School of Systems and Enterprises Announces 2024 Faculty Awards
The School of Systems and Enterprises is excited to announce the winners of its Faculty Awards for the 2023-24 academic year. The school honors seven of its top faculty members based on a combination of their accomplishments, student evaluations and recommendations from other faculty.
The winners are listed below.
Excellence in Undergraduate Advising and Mentoring Award: Kathryn Abel
As an educator, Dr. Kathryn Abel has taught a wide array of courses on many levels (undergrad and grad) in Engineering Management, Industrial & Systems Engineering, as well as the Business School, which speaks for a solid education and breadth of knowledge.
However, a teacher should be much more than a person who transmits knowledge. Advising and mentoring students is an integral part of an educator’s career. In her Engineering Management and Industrial & Systems Engineering programs, Abel is both a freshmen advisor and a faculty advisor to almost all the upperclassmen students in her programs. She has advised multiple capstone design projects. She cofounded the local chapter of Epsilon Mu Eta, the national honor society for Engineering Management. She is the advisor for the local chapter of ASEM. She has given multiple talks to undergraduates about the Accelerated Masters Program (AMP), as well as presented seminars on campus about Being a Woman in STEM.
Student Testimonial: “I am writing to express my deepest appreciation for your unwavering guidance and support throughout my academic journey. As I recently graduated, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the tremendous impact you have had on my education and personal growth. Your dedication to teaching, passion for the subject matter, and genuine interest in your students' success have been truly inspiring. Your profound knowledge, exceptional teaching skills and mentorship have not only shaped my academic achievements but have also instilled in me a passion for lifelong learning.
“I am sincerely grateful for the difference you have made in my life and the lasting impact you have had on my intellectual and personal development. Thank you for believing in me and for your commitment to fostering a stimulating and inclusive learning environment. I feel honored to have been your student, and I will carry the lessons I have learned from you with me throughout my personal and professional journey.”
Award for Research Excellence: Onur Asan
Since joining Stevens in 2018, Dr. Onur Asan has brought leadership and research experience in the healthcare field. He has helped SSE to develop a strategic vision in the area of healthcare research. He has been crucial in the establishment of the research area not just in his lab but also by recruiting and mentoring junior faculty. Dr. Asan's socio-technical research focuses on the application of theory, methods and design from the discipline of health systems engineering, human factors and human-computer interaction to improve healthcare.
Asan established a research platform in the healthcare field by developing collaboration in the surrounding healthcare systems and industry, including Hackensack, RWJ Barnabas, NYU Medical School, UPENN, and Novartis as well as other medical schools such as UW-Madison, Medical College of Wisconsin, and Mayo Clinic. These collaborations contributed to securing external grants as well as numerous research publications. Additionally, he is mentoring junior faculty to submit various NIH and NSF grants in the field of healthcare.
Harvey N. Davis Distinguished Teaching Assistant Professor Award: Hao Chen
Dr. Hao Chen leads four core courses for SSE programs: EM/ISE 322 Engineering Design VI, EM/ISE 423 Engineering Design VII, EM/ISE 424 Engineering Design VIII, and SYS 640 System Supportability and Logistics. His expertise in engineering system design and space systems directly translates to rich classroom experiences where students use hands-on activities and computational software to learn and reinforce design concepts.
Since 2021, Chen has chaired one doctoral thesis, three master's theses, 18 master's capstone projects and served on two additional doctoral advisory committees at Stevens. In recognition of Chen's excellence in teaching, he is invited to be one of the faculty facilitators of the PRV 101 First-Year Experience Course to be launched in Fall 2024.
Read about Chen’s work with NASA and space debris HERE.
Online Teaching Excellence Award: Carlo Lipizzi
Dr. Carlo Lipizzi Prof. Lipizzi leads two core courses for SSE programs: EM 624 Data Exploration and Informatics for Engineering Management, and EM 626 AI & Machine Learning for Systems and Enterprises. His expertise in in data science, machine learning and natural language processing directly translates to rich classroom experiences where students use hands-on activities and computational software to learn and reinforce theoretical concepts. Coupled with the required academic rigor, Lipizzi offers students and the community his 30 years of experience in industry, infusing his teaching with real-life cases on which he has had the privilege to work.
Lipizzi developed four new courses – two of them as part of the Noodle fully online
Program – and revised the two master's programs for which he is the lead. As lead of the program, he oversaw porting the whole graduate Engineering Management program to the Noodle online platform, coordinating every course development along the way.
Lipizzi also wrote his first book, focused on the societal impacts of AI and machine learning. Read more HERE.
Henry Morton Distinguished Teaching Professor Award: David Darian Muresan
Teaching Professor David Darian Muresan plays a pivotal role in our programs by leading five core courses, including SSW 345 (Model-based Software Engineering), SSW 423 (Engineering Design VII), SSW 424 (Engineering Design VIII), SSW 564 (Software Requirements Analysis and Engineering), and SSW 565 (Software Architecture & Component-Based Design). Beyond conventional classroom instruction, he is the visionary behind the Software Engineering Computer Club, an interdisciplinary initiative between Electrical Engineering and Software Engineering, where students engage in hands-on experimentation, fostering the development of complex computer systems on printed circuit boards (PCB) as well as leveraging technologies from transistors to JAVA. Muresan’s extensive industry experience translates into enriching classroom experiences, as he adeptly integrates hands-on activities and industry processes to reinforce theoretical concepts.
Early CAREER Award for Research Excellence: Philip Odonkor
Drawing from his formative experiences in Ghana, where frequent power outages were a common occurrence, Dr. Philip Odonkor has developed a visionary research agenda aimed at harmonizing social and technological innovation to achieve collective energy security.
Through cutting-edge, data-driven and reinforcement learning technologies, Odonkor has developed groundbreaking frameworks that enable groups of buildings to cooperatively manage limited energy resources. This innovative work lays the foundations for smart cities with efficient, shared infrastructures directly benefiting humanity by increasing access to reliable energy.
Odonkor’s recent prestigious NSF CAREER Award, titled “CAREER: Evaluating Cooperative Intelligence in Connected Communities,” underscores the significance and promise of his research trajectory. Moreover, Odonkor's inspiration goes beyond technological innovation. Recognizing the critical issue of energy injustice and its disproportionate impacts on marginalized communities, his research integrates social inclusivity measures with optimization techniques to advance equitable resource-sharing protocols and agent-based models – leveraging technology to redress historical energy injustices.
Read more about Odonkor’s CAREER Award project HERE.
Alexander Crombie Humphreys Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor: Zhongyuan (Annie) Yu
Dr. Zhongyuan (Annie) Yu has taught 10 distinct courses in two programs, Software Engineering and Engineering Management, since she joined Stevens in 2015. Since Fall 2021, spanning the last three academic years as teaching associate professor, Yu has delivered five distinct courses with 20 sections to 816 undergraduate and graduate students.
Student Testimonial: “The best thing in this course is professor Yu. She is one of the best professors at Stevens. She is an excellent professor. She made the lecture fun and we learned much from her. She was helpful and approachable when needed. I feel fortunate that I have taken this course with her.”