, and customer demand in order to determine the true cost of outsourcing. For further information, contact Dr. Burak Eksioglu at 662.325.7625 or at beksioglu@ise.msstate.edu.
MSU industrial and systems engineering senior, Brian Porter, won 1st place in the Student Technical Paper Competition during the Institute of Industrial Engineers Region 3 student conference held in Orlando, Florida on March 1-4. The Region 3 is composed of 16 universities in the southeastern United States including Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Florida, Auburn, Louisiana State University, and University of Puerto Rico. “We are very proud of Brian,” said industrial and systems engineering head Royce Bowden. “He is a top caliber engineer.”
Brian’s paper, Six Sigma Applications for Logistics Improvement, was based on a project conducted for his Co-op employer, Shaw Industries, in Dalton, Georgia during 2006. Brian earned certification as a Six Sigma Green Belt at Shaw and the Six Sigma Certificate from the Bagley College of Engineering. A total of 19 Mississippi State students attended the conference along with Larry Dalton, industrial and systems engineering’s director of six sigma.
Congratulations, Brian!
Dr. Stanley F. Bullington
Dr. Stan Bullington was selected by a committee of engineering faculty and students as an inaugural inductee into the Bagley College of Engineering Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His selection for this significant distinction was based on the following criteria:
–Outstanding teachers engage students in the learning process and motivate students to succeed in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom.
–Outstanding teachers seek to use a variety of teaching methods to reach students regardless of their individual learning styles.
–Outstanding teachers are demanding but fair, clearly communicating their expectations for students and hold students to these expectations.
–Outstanding teachers challenge students at all levels in their classrooms and encourage collaborative learning among their students.
–Outstanding teachers engage in active assessment of the learning of their students and seek to improve their teaching to ensure even greater student learning in the future.
The students in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering routinely express their gratitude for having access to Professor Bullington. Students from other programs, both undergraduate and graduate, have also benefited from Dr. Bullington’s innovative approaches to their education. He is an exemplary and distinguished educator, and the ISE faculty and staff are delighted that Professor Bullington’s success and dedication to educating top caliber engineers has been recognized by the Academy. Congratulations, Stan!
Dr. Jessica Oswalt Matson is the 2007 Distinguished Fellow of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Jessica has had a very honorable career since receiving her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Mississippi State in 1975. She is a trailblazer from an MSU family of trailblazers.
Jessica’s father, Professor Jesse Oswalt, blazed an exciting new trail in 1962 when he co-founded the industrial engineering department at MSU. This would be the foundation from which his family and many others would receive degrees from MSU. The Oswalt family, with their tradition of excellence, is held in high esteem by the faculty of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Before Jessica graduated from MSU in 1975, she was named the best female industrial engineering student in the nation by the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Later, after a couple of years with AT&T, she blazed a new trail to the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, she was one of the first two women to earn an industrial engineering PhD.
After completing her PhD in 1982, Dr. Matson joined the MSU faculty. In 1987, she moved to the industrial engineering department at the University of Alabama. For several years, she was the only woman in a faculty position in the engineering college at Alabama. In 1998, Jessica blazed a new trail to the Tennessee Technological University where she became the first woman engineering department chair at Tennessee Tech.
Jessica has an impressive record of research and scholarly publications. She is a recipient of the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Dr. Matson has been active nationally in the Institute of Industrial Engineers, serving on the Board of Trustees as Senior Vice-President at Large for Academia in 2004-06. She has also held national leadership roles in the Industrial Engineering Division of ASEE. She is a program evaluator for the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET and a Professional Engineer.
Dr. Jessica Oswalt Matson blazed another new trail on 15 February 2007 when she became the first woman to become a Distinguished Fellow of Industrial and Systems Engineering at MSU.
Franklin Myers is the 2007 Bagley College of Engineering Alumnus of the Year.
The 2007 Bagley College of Engineering Alumnus of the Year received a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at MSU in 1974. He also holds a juris doctorate with honors from the University of Mississippi School of Law.
He currently serves as senior vice president and chief financial officer for Cameron International Corporation, a Houston, Texas-based international manufacturer of oil and gas flow control equipment. His areas of responsibility include accounting, risk management, internal audit, treasury, strategic planning, and acquisitions.
