“Dr. Rivero brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our institution,” said Forrest Masters, Ph.D., interim dean of the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. “Her dedication to interdisciplinary research, advanced manufacturing techniques, and commitment to excellence in education makes her an invaluable addition to our community.” 

Dr. Rivero comes to UF after serving five years as the Kate Gleason Professor and Department Head of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her experience in higher education also includes her various faculty positions at Iowa State University and Texas Tech University. Dr. Rivero earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees from Pennsylvania State University, all in industrial and manufacturing engineering. 

Throughout her career, Dr. Rivero has successfully spearheaded numerous research projects funded by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and NASA. Her accomplishments are further highlighted by numerous awards for research, service, and teaching, with notable mentions including the Society of Manufacturing Engineers John G. Bollinger Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award and the Woman of the Year in Education by the Hispanic Association of Women. Additionally, she is a distinguished fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, serving as the first Hispanic woman to be selected. 

Dr. Rivero replaces David Kaber, Ph.D., the Dean’s Leadership Professor, who has served as chair of ISE since 2018. Dr. Kaber will depart from his role after helping transform ISE into one of the top departments in the country during his tenure. In his span as the department chair, ISE has peaked with the 11th-best graduate program and 12th-best undergraduate program among public universities nationwide by the U.S. News & World Report. ISE also experienced significant growth in enrollment numbers in both programs during the Fall 2023 semester. 

“The ISE department has undergone a major transformational change over the past five years and has an advancing trend in rankings due to excellent faculty research and student academics,” Dr. Kaber said. “Dr. Rivero is an experienced and recognized scholar and academician in industrial and systems engineering, and I am confident that she will take ISE to the next level through excellence in ISE science and practice.” 

Dr. Rivero’s research group, the iMED laboratory, has made significant strides in designing scalable manufacturing techniques incorporating additive manufacturing for diverse material systems, ranging from biopolymers to metal alloys and concrete. At UF she will be expanding her research to industrialized construction in collaboration with her colleagues in ISE, the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment, and the College of Design, Construction and Planning as part of a $2.5 million project using strategic funding from the office of UF President Ben Sasse. For this purpose, the iMED lab will be moving into Weil Hall Structures and Materials Laboratory with a large-scale 3D printer capable of printing warehouses and buildings, among other structures.  

Dr. Rivero also has extensive industry experience in advanced manufacturing systems and materials, having worked with Detroit Diesel Corp., Honeywell Engines & Systems, Pratt & Whitney, and John Deere. Her contributions extend to collaborations with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where she served as a faculty fellow. In her role as department chair, she will seek to strengthen ties with industry. 

“We are confident that under Dr. Rivero’s leadership, ISE will reach new heights of innovation, collaboration, and achievement,” Dr. Masters said. “Given her combination of professional and educational experience, we know she will make an excellent addition to our Gator engineering team.”

Brady Budke
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

Once again, we are coming to the close of another busy fall term at the University of Florida. At this time of year, the temperatures in Gainesville are pretty much perfect, and the students and faculty are ready for a relaxing holiday season.  

As in past semesters, the faculty have achieved several new research accomplishments, including additional grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Mostafa Reisi Gahrooei, Ph.D., is collaborating with the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Science to develop new federated data analytics to support commercial farm decision making. This is a multi-year project aimed at promoting yields for perennial crops. Dr. Reisi Gahrooei also received a separate NSF grant to develop a rapid damage assessment framework to support emergency agencies in critical data collection and integration as well as recommendations for response resource allocations.  

The NSF also awarded Yu Yang, Ph.D., a grant to assess equity in delivery and access to new individual transportation systems, including developing measures for analysis of fairness and to support policymaking. This is a multi-year project on optimization modeling to promote shared micro-mobility system accessibility. These grants, among other new faculty funding, have elevated current active department awards to over $7 million. 

This year, the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering has once again been highly supportive of ISE Department growth and expansion of instructional and research capabilities. The college allocated to the department one new instructional faculty position and three open-rank tenure-stream positions, including one position focused on ISE applications of AI for Complex Systems. There are multiple active searches open at this time. The instructional faculty search is focused on persons with expertise in data analytics, simulation analysis and supply chain systems. The other open rank positions are in the areas of stochastic optimization and health and human systems modeling and analysis. These new hires will push the department to over 25 full-time faculty. The department has had a strong record of faculty recruiting over the past five years and has been fortunate to develop a technically broad and cohesive team. 

