Digital Twin - Industrial Operations (DigiT-IO)

Digitalization is everywhere. Industrial Engineers model and simulate systems to optimize them or predict the unpredictable, making our world simply work better.

A digital twin is a digital model of an item or system. Digital twins can be made of an advanced manufacturing facility with all the latest technology, or space junk movement and collection in low earth orbit. A digital twin can be made of the traffic patterns in a theme park, human response to autonomous vehicles, or how to optimize energy on the grid. We will help you build skills to become a leader in this increasingly digital world.

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Team


Team Leaders

Stephan Biller
Harold T. Amrine Distinguished Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business Director of Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises

Research Interests

Digital-Industrial Strategy, Business and Financial Models

Resilient and Sustainable Manufacturing & Supply Chains

Production Systems, Operations Management, Enterprise Systems

Smart Manufacturing, Industry 4.0, AIoT

Digital transformation, Digital Twins

Energy Transition & Transportation

Innovation Commercialization & Go-to-Market @Scale

Ramses Martinez
Hall Family Rising Star Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Joint Appointment with Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests

3D Modeling, Rapid Prototyping, & Sensor Integration​:

- CAD Modeling of Highly Complex Systems​
- COMSOL Multiphysics Modeling
- Additive Manufacturing
- Sensor Integration - Thin, flexible and low-cost sensors for:​ structural integrity​, electrophysiological signals​, temperature, strain​, humidity​, proximity, pressure

Augmented Invisible Motion using Color Variation​:

- Automated Computer Recognition of objects and defects​
- Predictive algorithms operating in real-time
- VR Cave for Augmented Reality​
- Integration of modeling, prototyping, sensing, digital twin and predictive algorithms​


Team Members

Vaneet Aggarwal
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Supervised learning

Reinforcement Learning

Large Language Models

Quantum Machine Learning

Applications in Networking, Transportation, Robotics, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Biomedical, and Climate

Hua Cai
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Carbon, water and material footprint of digitalization

Supply chain sustainability and resilience

Life cycle environmental impacts of emerging technology/system/service

System of systems (e.g., industry-agriculture-transportation-water-energy nexus)​

Integrated system modeling at different scales​

Srinivasan Chandrasekar
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Courtesy Appointment in Materials Engineering

Research Interests

Manufacturing

Materials Processing

Microsystems Technology

Nanostructured Materials



Zaiwei Chen
Assistant Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Reinforcement Learning

Learning in Games

Applied Probability

Optimization

Control

Gary Cheng
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Laser materials processing

Hybrid manufacturing systems

Rapid manufacturing of 3D bulk structural nanomaterials

Manipulation and processing of biomaterials

Multilayer functional coating

Mechanical/physical property enhancement of metals

Behzad Esmaeili
Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Joint Appointment with Civil Engineering

Research Interests

Construction safety

Risk management

Decision making



Nga Hin Ben Fong
Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Director of Professional Master's Program

Research Interests

Cyber-Physical Systems and Industry 4.0

IoT touch-screen devices, smart sensors, and Cloud services

Management of industrial monitoring system and AI/ML data analytics

Innovations in Experiential Learning and Professional Development practice

Global Technology Product Management

Ana Maria Estrada Gomez
Assistant Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Modeling, Monitoring, and Diagnosis of Multistage Manufacturing Processes Collecting High-dimensional Streaming Data:

- Adaptive Sampling Strategies for Online Monitoring​
- Directed Graphical Models for Root Cause Analysis​​

Syed Ahmad Helmi
Professor of Practice, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Industrial Engineering (Facilities Planning and Design, Supply Chain, Optimization)

Engineering Education (Problem Solving, Making Academic Change, Student-Centered Learning)


Susan Hunter
Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Methods for simulation optimization - optimization when the objective functions are defined implicitly through a Monte Carlo simulation model and can only be observed with stochastic error.​

Methods for multi-objective simulation optimization​

Methods for two-stage multi-objective linear programs

Cost-effectiveness analysis

Reem Khir
Assistant Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Logistics Systems Planning and Design:

- Developing optimization-based technology for dynamic decision making
- Enhancing and streamlining operations using real-time analytics​
- Supporting planner-in-the-loop environments to facilitate human-AI interaction for effective decision-making​

Resilient and Sustainable Supply Chains:

- Performance and risk analysis of critical networks such as food supply chains in the defense industry​
- Designing transportation systems that tradeoff economic, environmental, and social goals​

Methodology: System Modeling, Robust & Stochastic Optimization, Machine Learning for Optimization

Seokcheon Lee
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Logistics – dispatching, relocation, collaboration

Logistics – vehicle routing with non-routineness of trips, warehouse​

Optimization for plant design, work flows and layout​


Andrew Liu
Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Director of Professional Master's Program

Research Interests

Interactions of optimization

Game theory and Industrial organization, with applications to model and analyze energy markets and environmental policy

Shimon Nof
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Director, PRISM Center

Research Interests

Collaborative robotics, e-Work, and e-Business systems

Decision support networks for integrated production and service systems

Automation of nano and micro sensor networks

Systems security, integrity, and assurance

Nagabhushana Prabhu
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Nonlinear optimization and its applications

Eigenvalue computation of large sparse matrices

Computational oncology

Soliton physics​


Mohamed Salama
Visiting Assistant Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Supply Chain Network Design and Management

Logistics using emerging technologies, such as drones and automated vehicles

Public transportation network design and operations​

Conducting research on Disaster Management

Seeking Collaboration on "Resilient Community to Disruptions"

Gesualdo Scutari
Pedro and Barbara Granadillo Professor, Edwardson School Industrial Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research Interests

Distributed and Large-scale Optimization

Computational Game Theory

Variational Inequalities

Machine Learning

Big Data Analytics

Applications in Communications, Networking, Signal Processing, and Sensor Networks

Sivaranjani Seetharaman
Assistant Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Control systems

Machine learning

Networks

Energy

Transportation

Cyber-physical systems


Young-Jun Son
James J. Solberg Head;
Ransburg Professor of Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Real-time Control of Smart Factory and Extended Enterprises via Digital-Twin

Modeling Human Decision-Making (Extended Belief-Desire-Intention Model)

Multi-paradigm Simulations (agent, discrete event, system dynamics, virtual reality)

Modeling and Control of Emerging Applications (Emergency Evacuation, Healthcare, UAV/UGV Coordination, Social Network)

Mario Ventresca
Associate Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Spread of [potentially] pandemic diseases through populations (local to global scale); e.g., Zika, COVID-19

Spread of antigenically variable pathogens (local to global scale); e.g. Influenza H3N2

Deriving and optimizing vaccination distribution strategies/public health policies (including considering equity-related factors)

Influence of social media messaging on health policy acceptance​

Utilization of ML to aid in discovery of more effective policies

Use of network science to model and identify opportunities to improve trust in heterogeneous healthcare collaborative networks to improve services

Develop novel methodologies for analyzing fMRI data from network science perspective to discover cognitive differences and early decline signs among healthy, ageing, immuno-compromised populations

Strengths in network science, operations research, stochastic modeling, ML, algorithm design and analysis​

Juan Wachs
James H. and Barbara H. Greene Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Skilled Robots:

- Multimodal Robotic Co-Workers in the OR​
- Autonomous, Unmanned Medical Robots
- Robotics for Skill Augmentation

HRI and AI:

- Autonomous & AI Mentoring.

Assistive Robotics


Wenzhuo Wu
Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering

Research Interests

Wearable multimodal sensors for physiological and mental health monitoring

​Wearable sensors network for human/team performance assessment

Nanotechnology for off-the-grid clean water and power resiliency

Self-powered microelectronics

Yuehwern Yih
Tompkins Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering;
Director of Smart Systems and Operations Laboratory;
Director of LASER PULSE Consortium

Research Interests

Real-time decision-making in operations for semi-conductor manufacturing

Supply chain management for health care and humanitarian operations

Human-technology interactions in technology implementation

System design and integration; Interoperable data platform

Simulation and predictive modeling

Robust supply chains to optimize cost & delivery considering resilience and sustainability

Company/user engagement and stakeholder mapping and analysis

Supply chain data platform and solutions

Identify, develop, and pilot solutions (including workflow design and evaluation plan) with selected industrial partners

Implement and evaluate the performance of the pilot tools

Identify gaps that need further development and refine the solutions; need/solution matching

System/process for research translation and technology transfer to scale and disseminate solutions

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