Tag: Dr. Erick Jones

IMSE Celebrates Graduates and Award Winners

Ann Hoang on

The IMSE Department celebrated graduates from the Summer, Fall, and Spring semesters as well as award winners with a banquet Thursday evening. The event began with a reception as Advisory Board members, faculty, staff, and honorees and their friends arrived at the banquet inside the Hospitality Suite at UT Arlington’s College Park Center. A catered meal was served after the reception as guests took their seats for dinner.

After the meal, Dr. Chen introduced IMSE alumna and co-founder of TransSolutions, LLC Gloria Bender, as the keynote speaker. She spoke about the importance of getting your degree and giving back to the community and how IEs could use their degrees to serve.

After the keynote address, Dr. Brian Huff recognized the members of the Alpha Pi Mu Industrial Engineering Honor Society. The attendees gave the members in attendance a round of applause.
The first award given in the evening was the G. T. Stevens, Jr. Endowed Alumni Scholarship which was established in 1998 to honor the IMSE Department’s former Chair. This year’s recipients were April Shortt (Junior), Ting Xiao (Senior), and Ezeh Perpetua Ebere (Graduate).

Next, Dr. Bill Corley presented the Elinor Pape Endowed Scholarship Award, which was established in 2006 to honor the Professor Emeritus’s service and dedication at UT Arlington. The award winners were Cynthia Rodriguez (Junior), Gustavo Robles (Senior), and Vikas Hinge (Graduate).

The next two scholarships were established by IMSE alumnus Keith Weiss. Keith and Carolyn Weiss were on hand to award Dylan Slick with the Keith and Carolyn Weiss Industrial Engineering Scholarship, which is given to deserving Industrial Engineering undergraduate students who are working to support their education. Slick works as a Resident Assistant at UT Arlington Apartment and Residence Life. The Weiss Family Endowed Scholarship is an award distributed by the UT Arlington Alumni Association to award a junior or senior undergraduate who have been working to support their education. This year’s recipient was Greta Leza who works at Airbus Helicopters, Inc. (formerly known as American Eurocopter).

The next award given, the John and Pat Priest Family Endowed Scholarship, is the IMSE Department’s newest endowed scholarship. It was established by current IMSE professor John Priest and his wife in 2013. This year’s winner was Colin Brisco.

The next two scholarships were awarded by the RFID and Auto ID (RAID) Labs. Dr. Erick Jones presented the awards to the winners. This year’s recipient of the RFID and Auto ID Labs Research Excellence Scholarship, which recognizes students for his/her excellence in RAID research and published work, was Harrison Armstrong. His research paper, “A Framework for Detecting Hazardous Events Occurring in Transit with AutoID Technologies” was accepted by IIE Sensors in March 2014. The RFID and Auto ID Labs Outstanding Research Scholarship recognize students conducting outstanding research in RAID Labs. This year’s recipients were Mewan Wijemanne (Undergraduate) and Ryan Dietrich (Graduate).

The Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Outstanding Student awards recognizes outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service to the IE profession. This year’s recipients were Cynthia Rodriguez (Junior) and Rachel Machbitz (Senior). After receiving their award, they were joined by previous Outstanding IIE Award winners.

The final award presented in the evening was the Texas Industrial Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award, which was created in an alliance between the Industrial Engineering departments at Texas public universities including UT El Paso, Texas A&M, Texas Tech University, the University of Houston, and Lamar University. Awardees are alumni selected by these universities based on the impact of their career on society. Gloria Bender presented the honor to this year’s awardee, Gloria Maceiko. Maceiko founded DirectNu Energy in 2009 with a vision to develop Energy Independence for commercial entities, nationally and globally, by focusing on solar and wind project development. She serves as its CEO and manages multimillion dollar projects from concept to contracts and worked over 25 years with high tech companies in Silicon Valley. She was also at the forefront of trend setting startups.

The wonderful evening concluded with a few brief comments from our graduating seniors and a final congratulation to award winners and graduates of the past year.
Pictures of the event will be posted on our Facebook page soon!