Before joining Cameron in 1995, he was senior vice president and general counsel for Baker Hughes Corporation, and before that was an attorney and partner with Fulbright and Jaworski law firm.
He also serves as a member of the ISE advisory council and member of the board of directors of Input/Output Incorporated and of Comfort Systems Incorporated.
Congratulations Franklin!
Sara Morison’s congressional internship with Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran’s office involved getting out of her comfort zone, regularly helping people she’s never seen. It also involved sharing a cafeteria with presidential candidates and meeting Angelina Jolie.
Morison – a Mandeville, Louisiana, native and industrial and systems engineering major set to graduate in December – interned in spring 2005 with Sen. Cochran, chairman of the powerful appropriations committee. The experience at the Capitol will influence her for the rest of her life. She now looks forward to the job she wants in the city she wants to work at just weeks after she’ll graduate from Mississippi State University.
Working in Sen. Cochran’s office involved answering constituent e-mails, phone calls and letters. She further developed her people skills while working around one of the most political environments in the country. Although she showed communication skills, enthusiasm and other desired skills at MSU’s Starkville campus, her congressional internship put her in a situation to showcase herself where few other students ever will. “This definitely helped with written skills and people skills,” Morison said during a recent interview in McCain Hall. “There’s no class like having a real job.”
Just a handful of people will experience working for one of the most powerful senator’s in the country. Working with Sen. Cochran during a budget cycle allowed her to do research on federal budget appropriations requests. It also allowed her to meet people until then she had only seen on television, movies and magazines. Angelina Jolie popped into Cochran’s office one day while Morison worked. “There’s always somebody walking into the office,” she said. “We went walking around the Capitol looking for Brad Pitt.”
The uncertainty of who she would meet, along with getting work experience that would set her apart from most college graduates for the rest of her life all factored into daily life during Morison’s internship. However, each fall and spring semester a student in the Bagley College of Engineering experiences a semester-long internship with either Sen. Cochran or Sen. Trent Lott. The Congressional internship program through the College of Engineering aims to show MSU students the inner workings of how public policy emerges on Capitol Hill. The MSU program started in 1999 put college students with solid academic standing, outgoing personality, demonstrated leadership ability on MSU’s campus, and a self-starting attitude. An engineering degree can be a key to many opportunities besides traditional engineering fields. It can lead to a MBA or law degree.
“We have lots of students who are interested in public service careers,” said Dr. Donna Reese, associate dean of the Bagley College of Engineering and chairwoman of the congressional internship committee. “They get to see how the political process in Washington, D.C. works.”
Most interns in the program see things much closer than they ever thought. For Julie Carnathan, an industrial and systems engineering graduate, that meant watching President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address earlier this year in three rows down from where Laura Bush, the First Lady. Carnathan sat next to Martha-Ann Alito, whose husband was confirmed earlier that day as a justice in the Supreme Court. “It was just being in the right place at the right time,” Carnathan said in a phone interview. “Senator Lott had an extra ticket.”
While Carnathan counted sitting next to such famous people at President Bush’s address to the country as the highlight of her internship, she also learned the technical, complex side of making policy. Carnathan attended hearings that led to the rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The exposure to changing public policy with a focus on results led to Carnathan accepting a consulting job in Washington, D.C. after her internship. The Jackson, Mississippi native now works for Herren Associates, one of the country’s leading engineering and management consulting firms that assists the Navy in helping decide which ships are the best value to purchase, among many other duties. Carnathan’s internship experience opened her to a bigger world. Before accepting the congressional internship, she expected to take a job after graduation working for a company in Memphis or Atlanta, somewhere closer to home. She appreciates how the opportunity changed where she started life after college. “It’s probably the best move I ever made,” she said. “It really changed the course of my career and really my life.”
Carnathan’s consulting job keeps her around people associated with Mississippi and MSU. Jeffrey L. Herren, president and CEO of Herren and Associates, also graduated from MSU with a bachelors of science degree in industrial engineering from MSU. Herren makes no secret about enjoying hiring MSU graduates. His company offered a job to Morison that she begins in January, a month after completing her graduation requirements in Starkville. In between talking about plans to move back to the Capitol to work in a few months, Morison encouraged other MSU students to apply for the congressional internship. “Having that kind of job helps you in the future no matter what kind of career you go into,” she said. Carnathan agreed, saying students should pursue all available opportunities. “You have to take advantage of the opportunity,” she said. “You can’t leave it up to the person sitting next to you in class.”
