Dr. Sidi Deng is co-advised by Dr. Yuehwern Yih from the School of Industrial Engineering and Dr. John W. Sutherland from the School of Environmental and Ecological Engineering. He joined the LSM in May 2018 and since then has been leading a group of students working on a project funded by the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), an innovation hub under the U.S. Department of Energy. He also serves as an active member of the CMI Leadership Academy. During the course of his Ph.D. program, Dr. Deng has authored 9 papers that have appeared in prestigious journals and conference proceedings. He has 3 invention disclosures/copyrights for software. He received the Outstanding Research Award for the year 2023 from the College of Engineering at Purdue.

Deng’s principal research interests include machine learning, simulation design, and production system planning, with primary applications in the field of the circular economy for critical materials. Deng’s research work particularly concerns evaluating and optimizing the economic performance of newly-developed technologies that aim to address the supply risks of critical materials. By implementing a diverse range of operations research approaches, Deng is endeavoring to develop quantitative models to support decision-making in project development, in order to facilitate the industrial deployment of circular economy strategies.

The dissertation of Dr. Deng is largely motivated based on his early engagement and experience with CMI research activities and the challenges faced by CMI researchers. In his dissertation, Dr. Deng aims to achieve the following overarching research goals: 1) create forecasting/prediction methods to provide decision support in the early stages of project/system development; 2) extend the utility and enhance the robustness of existing economic analysis frameworks; 3) support the development of circular economy infrastructure via process planning and system engineering.