During this term, the ISE faculty have also been engaged in new academic program development. The faculty proposed and approved two new graduate minors in ISE at the master’s level (3 courses) and Ph.D. level (4 courses). The faculty also put in place a new undergraduate minor (3 courses), which is expected to substantially increase ISE student credit hours. Returning to the graduate level, department faculty recently converted several systems engineering semester-long courses (in design, architectures and management) to 5-week short courses to meet demands from government agencies and non-government contractors in the state of Florida for micro-credentials. The short courses were offered online this year between April and November with no cost for government employees. The courses will be offered on demand for interested students in the future. 

As an outlook for future program development, the department is in the process of formally proposing to the UF Graduate School a new master’s degree in Engineering Management (MSEM) in collaboration with the Warrington College of Business. The new program is to be delivered through the pending UF Jacksonville Graduate Center, currently under development by the University administration. The degree program will include an integrated core of engineering and business courses along with the option of different concentrations that are also formal minors through the Graduate School. It is anticipated that this new program will be implemented in Fall 2025.  

Finally, the department is very excited about the arrival of our new chair, Iris Rivero, Ph.D., and the expertise that she brings in advanced manufacturing and biomedical engineering, as well as her substantial academic administration experience. Through Dr. Rivero’s leadership, our department will further expand into new research directions that are expected to lead to greater collaborations with other units around campus. This includes, for example, work in industrialized construction with the College of Design, Construction and Planning involving co-(ro)bot 3D printing of concrete structures. We look forward to these new research developments and an even brighter future for UF ISE. 

For as much as we enjoy sharing with you the exciting accomplishments resulting from our activities at UF, we welcome the opportunity to hear about your achievements and points of pride. Please don’t hesitate to reach-out to media@ise.ufl.edu with your story to share. We also invite you to visit the main campus and department during any of your travels to sunny Florida! 

Best regards and (as always) GO GATORS! 

 Dave Kaber 

Using a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Mostafa Reisi Gahrooei, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE), will work to design a systematic data collection method that estimates the level of damages based on current information and adaptively guides data collectors to locations where the damage-level estimates are highly uncertain. This method will allow data agents to collect reliable data under severe time and resource constraints. 

“Extreme events often create unexpected situations that cannot be predicted beforehand,” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. “For example, while there are excellent predictions about how a hurricane may hit an area, the impact, level of damage and location of damage for that hurricane is very difficult to predict.” 

The proposed method first constructs a pre-disaster preliminary probabilistic model of physical damage levels for different structures. This model uses domain and expert knowledge of a region to preliminarily estimate how the region may be impacted by an extreme event before it happens.  

“Such a model estimates what the damage would look like in a region based on our knowledge of building distributions, type of buildings and built environment, land use, etc.,” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. “However, this is only a baseline as the actual impact of an extreme event depends on many factors related to the event itself.” 

 The model will determine initial trajectories for multiple data collectors to maximize information gain in the shortest possible time. 

“For example, we may have a few drones flying over to collect data regarding the level of damage and a few humans who are driving around to collect data.” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. 

This data collection system will use a novel hierarchical Bayesian framework, which allows for continual updating of beliefs about the level of damage caused by an extreme event, based on new observations.  

“As we collect data from a zone, or multiple zones, we continuously update our belief about the damage levels in the entire impacted region through the Bayesian framework,” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. “This continuous belief updating will allow us to identify what zones should be visited next.” 

The outcomes of this project will set the stage for the development of automated damage assessment systems that will result in more efficient and successful emergency management operations. 

Brady Budke
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

This year, the ISE department research awards exceeded $4 million with some of this funding resulting from programs supporting translation of research to education. A new college partnership with Autodesk Corporation will support research in advanced manufacturing and production that provides a basis for new courses on human-centered design and design for manufacturability. ISE faculty were instrumental in Autodesk’s support for our programs.  

Related to this activity, Katie Basinger-Ellis, Ph.D., ISE’s Undergraduate Coordinator and an instructional assistant professor, collaborated with Sean Niemi, Ph.D., an instructional assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, to secure funding from the America’s Cutting Edge (ACE) initiative to support workforce development in Florida. This program provides training in advanced manufacturing, including machine tool use and advanced 3D modeling software, specifically Autodesk’s Fusion 360. 

