Letter From Department Head Ricardo Valerdi

Dear SIE Alumni and Friends,

I am honored and enthusiastic about serving as interim Department Head this academic year. This is a particularly special year for SIE since we are celebrating our 60th anniversary!

Even though I have been a faculty member in SIE for 11 years, the chance to lead the department comes with entirely new challenges and opportunities. One thing I have been reminded of in the first few months on the job is that we have a world-class department with faculty who are leaders in their fields, staff who are committed to student success, and students who are ambitious and passionate about their education.

Many great things are happening in SIE including the recent promotions of Prof. Jianqiang Cheng to Associate Professor with tenure and Prof. Vignesh Subbian to Associate Professor with tenure. We are also excited to welcome Prof. Fabio Curti to our department from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in Spring 2023 as Associate Professor. He will be moving his family from Rome to Tucson very soon.

Our faculty continue to thrive in their research as evidenced by recent grant awards from Maricopa County for SMARTdrive (Larry Head), Lawrence Livermore for Rare Earth Recovery and Separation (Hongyue Jin), NSF for Asset-Based Approaches in Undergraduate Engineering Design Education (Hannah Budinoff and Vignesh Subbian), NSF for Federated Cloud Platforms (Pratik Satam), NSF for Resilience-Oriented Market Design (Pavlo Krokhmal), DARPA for Reefense: A Mosaic Oyster Habitat (MOH) for Coastal Defense (Hongyue Jin), National Library of Medicine for Place-based Culturally Responsive Health Informatics Research Education (PHIRE) Program (Vignesh Subbian), and Department of Defense for Innovation for Digital Transformation and Policy Analytics (Alejandro Salado).

Our staff is also growing in order to support new academic programs offered at our micro-campus locations in Peru, Indonesia, and Jordan. Please join me in welcoming Stacey Fox, our new micro campus coordinator, who will be working with our micro campuses to ensure we deliver high-quality courses in partnership with local instructors.

Our students are also being recognized for their work in international forums. SIE Ph.D. student Enrico Schiassi (advised by Roberto Furfaro) received the Best Paper Award at the 2nd International Conference on Applied Intelligence and Informatics. This comes on the heels of Prof. Furfaro’s election as a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society. In addition, Prof. Alejandro Salado has been elected to a 3-year term on the Board of Directors of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) as Director for Academic Matters.

It is no surprise that U.S. News 2023 rankings were released and recognized SIE as #21 in the Industrial/Manufacturing/Systems Engineering category.

We look forward to all the new year has to offer. Thank you for all you do to contribute to the greatness of our department.

Bear Down,

Ricardo Valerdi
Distinguished Outreach Professor and Interim Head
Department of Systems & Industrial Engineering