SSIE Department celebrates spring 2022 successes
The spring semester at Binghamton University has only a few weeks left, and the students, faculty and staff from the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering have been busy with classes, research projects and more.
Research news
A new study from an international team of researchers — including two from Binghamton University — demonstrates that social media could be used to detect behaviors preceding sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). Luís M. Rocha, George J. Klir Professor of Systems Science, and Rion Brattig Correia, a researcher at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal, a visiting research scientist at Watson College, took part in this study, which was published in the journal Epilepsy & Behavior.
Assistant Professor Daehan Won teamed up with Professor Jennifer Gillis Mattson from the Harpur College Department of Psychology for research into absentee numbers at Binghamton University’s Institute for Child Development (ICD). The study, published in Nature’s Scientific Reports Journal, explores using student absentee data to identify individual patterns of absenteeism for each student and to alert teachers and administrators when those absences become problematic.
Assistant Professor Zeynep Ertem led a COVID-19 study published in Nature Medicine that analyzed data from the 12 weeks after school opening from July to September 2020, before the Delta variant became predominant and before vaccines were available. It found that COVID incidence rates were not statistically different in counties with in-person learning versus remote school modes in most regions of the U.S.
Professor Sangwon Yoon and Qianqian Zhang, MS ’16, PhD ’20, studied lung nodule heterogeneity and designed an effective nodule classification framework for CAD systems. They proposed a novel deep-learning algorithm that identifies malignant and benign lung nodules from 3D CT images in more effective ways.
Faculty news
Congratulations to SSIE Chair Mohammad T. Khasawneh, who was one of three professors from Watson College promoted to the ranks of distinguished faculty. He was hailed for his research on the novel application of systems engineering to transform healthcare systems into high-performance environments that produce better patient outcomes at lower costs.
“I owe this significant milestone to my amazing family, the inspirational leaders that I know and work with, our world-class faculty and staff team, my incredibly dedicated students and alumni, and my collaborators here and around the world,” he said.
Student news
Alumni who are former students of Dean and Distinguished Professor Krishnaswami “Hari” Srihari have established the Krishnaswami Srihari Scholarship in Graduate Excellence. The recipient must be an international student studying for a PhD in industrial and systems engineering, with a preference for a female student. The scholarship is renewable for an additional year if the student maintains a minimum 3.7 GPA.
Two SSIE PhD — Raghad Al-Hemeimat and Tamika Gordon, MS ’13 — traveled to Virginia Tech to take part in its Future Faculty Diversity Program. The three-day conference gave participants the opportunity for professional development and networking as well as to have discussions with department heads, deans and early career faculty members about life in academia.
Al-Hemeimat, Nazila Bazrafshan and Odai Dweekat also were accepted into the 2022 IISE Doctoral Colloquium.
Undergraduate student Derrick Junsu Lee won third place at the 2022 IISE Regional Conference hosted at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The student team of Miranda Owen, Justin Rutley and Nicholas Arfanis (with Coleman Parker as a support member) was selected as finalists in the 2022 Arena/Rockwell Automation IISE Simulation Competition, with Professor Sangwon Yoon and Assistant Professor Daehan Won as advisors.
Team BSIM (Maryam Hosseini and Ali Rawabdeh, with Khasawneh as advisor) won first place and BU Team (Lubna Tarawneh and Sara Sawaqed, with Yoon and Assistant Professor Soongeol Kwon as advisors) won second place at the eighth annual Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE)/Society for Health Systems (SHS) Student Simulation Competition.
Alumni news
Lakim J. Desir ’15 was named a 2022 Black Engineer of the Year at the BEYA STEM conference. In a recent Q&A, he discusses how Watson helped him for his career at Lockheed Martin and why he thinks it’s important to lift up others along his journey.
Binghamton ASQ Section 205 section leader Punit Shetty, MS ’15, was selected as a Rising Star by ASQ! He is an engineer at TeamWorld Inc. in Binghamton.