Several faculty and students at the Stewart School of ISyE were recognized at the recent IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2009 in Miami, Florida. This year's annual conference for the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) drew more than 1,300 representatives of industry and academia for four days of educational sessions, exhibits, and awards ceremonies.

Among ten total publication awards, IIE annually awards four Best Paper Awards for articles published in its flagship journal IIE Transactions in the categories of design & manufacturing, quality & reliability, scheduling & logistics, and operations engineering. In 2009, Stewart School faculty co-authored the award-winning papers in three of the four categories.

Professor Paul Griffin and Associate Professor Pinar Keskinocak received the IIE Transactions Best Paper Award in Scheduling and Logistics for "Coordination of Marketing and Production for Price and Leadtime Decisions," coauthored with Ph.D. student Pelin Pekgun. Their paper analyzes the inefficiencies that are due to the decentralization of price and leadtime decisions in make-to-order firms.

Associate Professor Roshan Vengazhiyil received the IIE Transactions Best Paper Award in Quality and Reliability for "Optimal Specifications for Degrading Characteristics," coauthored with I-Tang Yu of Tunghai University, Taiwan. Their paper demonstrates an alternative approach to maximizing the quality of the product when dealing with characteristics affected by degradation.

Associate Professor Chen Zhou received the IIE Transactions Best Paper Award in Design and Manufacturing for "Clusters and Filling-Curve-Based Storage Assignment in a Circuit Assembly Kitting Area," coauthored with Wei Hua of IBM (MS 1999, DR 2001). Their paper addresses the complexity of a manufacturing process that assembles circuit boards for more than 1,000 different products.

In addition to the publication awards, Ph.D. student Melike Meterelliyoz won the Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award and received the first-place cash prize of $1,000. Meterelliyoz was advised by Professor David Goldsman and Associate Professor Christos Alexopoulos, both of whom specialize in the field of simulation.