Eight accomplished faculty members are joining the Department of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering (ISE), signaling a significant expansion in both size and scope. Their arrival marks a pivotal moment in the department’s history, as it now boasts more faculty than ever before.
The research of these distinguished experts covers a wide array of application domains, including health care, virtual reality, algorithmic fairness, human-robot interaction, autonomy, and electronic commerce. Their work complements and builds on ISE’s foundational areas of operations research, data analytics, design, and decision and control.
Moreover, the addition of these faculty members is building stronger connections for ISE across campus, as they have affiliations with Carle Illinois College of Medicine, Coordinated Science Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
Jeff Shamma, department head of ISE, expressed his excitement about the arrival of these new faculty members, stating, "These distinguished individuals will have a major impact on the future of our department's mission in education and research. They will enhance the learning experience for our students and strengthen our research capabilities. This growth in ISE represents a significant moment for our department, and we eagerly anticipate their remarkable contributions to The Grainger College of Engineering.”
Meet the new Grainger Engineers.
Caroline Cao
Professor | Director of Applied Health Technology Initiatives
Caroline Cao is an expert in human factors engineering (HFE) in medical systems, especially in the design and application of enabling technology for minimally invasive surgery and training (such as virtual reality simulation, sensory augmentation and robotics). She holds a joint appointment with Carle Illinois College of Medicine, where she is the Director of Engineering Innovation & Medical Simulation. Cao received her PhD in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto.
Jim Rehg
Professor | Director of the Health Care Engineering Systems Center
James M. Rehg was previously a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he co-directed the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics (CHAI). He now holds a joint appointment with ISE and the Department of Computer Science. Rehg received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and worked at the Cambridge Research Lab of DEC (and then Compaq) from 1995-2001, where he managed the computer vision research group.
Bhaskar Ray Chaudhury
Assistant Professor
Before his current appointment, Bhaskar Ray Chaudhury was a Future Faculty Fellow Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Computer Science at UIUC. He focuses on topics at the intersection of economics and computation, social choice theory and machine learning. He has worked extensively on algorithmically resolving open problems on fairness in resource allocation and task distribution.
Roy Dong
Assistant Professor
Roy Dong's research uses tools from control theory, economics, statistics and optimization to understand the role of data in interconnected systems. His interests include distribution of data change, user privacy in modern systems and modeling human behavior in a fashion that admits engineering design. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.
Yatharth Dubey
Assistant Professor
Yatharth Dubey was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University before his appointment. His research is concerned with strengthening our understanding of the algorithms that allow us to make large-scale discrete decisions—particularly the algorithms underlying state-of-the-art mixed-integer linear programming(MILP) solvers. He holds a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Grani A. Hanasusanto
Associate Professor
Grani Hanasusanto's research focuses on designing and analyzing tractable solution schemes for decision-making problems under uncertainty, with applications in operations management, energy systems, finance, machine learning and data analytics. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Imperial College London and an MSc degree in Financial Engineering from the National University of Singapore.
Yingying Li
Assistant Professor
Yingying Li's research lies in the intersection of statistical/reinforcement learning, control and optimization and applications of robotics and smart grids. She is especially interested in online and distributed learning for control and optimization with safety and optimality guarantees, with applications in smart cities. Li received her Ph.D. and master’s degree in Applied Math at Harvard University.
Yunzong Xu
Assistant Professor
Yunzong Xu’s research spans machine learning, operations research, and data science, with applications in electronic commerce, revenue management, and healthcare. He received his PhD from the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Yunzong is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research and joins ISE in Fall 2024.