The Data Analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) community will present University of Washington Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor Shuai Huang with two distinguished awards at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo, occurring this week in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The mathematician of medicine

Professor Huang will be honored with both the 2023 DAIS Teaching Award and the Professional Achievement Award. These accolades reflect Professor Huang’s persistent efforts on tackling important research challenges of data science in the real world, cultivating the next generation of scientists and engineers with new approaches and materials for data analytics education, as well as his interdisciplinary influence outside of the ISE classroom, notably in healthcare data analytics.

Associate Professor Shuai Huang

In announcing the Professional Achievement Award, DAIS commended Professor Huang’s “contributions to both the theoretical research in data analytics as well as the applications to high-impact healthcare domains. [Professor Huang’s] extensive experiences in data analytics education are also noted and much appreciated by the reviewers. We recognize the great societal impact generated by [his] work.”

A trail-blazer in disease detection

Prof. Huang’s groundbreaking research showcases the application of industrial and systems engineering across a vast range of disciplines. His collaborators include experts across healthcare, biomedical informatics, computer science, statistics, and operations research. By bringing his expertise in data analytics to their work, Prof. Huang’s teams have made significant advancements in modeling diseases, notably Type 1 diabetes, depression, surgical site infection and Azheimer’s disease.

In Type 1 diabetes research, Prof. Huang works with the The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study to develop a rule-based framework to identify biomarkers from complex datasets. For depression, he has collaborated with Prof. Shan Liu and medical collaborators from the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute to analyze electronic health records, developing patient-specific adaptive monitoring algorithms. In the field of surgical site infection, he has worked with Dr. Heather Evans and Dr. Bill Lober to develop the mPOWEr app, unlocking the potential of smartphones and common wearable devices, for post-discharge surgical patient monitoring, tracking health data for early risk detection. His work in Alzheimer’s disease has helped to identify novel neuroimaging biomarkers for early diagnosis, disease progression monitoring and treatment effect evaluation.

Nurturing the next generation of data scientists

Prof. Huang’s passion for education ensures his positive influence in the field will extend far into the future. At the University of Washington, he teaches a course of his own design, Data Analytics for Systems Engineering (IND E 427), which serves as the foundation for the ISE department’s Data Science degree option. As a faculty advisor, Professor Huang has graduated nine Ph.D. students, with four currently under his supervision. The 2023 DAIS Teaching Award committee will announce his award at the DAIS Town Hall at the IISE Annual Conference and Expo.

In accepting these awards, Prof. Huang acknowledges his students and many collaborators: "I am very grateful for the recognition of our works by my home society and appreciate the support of the IISE DAIS leadership team and the award review committee. I have been fortunate to work with many excellent students and collaborators, and this recognition is truly shared by all of us."

The ISE Department offers our gratitude and congratulations to Professor Huang, both for improving the educational experience of students in the classroom, advancing the research frontiers of data analytics, and for improving the lives of patients worldwide.