ISE welcomes three new faculty members this fall: Associate Professor, Simge Küçükyavuz; Assistant Professor, Youngjun Choe; and Full Time Lecturer, Patty Buchanan.
Simge Küçükyavuz
Simge Küçükyavuz comes from The Ohio State University where she was an associate professor in the integrated systems engineering department. She previously held academic and research positions at the University of Arizona and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.
Simge designs algorithms that enable sectors with large-scale data systems, such as logistics, energy and telecommunications, to deliver high performance in fluctuating and uncertain environments, and develops optimization tools that respond to existing and emerging problems in the design and operation of networked systems that require high reliability and low risk.
Her work is supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, including the 2011 CAREER Award. She is the co-winner of the 2015 INFORMS Computing Society Prize. She serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Computational Optimization and Applications, Networks, and Journal of Global Optimization.
Youngjun Choe
Youngjun Choe joins ISE as an assistant professor.
His current research focuses on modeling and analyzing complex systems, such as sustainable energy systems, by integrating approaches in statistics and simulation. He examines performance and reliability in complex systems by using high-performance computing to incorporate extreme data loads from in-situ sensors and physics-based computer simulators. He plans to continue his work in computational statistics and stochastic simulation to better understand large-scale systems such as power plants and electrical grids, or when field experiments are difficult, expensive or impossible.
His work is recognized by several professional societies including the American Statistical Association, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers.
Patty Buchanan
Patty Buchanan joins ISE as a Full Time Lecturer.
Prior to coming to UW, she worked for 10 years at Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida as a production and development manufacturing engineer. She led a company wide effort to implement simulation modeling which was crucial to gaining new contracts and improving manufacturing process capability for Harris. As a Lean/ Six Sigma Black Belt, she was responsible for leading Lean improvement projects and teaching training courses on Root Cause, Mistake Proofing, Yellow Belt and Green Belt certification.