Professor Kari Babski-Reeves of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) is a Co-Principal Investigator for a $588,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The Principal Investigator for the project is Professor Nick Younan of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Other Co-Principal Investigators include ECE Professors Noel Schulz and Roger King. ECE and ISE undergraduate and graduate students will be an integral part of the research.
The focus of this research is improving the security of the electric power grid. Software systems will be developed to facilitate information sharing among interconnected power grids that often use different data formats for reporting the status of the grid. Methods for synthesizing the heterogeneous data sources into requisite information needed by human operators tasked with detecting attacks on the power grid or grid overloads will be researched.
Contact Kari Babski-Reeves at (662) 325-1677 for additional information.
Professors Sandra Eksioglu and Burak Eksioglu of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering are Co-Principal Investigators for a $497,000 grant from the United States Department of Homeland Security. The project is a joint effort between Mississippi State University and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Principal Investigator for the project is Professor Lori Bruce of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the GeoResources Institute. Computer Science and Engineering Professor TJ Jankun-Kelly is also involved with the project.
The objective of this research program is to develop a strategic plan for building, operating, and maintaining a robust, national emergency communications system that will assure reliable communications during disaster management operations. The strategic plan will include risk and economic viability assessments, identification of critical systems and technologies, and development of operating principles that are necessary for assured communications during national ergencies.
The research will be beneficial because a strategic plan will guide immediate investments in communications infrastructure that is essential for improving national emergency preparedness and future disaster management operations, and a strategic plan is needed to direct future research and development towards improving critical communications infrastructure. Building a national emergency communications system is challenging since it requires in-depth analysis of communications needs that exist, but are not presently satisfied, when responding to large-scale disasters; and, it requires models of historical and future scenarios that reflect real requirements and can usefully serve as a test bed for new concepts.
The research program will take advantage of the Office of Interoperability and Compatibility’s SAFECOM and RapidCom initiatives in devising strategies for a highly reliable communications (both public and private) infrastructure during disaster management. The technology will be developed taking into account the existing and emerging standards so as to provide ease of interoperability and upgradeability.
Contact Sandra Eksioglu at (662) 325-9220 or Burak Eksioglu at (662) 325-7625 for additional information.
Dr. Kari Babski-Reeves is the contract Principal Investigator for a $450,000 grant from United Parcel Service (UPS). This effort is being conducted in conjunction with researchers in the Human Factors and Ergonomics option at Virginia Tech. The focus of the research is the development and enhancement of current delivery service provider training programs to improve safety and driving performance of UPS drivers. Novel training methodologies are being explored and tested. A training program will be pilot tested in Maryland in the summer of 2007. The finalized training program will be instituted across multiple training facilities in the US. ISE undergraduate and graduate students will be an integral part of the research.
Contact Kari Babski-Reeves at (662) 325-1677 for additional information.
Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Professor Mingzhou Jin is the Principal Investigator for a $441,000 grant from the United States Department of Homeland Security. The project is a jointed effort between Mississippi State University (MSU) and the Oak Ridge National Lab. ISE Professors John Usher and Royce Bowden, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor William McAnally, and Michael Parsons of the Institute for Clean Energy Technology are also involved with the project.
The objective of the research program is to develop and field test a prototype system that provides more accurate, uniform, and timely data on hazardous cargo movements by barges, especially those certified as Certain Dangerous Cargo (CDC). The proposed system is expected to automatically track and monitor barges with CDC and communicate the real-time information to a data server. An information fusion system will be developed to analyze the collected real-time data and other information, identify any potential security threats, and visually display locations and routes of suspicious barges. The system will benefit the homeland security community, first responders, local law enforcement personnel, and businesses by providing timely and accurate barge information to make quick and effective decisions in disasters involving CDC movement on the inland waterway. ISE undergraduate and graduate students will be an integral part of the research.
Contact Mingzhou Jin at (662) 325-3923 for additional information.