Purdue Students, Alumni and Faculty Shine at IISE Annual Conference & Expo
![Xiaoquan Gao delivers presentation at IISE Annual Conference & Expo](/IE/news/2023/iise-first-place-xiaoquan-gao/IISE_SSE_ServiceInnovationAward_Presentation.jpg)
IE's PhD candidate Xiaoquan Gao was part of a team that earned first place in the category "IISE/SSE Outstanding Innovation in Service Systems Engineering." More can be learned about the project, titled "Breaking the Cycle of Reincarceration: Community Corrections Placement with an MDP Approach" at this link.
Bryan Denmark, who just graduated with his bachelor's degree earlier in the month, was awarded with third place in the James W. Barany Student Award for Excellence category. This award recognizes undergraduate excellence and campus leadership. Denmark, who will begin work with PepsiCo later this year, was a member and former president of Purdue's IISE chapter.
![Bryan Denmark with his IISE James W. Barany Student Award for Excellence](/IE/news/2023/iise-awards/denmark-barany.jpeg)
Zeken (Louis) Liu also earned an award, placing second in the Three-Minute Doctoral Pitch Contest Optimization and Modeling Track. Liu is a PhD candidate in Industrial Engineering.
Marian Obuseh, a graduate student, along with Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering Denny Yu, were awarded with the Work Systems Best Track Paper for their paper titled "A Sensor-Based Framework for Layout and Workflow Assessment in Surgical Operating Rooms."
Reem Khir, who joined Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering in January of this year, was awarded with Best Application Paper for her team's work on the paper "Two-stage sort planning for express parcel delivery" in IISE Transactions Focus issue on Supply Chain and Logistics. Papers published from July 21, 2021 to June 30, 2022, issues 53:7 through 54:6, were up for consideration.
According to Khir, the work "addressed the planning of two-stage sort systems operating as part of express parcel transportation networks. The role of these systems is to enable the execution of effective consolidation plans which have been made more complex with deliveries getting larger in magnitude and tighter in service time. Working closely with an industry partner, the paper presents a novel optimization-based approach that enables parcel carriers to generate cost-effective sort plans while meeting on-time delivery service guarantees commonly offered in practice."
Professor of Industrial Engineering, Barrett Caldwell, was also recognized. Caldwell was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Advisor award for the Great Lakes region.
Also representing Purdue Engineering, Nan Kong (Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Deputy Head of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering) was awarded with Best Application Paper in Operations Engineering & Analytics. His team was awarded for their paper titled "Inpatient Discharge Planning Under Uncertainty."
Ricardo "Rick" Echevarria (BSIE, 1998) was chosen to deliver this year's keynote address. Echevarria is vice president and general manager of Security Sales at Intel Corp., and was named a Distinguished Engineering Alumni in 2021. Prior to his current role at Intel, Echevarria led Intel's Olympics and Paralympics Office.
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To view photos from the event, please visit our photo gallery.
Click here for a complete event program.