The department has also received support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the integration of cutting-edge knowledge on collaborative (co)-robots and standards for safety in work with humans. UF was one of only five institutions to be awarded this type of funding, which will allow our faculty to complement current coursework in occupational safety engineering and human factors applications. The safety course has an undergraduate section, which is highly subscribed annually, allowing faculty to support the future generation’s knowledge of human-robot interaction principles. 

The department has also received other recent support for novel research in optimization methods for shared electric micro-mobility systems (Yu Yang, Ph.D., assistant professor) and federated learning approaches to collaborative smart farming (Mostafa Reisi Gahrooei, Ph.D., assistant professor) in collaboration with UF Institute of Food & Agricultural Science faculty. The projects represent inaugural and additional NSF (National Science Foundation) grants for tenure-track faculty in the department that will provide support for additional Ph.D. students. Related to this, department Ph.D. student enrollment has substantially increased this year with 15 new students entering in this fall term. Current active research awards for the department are at $7M+ with an overall Ph.D. student population of ~46 students. 

ISE continues to focus on recruiting faculty and students with diverse backgrounds and experiences. This fall our undergraduate program enrollment has increased with a projection of 462 students, including 47% female students and 45% underrepresented groups. Over the past five and a half years, ISE department female faculty representation has increased from 25% to 48% with ISE faculty currently advising the Society of Women Engineers chapter for the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. The department has also hosted recent events to highlight contributions and experiences of women in engineering (see article in this issue). 

Toward accommodating broad student interest in ISE-related topics, we have developed several new graduate programs in the past three years. Aside from the certificates covered in this issue, the department most recently received approvals for additional masters-level certificates in “Financial Math & Optimization,” “Financial Risk Analysis and Management” and “Financial Technology.” These programs will be delivered on-campus and are candidates for the new UF Jacksonville Graduate Center. We believe these activities have contributed to the recognition and reputation of the ISE graduate program with an elevation in our public graduate program ranking to #11 (USNWR, 2023). 

Lastly, this year also brought achievements and accolades for our ISE alums and current students. Our alumni, who have developed their own companies (e.g., Michael Hirsch and Trey Lauderdale) continue to excel with a Gator100 award and induction in our ISE Hall of Fame. Other alumni (Josh Bass) have developed outstanding corporate careers and have given back to the department in terms of their time and expertise. This has also led to recognition in our Hall of Fame. Finally, our students continue to excel in competitions, including Anushka Radhakrishnan winning the Raytheon annual Tech Competition for supply chain solutions. Related to this, the department awarded 23 scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students along with four other Latin-American Caribbean program scholarship recipients. We are fortunate to have such outstanding students in ISE and graduates, who are impacting our world. 

As an update to our spring newsletter, the department has recently completed its search for a new chair, and I anticipate a leadership changeover at the beginning of the new year. Once again, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to lead such a forward-looking department in a high-growth college of engineering over the past five and a half years. I believe the department has made major strides in terms of the faculty team, academic program development and research enterprise. I believe the vision to create a broad-based ISE department at UF was an incredibly positive and transformational change for the faculty and students. There is additional growth to come for the department in expanding instructional capacity and breadth of coverage of the ISE discipline even further to support innovative teaching and scholarly activities. I look forward to the future of the department. 

As always, we welcome your input on department initiatives and programs. We also hope to hear about any new developments in your careers and/or personal achievements. Please reach out with any feedback at: info@ise.ufl.edu. We hope to hear from you!  

Best regards and GO GATORS!

Dave Kaber
ISE Department Chair, Dean’s Leadership Professor

“This project was motivated by the fact that the adoption of emerging technologies in infrastructure systems significantly impacts equity,” Dr. Yang said. “There is a lack of systematic ways to define fairness for systems with high dynamics, and little is known about the fairness tradeoffs.” 

As an example, Dr. Yang cites how newly emerging electric scooter systems are going against the overall equity model that is present in existing infrastructures, like public transit. Because of the unique challenges that come with measuring fairness in electric scooter access and use, the research by Dr. Yang is set to provide policymakers with a more holistic picture to guide decision-making on various regulations that can uphold public transit equity principles in access to individualized transportation systems. 