Warehouse Management System Software Certification Weekend Class

Ann Hoang on

Dr. Jones has negotiated a discount for UT Arlington students to attend training for CIS Logistics Execution Suites including WMS, Inventory and Delivery Software.  The company has also committed to selecting an intern from those at UTA who attend and pass the certification exam.  For more information on UTA’s partnership with CIS, a global Logistics execution system provider and integration services, read CIS’s press release announcing our new partnership.

1. Certification on WMS software Inbound Process will be available on Saturday, March 1st 2014.
2. Certification on WMS outbound processes will be available on Saturday, March 8th 2014.
3. To qualify for internships and job opportunities attendance and passing of exams is mandatory

The training will be held on the UTA Campus.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Donavan Wheatfall at 972.739.6054, email at dwheatfall@CISorg.com or register online at http://www.cisorg.com/Registration/Certification.cshtml

RAID Labs’s Recent Activities and Upcoming Events

Ann Hoang on

The RFID and Auto ID (RAID) Labs is the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Department’s newest lab. It was established in 2011 by Dr. Erick Jones and quickly proved to be the favored lab where experiments could be run by both undergraduates and PhD students alike. The lab focuses on supply chain logistics, engineering management-productivity, and RFID in the mechanical contracting industry-asset tracking development with current projects focused on areas of healthcare, factory lines, and phone apps to help identify RFID tags. RAID Labs has been very active this semester.

Recently, three topics have been started as themes for research, “RFID and automatic inventory control in the oil and gas industry,” “RFID medical devices used in vivo (inside the body),” and “RFID uses that promote Homeland Security.”  The lab has also had three papers accepted for publication this Fall that include two undergraduate students who have made author-level contributions, Harrison Armstrong and Walter Mulflur. These papers will be made available by pdf after final publication. Finally, RAID Labs staff promotions and lab shirts were recently distributed. Those Lab students who reached the E3 status received t-shirts; those who reached M2 status received blue shirts, and top level MI3 (manager and innovator 3) received black shirts.

Also, there will be an upcoming RFID Certification training and exam in December. The certification is backed by the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA), the leading RFID certification in the country. The ISCEA RFIDSCM will be hosted by RAID Labs on December 6th – 8th, 2013. For those interested, UT Arlington IMSE students can receive a discount. Please follow-up with Harrison Armstrong, RAID Labs Center Manager.

If this type of research and experimentation interests you, you’re in luck! RAID Labs will be taking applications for the two-week training/evaluation process for working in the Labs for Spring 2014. There are only ten E1 positions available. Please ask any RAID Lab person where you can apply. RAID Labs is located at 411 Woolf Hall.

IMSE Grants and Awarded Contracts

Ann Hoang on

Several IMSE faculty members were recently awarded research grants and contracts. Dr. Li Zeng made news for the grant she received recently from the National Science Foundation for her research titled, ” Quality Profile Modeling and Control with Applications in Tissue-engineered Scaffolds Fabrication.” The collaborative research will be conducted with Penn State and with the purpose of developing a “generic and systematic methodology for the modeling and control of quality profiles through the integration of advanced statistical techniques and expert knowledge of manufacturing processes.” Dr. Zeng was awarded a $142,223 grant that will run through 2016. For more information on this research, read the abstract on the NSF website.

In addition, the IMSE Department received a Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, (GAANN) Grant for $534,000 that will benefit five students over the next three years.

Dr. Jay Rosenberger, Dr. Susan Ferreira, and Dr. Victoria Chen were awarded a $33,000 contract with L-3 Communications for a “Flight Test Matching Tool” to develop a method to warm start a simulator calibration process.

Additional grants that were awarded:

Richard Billo, John Priest, and Erick Jones were awarded TxMED grant “A Novel Glass Microfluidic Neuro-Sensor For High-Throughput Drug Discovery.”

Erick Jones was awarded NSF I/UCRC grant “Rf-Code Computer Rack Cooling System RFID Project.”
Erick Jones was awarded a grant from Angelica Incoroporation Evaluating RFID in Healthcare Linen” joint with SAVANT.