“We will build a new optimization model to effectively compute the price of fairness at various levels of fairness in system access using a diverse set of fairness measures. We will also perform extensive tradeoff analyses to assist in policymaking on fairness in system use,” Dr. Yang said. “We hope to verify that these measures can precisely evaluate system fairness and that our optimization models can effectively compute the efficiency loss due to newly enforced fairness requirements. These developments are expected to support comprehensive analysis of fairness and the efficiency of tradeoffs.” 

A case study that involves shared micro-mobility systems and various experiments using real-world data will be used to help conduct and analyze tradeoffs and provide insights for fairness policymaking. The research findings will be implemented into undergraduate and graduate courses to help show the challenges of measuring and promoting fairness in civil infrastructure system access through new emerging technologies.

Brady Budke
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

This fall, ISE has welcomed 15 new Ph.D. students, which is the largest entering class in the past five and a half years. One way the department has been able to bring on new students is through the newly implemented First Year Ph.D. Fellowship Program. Using the Harbert S. Gregory ISE Endowment fund, this fellowship program provides a stipend, tuition assistance, and health insurance for up to two Ph.D. students in their first year of study. Kaber said, “These are highly prestigious fellowships that allow students to enter our program without a defined work commitment and to align with a faculty member (over time) based on their specific research interests.” 

In the master’s program, ISE welcomed 39 new students on-campus and through the UF Electronic Delivery of Gator Engineering (EDGE) program. The department also saw 48 new students join the Outreach Engineering Management (OEM) master’s program. The current total ISE graduate population is approximately 200 ISE students. The department has utilized the new Haldeman M.S. Admission Scholarship to further support new student access to ISE programs beyond the existing Academic Achievement Scholarships through the College of Engineering. Using support from the Harold D. Haldeman Jr. Endowment fund, the program provides up to 20 scholarships per year of $2,500 for a master’s student to conduct ISE research with a faculty member. 

The departmental growth has also included the undergraduate program. During the past three years, the four-year graduation rate for the BS ISE program increased from approximately 12% to 37.1%, while the time to degree decreased from 4.92 years to 4.39 years. Despite the program moving more students to job placement sooner, program enrollment has increased since suppression of the pandemic. Student enrollment settled at a low point of 405 during spring 2023 but is now on the rise at an expected 462 students for the Fall 2023 semester. Related to this, the ISE program is experiencing the highest level of transfers in the past five years with a total of 82 new students entering the program this semester.  

“With the continuing increase in the state population and more students seeking engineering degrees covering methods and tools that flexibly apply to a broad range of applications,” Dr. Kaber said, “ISE programs are becoming high-growth majors of choice for students entering and studying at UF.” 

Brady Budke
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

Welcome to the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Florida’s digital newsletter. Each semester, you will receive a message from us highlighting departmental updates and successes. We look forward to connecting with you!

Message from the Chair

We are pleased to share with you news and events from the UF Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. >>>

David Kaber, Ph.D.
Dean’s Leadership Professor
ISE Department Chair

Dr. Reisi Gahrooei will work with co-principal investigators Yiannis Ampatzidis, Ph.D., an associate professor, and Ute Albrecht, Ph.D., an associate professor, both with the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Southwest Florida Research and Education Center (UF/IFAS SWFREC). 

“In a centralized approach, farms share their data with a central server to develop analytical models to support farm decision-making,” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. “Under this scenario, farmers may be hesitant about how their data is being used and whether it is shared with other third parties and growers.” 

The researchers proposed a new approach to design algorithmic solutions that allow farms to keep their data locally instead of sharing it with a central server. Each farm creates a local model that is transmitted to an aggregator. Once an aggregated model is created, it is then broadcast to each farm to create a personalized model that supports local decision-making. The approach eliminates data-sharing requirements while still allowing for benefit to be gained from knowledge that exists in other farms. 

“The fundamental methodologies developed in this project should be applied to real datasets collected at multiple agricultural farms, with potentially different data collection protocols and standards,” Dr. Reisi Gahrooei said. “In addition, data collected at various farms often differ in size and distribution due to economic and geographic differences. Addressing these differences to develop generalizable models useful to all participating farms is very challenging.” 

The group of researchers plan to evaluate the proposed “federated farming analytics” in modeling a collection of citrus farms as a case study. Along with this, the proposed cyberinfrastructure can easily be adapted to other specialty crops, especially other tree crops, and production systems. The group looks to focus on perennial crops, such as fruit trees, nut trees, and key vegetable crops. 

Brady Budke
Marketing and Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering