Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

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Mon, 01/27/2025 - 13:14

Assistant Professor Areen Alsaid says the growing suite of semi-autonomous technologies have the ability to make driving safer, more convenient and less stressful. But we’ll only fully realize these benefits if the learning curve doesn’t confuse drivers.

Assistant Professor Areen Alsaid (right), pictured here with doctoral student Shiva Rasouli, has been using a driving simulator to study how drivers respond to interactions between driver assist features. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

Planning for EV infrastructure is complicated. Here’s a better way to do it.

lblouin — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 13:45:53 +0000

Planning for EV infrastructure is complicated. Here’s a better way to do it. lblouin Wed, 01/22/2025 - 08:45

Electric vehicles still represent less than 1% of registered vehicles in the U.S. and comprised just over 8% of new U.S. vehicle sales in 2024. But government officials across the country are already planning for a future in which EVs are the go-to mode of private transportation — as evidenced by increasingly large public investments in EV charging infrastructure, like the $7.5 billion pledged under the Biden administration. When it comes to actually making a plan for building out that infrastructure, however, the devil is in a complex web of largely unknown details, says Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Jian Hu. Ideally, Hu says, you’d want to build a charging system that serves people’s needs for the next 10 years. The tricky part is that involves correctly anticipating a host of trendlines which are basically impossible to predict. “There are so many uncertainties,” Hu says. “We don’t know how fast the EV market will grow, which means we don’t know what the charging demand will be. Will the public want fast or slow charging? Will people charge at home or at work? During peak hours, or non-peak hours? Will utilities adopt dynamic pricing so it’s cheaper to charge at certain times of day? And how will this affect charging behavior? And what if there are new technologies that emerge? There are so many things we don’t know.”

Typically, when government agencies are planning for things like this, Hu says they might use what statisticians call a deterministic model. When you’re making this kind of model, you take account of what data you have, plug it into a formula that defines the relationship between the variables, and then you typically get a single answer, which then guides your plan of action. A simple retirement calculator, which takes your current age, retirement age, anticipated rate of return, the rate of inflation, and monthly savings target and tells you how much money you’ll have when you retire is a simple kind of deterministic model. But Hu argues that these kinds of prediction models aren’t the best tools when you’re dealing with complex situations with lots of uncertainty. “What if your rate of return on your investments isn’t the 7% you’ve put into that calculator? What if it is less and then you don’t have the money you expect when you retire? If you only use this kind of model, you’ll have this single prediction and you base everything on that. But you’re not preparing for a possible worst-case scenario.”

Because of this, statisticians often use different tools for forecasting complex, highly uncertain phenomena, like investment performance. One of the most popular is called stochastic modeling, which, instead of giving you just one answer, provides a range of results represented by thousands of different simulated scenarios in which the values and probabilities of the underlying variables are allowed to change. A popular type of stochastic model is a Monte Carlo simulation, which is used in financial planning. Unlike a simple retirement calculator, which assumes fixed values for things like the rate of inflation or a rate of return, a Monte Carlo analysis will run thousands of simulations in which all the variables you have in your model have different values and assigned probabilities. As a result, you get a much wider representation of possible outcomes, including best-case, worst-case and most likely scenarios. A Monte Carlo simulation might tell you, say, that in 98 percent of its simulated scenarios, which account for a wide range of possible economic conditions, your savings plans are going to get you to the end of your life with money in the bank. That might give you much more confidence in your investment strategy. You might even decide to take a more aggressive approach. Or, as Hu frames it, stochastic modeling gives us a much more complete way to understand risk.

Because stochastic models are so much better at helping us understand risk of uncertain events, Hu says they could be an excellent approach for planning EV infrastructure, given that reliable data on important details, like consumer charging preferences and future electricity demand, are sparse or lacking altogether. As part of a National Science Foundation-funded project, and in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, which is itself partnering with the Chicago Transit Authority, Hu will be creating novel approaches to stochastic modeling that he hopes can profoundly improve this planning process. To get just a little bit technical for a moment: Hu says one of the big challenges of stochastic modeling is coping with “distributional ambiguity,” which is where you’re lacking a lot of reliable information about the probability of key phenomena. Currently, one of the ways statisticians deal with this is a method called distributionally robust optimization, but Hu says DRO has a few limitations. One, it’s computationally intensive, which means as models get more complex, it becomes increasingly cumbersome and time consuming to run them and adapt them to new data. Second, DRO tends to hedge against worst-case scenarios and can therefore lead to overly conservative outcomes. Third, it's a machine learning-based process that is a “black box,” meaning it does not show how it arrives at its answers. It therefore might not be a great option for publicly funded agencies, who, in spending large sums of taxpayer dollars, could certainly benefit from transparent or interpretable models. Hu says his novel stochastic modeling strategy aims not only to improve on these limitations, but also provide more overall usability for public agencies, including models that can be more easily updated as better data emerge.

After developing the model, Hu is looking forward to a big field test toward the end of the project: helping the Chicago Transit Authority as it embarks on electrifying their massive fleet of public buses. Current electric bus battery technology generally provides a range of around 60 miles. But many of CTA’s current scheduled vehicle route blocks are much longer; nearly a third of weekday blocks are longer than 100 miles. CTA therefore envisions building out a bus-charging infrastructure that’s integrated with their garages and bus routes, which will also require enhancements to the local electric grid to accommodate the new electricity load. Figuring out where these grid modifications need to be made and the ideal placement for the charging stations in a way that harmonizes with the complex bus routes — which are likely to change in the future — is exactly the kind of complicated, ambiguous planning task Hu says his model can help with. Most importantly, it gives a government agency its best chance of spending limited public resources for EV charging as effectively as possible.

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Story by Lou Blouin

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Wed, 01/22/2025 - 13:40

Given a web of uncertainties, like future electricity price, consumer charging behavior and EV market growth, Associate Professor Jian Hu says a novel type of stochastic modeling can minimize the risks of public investments in EV infrastructure.

Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Jian Hu is testing a new approach to planning charging infrastructure with the Chicago Transit Authority. Photo by Annie Barker

The challenges with younger drivers and autonomous vehicles

lblouin — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:28:25 +0000

The challenges with younger drivers and autonomous vehicles lblouin Mon, 01/13/2025 - 10:28

Autonomous vehicles promise a future of almost unimaginable driver convenience. After all, who wouldn't want to be able to watch a movie during a tedious stop-and-go rush hour commute? But proponents of AVs think the technology’s even more meaningful impact will be in the realm of safety, given that more than 90% of traffic accidents are thought to be the result of human error. Indeed, we’re already seeing some of the safety benefits as semi-autonomous driver assist features, like lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring and emergency braking, become commonplace on newer vehicles. Even so, the next big developmental leap to so-called Level 3 vehicles, which are capable of doing all the driving for us in certain situations and are now starting to enter American and European markets, could introduce a whole new set of safety and driver behavior challenges, says Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Bochen Jia. That’s because Level 3 AVs still require full driver intervention when conditions are beyond the system’s capability — like when lane markers aren’t clearly marked or are obscured by weather; or in the event of system malfunction. That introduces a whole new type of driver experience, which the AV research community calls “takeover.” That’s the tricky liminal moment when a driver has to abruptly shift their focus from, say, watching their favorite Netflix series, to dealing with a potential road emergency.

Intuitively, takeover is a fraught, psychologically complex space, which is why Jia says a lot of research has been devoted to studying how drivers respond to this type of demand. For example, early research has indicated, somewhat counterintuitively, that the risk of driver fatigue actually increases when operating a Level 3 vehicle. It seems the mental task of constantly monitoring a vehicle doing the driving for us can actually be more draining than doing the driving ourselves. And in Jia’s lab, he’s been focusing on a neglected area of takeover research: younger, inexperienced drivers. From a research perspective, he says it’s a fascinating population. First, young people’s brains are still developing, particularly when it comes to attention resources and situational awareness, which can influence things like fatigue development and how well they respond to potentially hazardous situations, like takeover. In addition, younger people tend to, in general, be more trusting of technology, which could lead to less intense monitoring of the vehicle and undesirable takeover outcomes. Moreover, Jia says we might not be too far away from an era where young drivers’ only driving experience is on Level 3 vehicles. “That would mean they actually aren’t getting much experience doing actual driving, which could influence how well they respond to situations when the vehicle asks them to take over,” Jia says.

In focusing on younger drivers, Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Bochen Jia has been exploring a neglected area of AV research. Photo by Annie Barker

For one of his latest projects, Jia has been digging into the particular issue of fatigue onset in younger, novice drivers. For this study, he recruited both drivers under the age of 19 who had limited driving experience and middle-aged drivers who had years of experience. Using a high-fidelity driving simulator, both sets of participants engaged in extended periods of autonomous driving and were instructed to take control of the vehicle when the autonomous mode was not safe or had failed. During their driving experience, Jia then introduced several types of takeover events to see how drivers would react. By combining physiological measures and self-reported assessments collected periodically during their driving task, Jia then monitored each set of participants for fatigue onset. The results were pretty interesting: Novice young adult drivers developed both physical and mental fatigue earlier than their middle-aged counterparts during extended periods of autonomous driving. "This is somewhat surprising to people because they think young people naturally have more energy," Jia explains. "However, it appears that the mental demands of autonomous driving, or the tendency of younger drivers to be more engaged in non-driving tasks during autonomous operation, may accelerate the onset of fatigue in younger drivers." Moreover, the takeover outcomes for fatigued drivers were often far from desirable. “Essentially, we were looking at how often participants would fail to prevent a collision,” Jia says. “And it happened more frequently than we had hoped.”

Jia says the results point to a need for highly effective fatigue warning systems for Level 3 AVs that have special considerations for younger, inexperienced drivers. Interestingly, Jia envisions this system would be most effective if it wasn’t just part of the vehicle, but integrated with other readily available wellness monitoring technologies, like wearable fitness trackers that monitor heart rates and sleep quality. “I don't think you can have a system that’s confined to the car — that’s not enough,” Jia says. “It should be part of your life monitoring — an overall system — because they don’t suddenly become a different person when they get in the car. With all the personal data monitoring technologies we have nowadays, we could easily identify younger drivers, and we likely have a lot of the data we would need.”

Next up, Jia says he plans to continue his research on fatigue onset with a study that puts participants in real automated vehicles within a closed testbed, such as the Mcity test facility. In addition, he has a similar project that is studying differences in distraction levels between younger, novice drivers and middle-aged experienced drivers. He hopes both studies will provide critical insights into improving the safety and usability of autonomous vehicle systems for drivers of all experience levels.

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Story by Lou Blouin. Want to learn more about Jia's work on driver fatigue? You can read the full-text of his recent article on the subject in the “Journal of Safety Research,” which was co-authored by Jia's student Yourui Tong, ��-Dearborn Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Shan Bao, Tsinghua University Professor of Industrial Engineering Changxu Wu and ��-Dearborn Associate Professor of Psychology Nitya Sethuraman.

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Mon, 01/13/2025 - 15:22

Associate Professor Bochen Jia’s latest research is revealing some surprising things about how fatigue can impact younger, inexperienced drivers when they're operating semi-autonomous vehicles.

Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Bochen Jia (right) and graduate student Darlington Egeonu check out the driving simulator Jia used for his most recent project on driver fatigue. Photo by Annie Barker

Class of Fall 2024: CECS graduate Dania Ammar

lblouin — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 16:46:13 +0000

Class of Fall 2024: CECS graduate Dania Ammar lblouin Mon, 12/16/2024 - 11:46

When Dania Ammar moved with her family from Beirut to southeast Michigan in 2017, her plan was to build on her civil engineering background and start the master’s in construction management program at ��-Ann Arbor. But some family circumstances led to her deferring her enrollment. As it happened, during the unexpected semester off, she reconnected with a friend from Lebanon who was studying mechanical engineering on the Dearborn campus. He had a lot of good things to say about the college, particularly how the research enterprise was growing quickly, giving graduate students a lot of opportunities. It was enough to pique Ammar’s interest. She got on the ��-Dearborn website, checked out the programs and research labs, particularly those in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and set up a meeting with then-College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and current CECS Dean Ghassan Kridli. “Dean Kridli was very generous in giving me some time to talk with him about the programs and all the research that was going on at ��-Dearborn at that time. I decided this was definitely one of the best options,” Ammar says.

The following semester, Ammar decided to go for it — enrolling in the IMSE master’s program at ��-Dearborn in 2018. IMSE is a broad discipline, and Ammar recalls feeling very open to exploring all the possibilities. That first semester, she took a variety of classes and found an early champion in Associate Professor Jian Hu, who specializes in using data analytics and machine learning in risk management applications. “I had a very good math background and knew some programming, but I had no background in that field,” Ammar says. “Professor Hu provided me with all kinds of support, told me which books I should start reading, and gave me time to get accustomed to programming models that we were using. I learned so much and it was a phenomenal experience.” A little later in her master’s program, she crossed paths with Professor Shan Bao, a specialist in human factors who was helping develop a new master’s program in Human-Centered Design and Engineering, a field that roots engineering solutions in deep understandings of human needs. Ammar says a lot of people think of human factors as a psychology-based discipline — and it does draw on psychology and user feedback quite a bit. But with Bao’s work, Ammar saw how the discipline’s deepest potential lay in combining those insights with complex data analytics and even artificial intelligence. “You can’t really develop any product, whether it is something simple or something very complicated, like an automated vehicle, without going into the human factors aspects of it,” she says. “But I saw this isn’t just about psychology. It’s about figuring out ways to quantify the psychology — to measure human preferences and behaviors so you can build models that help you gain insights into those measures.”

Ammar loved working with Bao and chose to continue her journey at Dearborn with a PhD. For her dissertation research, she took on an ambitious multiphase project in transportation safety that explored one of the more fascinating emerging challenges related to autonomous vehicles: How will pedestrians learn to trust and safely interact with vehicles when humans aren’t doing the driving? Ammar says both pedestrians and drivers typically rely on an exchange of visual signals, like eye contact and waving, to negotiate who has the right of way, and absent a human driver, cars will presumably need some way of declaring their intentions. She began her work with a deep dive into road crash data, identifying the factors that lead to the most dangerous situations between pedestrians and human-driven vehicles in order to derive potentially problematic pedestrian-AV scenarios. She then embarked on building a cueing system designed to satisfy pedestrians' needs while interacting with AVs in these evaluation scenarios. That phase of her research led to several interesting conclusions. For example, Ammar discovered that pedestrians tend to favor technologies that closely mimic their interactions with human drivers, e.g. AVs that communicate a symbolic message, like the familiar flashing silhouette used at crosswalks, either directly on the vehicle or via crosswalk infrastructure (or both). She also investigated many fine-grain details, like whether a pedestrian’s age, gender, and driving and pedestrian behavior (conservative versus nonconservative) influenced their preferences for AV cueing. The final stage of her research involved creating a VR simulation, where she observed participants reacting in tricky situations, like an autonomous vehicle quickly approaching a red light before eventually stopping. By measuring how long pedestrians took to leave the curb and using physiological measures like pupil diameter, she could see which safety cues inspired trust or distrust. She’s hoping the results, which have led to several publications, will help other researchers, automakers and civil engineers as they design cueing systems for the era of autonomous vehicles.

Since officially finishing her PhD program, Ammar has switched gears a little bit, and in some ways, it’s a moment when her diverse studies are all coming together. Since August, she’s been working as a data science project engineer with Hottinger Brüel & Kjær, where she focuses on data analytics and machine learning-based solutions for a wide variety of industries. “These skills can be leveraged in any application, including civil engineering-related fields, which have changed a lot even in the short time since I was an undergraduate student,” Ammar says. “Let’s say you had a project and you needed insights about soil mechanics or wanted to predict settlements in the soil over time. In the past, we would have done that with a bunch of physics-based and numerical equations. But now, with more sensors being installed and collected data becoming available, researchers are developing machine learning-based models to answer those questions. That’s where the field is going now, and in the future, most engineering solutions will be built with data collection in mind so these models can keep getting better.”

Ammar now just has one finishing touch to put on her ��-Dearborn career: Walking across the commencement stage in December. She expects it’s going to be a pretty emotional moment. “��-Dearborn has been my home for the last seven years,” she says. “It’s only been a few months since I left, but to see everyone again is going to be very special. I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many different people, and I always felt, sincerely, that every day I spent with them was a chance to learn something new.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

Student Success

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Mon, 12/16/2024 - 16:44

The recent PhD graduate almost pursued a career in construction management until ��-Dearborn helped her unlock a future in data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Since finishing her PhD, Dania Ammar has been working as a data science project engineer. She'll be putting the punctuation mark on her seven-year ��-Dearborn career on Saturday, when she walks across the commencement stage. Photo by Annie Barker

Undergrad students develop an improved sleep apnea mask

lblouin — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 14:01:44 +0000

Undergrad students develop an improved sleep apnea mask lblouin Mon, 08/12/2024 - 10:01

An estimated 930 million people worldwide struggle with sleep apnea, but two of them in particular played an inspirational role in a group of ��-Dearborn students' recent senior design project. Engineering undergrads Saja Samra’s and Maggie Bustamante’s dads both live with the condition, which causes people to stop and start breathing, sometimes hundreds of times, during their sleep cycle. To treat their condition, their dads both use a CPAP machine, which utilizes a face mask to keep airways open during sleep. The devices can help people get much better — and safer — rest, but the technology isn’t without problems. “Both our dads had similar issues — things like air leakage and discomfort, and that it was too bulky,” Samra says. “Portability was a big issue for my dad,” Bustamante says. “Whenever he would go camping or go on a trip for work, a lot of times he would choose not to bring it, and then he wouldn’t sleep nearly as well.”

This feedback prompted Samra and Bustamante to take a pitch to their senior design teammates: What if we designed a better CPAP mask? Both Ammel Mutahr and Sajida Tohfe liked the idea, so they started digging into what exactly that would involve. All four students majored in Human-Centered Engineering Design, a relatively new program at ��-Dearborn that emphasizes human needs and blends traditional engineering with skills borrowed from art, anthropology, psychology and sociology. So they quickly deployed the strategies they learned over their previous three years in their program. In typical HCED fashion, they started by talking with potential users, surveying more than a dozen people who have sleep apnea about their specific, real-world challenges with their CPAP devices. They also had more in-depth conversations with both dads. From that feedback, they learned that some of the most common issues involve fit around the nose and chin, comfort, the clumsiness of getting the mask on and the overall bulkiness of the device. With only two semesters to work on the project, they decided to focus on the first three issues, to see if they could create a better CPAP mask.

They began with a design brainstorming session, pulling inspiration from things like military pilot oxygen masks, which have inflatable head straps to create a tight fit, and even the Ironman helmet, a full head covering with interlocking panels. They then created low-fidelity prototypes with simple materials like cardboard and masking tape, and gradually moved through a series of higher-fidelity 3D-printed models. The dads proved to be a huge help in making some important tweaks along the way. “We knew comfort was a concern, so for one of our earlier prototypes we used TPU, which is a kind of plastic that has a little more give to it,” Bustamante explains. “But when Saja’s dad tested it, he said it was a little rough on his skin. So we tried this silicone resin, which is this relatively new type of resin used in 3D printing, and that ended up being much more comfortable.”

In addition to the silicone resin, their final prototype included a number of features designed to improve fit and comfort. Mutahr played a key role in developing the inflatable auto-adjusting straps, which not only make the mask fit better but make it easier to get off and on. Bustamante and Samra focused on an auto-sealing mechanism, which used two small motors around the bridge of the nose to seal the mask if pressure sensors detect an air leakage. One of the biggest breakthroughs was when Tohfe discovered a quick and cheap way to create individualized masks. Using a smartphone app called Scandy Pro: 3D Scanner, people could use their phone cameras to perform detailed scans of their faces, which then could be used to create 3D-printing files for custom masks.

The team’s innovative design earned the Best in College Award at this year’s Senior Design Competition. Still, the team says their final prototype by no means feels complete, as the compressed timeframe for the competition meant they couldn’t do everything they wanted. For example, Samra says the motors added some bulk to the mask, a quality they were trying to avoid, so she’d like to explore using a lighter-footprint technology, like actuators. And they’d likely add those to more places on the mask, like along the chin, where some of the people they surveyed say they experience air leakages. Mutahr, who also designed an app interface for their mask, pointed out that even Senior Design Day, when they presented their design to the public and the competition judges, gave them ideas for improvements. “For example, we got a comment from one of the judges, who had sleep apnea, and he had a really large beard, but he had to shave it because of the mask,” she says. “That’s something you probably wouldn't think about unless you’re actually talking with people who have sleep apnea. We heard comments like that from so many people who have issues with their masks. So you do the research, you read the statistics online, but seeing it in real life and how our solution could actually be helpful, that’s probably when you get the best design ideas.”

Mutahr says one of the most gratifying pieces of feedback was that their idea “could be on ‘Shark Tank.’” Indeed, they’re not ruling out trying to commercialize the product. One of their team’s faculty advisors is a patent lawyer, and a different project that Samra, Tohfe and Mutahr worked on in one of their HCED classes is already under review for a patent. The big challenge right now is getting the band back together. Bustamante graduated this spring and is busy with her new process engineering position at GM, where she’s helping retool a factory for EV production. Samra and Tohfe, who also graduated recently, are interviewing for jobs. And Mutahr still has a semester to go. “But we’d definitely love to pursue that,” Samra says. “Maybe after Ammel graduates, we can make it happen.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Experiential Learning

Student Success

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

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Mon, 08/12/2024 - 14:00

Four seniors from the Human-Centered Engineering Design program built a precision-fit face mask that could bring relief to the millions of adults who live with sleep apnea.

From left, Saja Samra, Maggie Bustamante, Ammel Mutahr and Sajida Tohfe show off their work at Senior Design Day. Photo courtesy of Ammel Mutahr

��-Dearborn is infusing sustainability into its engineering programs

lblouin — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 12:57:45 +0000

��-Dearborn is infusing sustainability into its engineering programs lblouin Wed, 07/03/2024 - 08:57

The days when engineering was thought of as a purely technical discipline are disappearing fast. For sure, engineers still need strong foundational knowledge in math and science and discipline-specific technical training. But there’s a growing movement within engineering education to ensure we’re training engineers who can also think deeply about the environmental and societal impacts of their creations as a fundamental part of the engineering process.

At ��-Dearborn, this emphasis on creating holistic engineers is already taking a number of forms, from sustainability-focused classroom projects and research, to a new course in trustworthy AI, to undergraduate and graduate programs in human-centered design, a discipline that blends traditional engineering with skills borrowed from art, anthropology and sociology. Now, sustainability is poised to take an even broader role within the College of Engineering and Computer Science, say Associate Professors Alireza Mohammadi and Samir Rawashdeh. The robotics experts and frequent collaborators recently landed a $200,000 grant from the Lemelson Foundation to support CECS faculty who want to incorporate sustainability-focused projects into their courses. “In talking with the people at Lemelson, we realized if you want this to become part of the culture and not just an occasional or fringe thing, you have to reach a critical mass,” Rawashdeh says. “Sustainability has to be something students are hearing about in multiple places, across courses, across programs for them to internalize that this is part of what engineering is all about.”

Specifically, the Lemelson funding will enable Mohammadi and Rawashdeh to award minigrants to faculty who want to add course modules or projects that incorporate the Engineering for One Planet Framework, a set of fundamental environmental sustainability-focused learning outcomes developed by Lemelson and VentureWell, with input from stakeholders in academia, industry and nonprofit organizations. For example, in a smaller-scale antecedent to this larger Lemelson-funded initiative, Rawashdeh and Mohammadi used a minigrant to add sustainability-focused modules to two of their robotics courses. “It was an interesting challenge because the overlap between robotics and environmental issues isn’t obvious,” Rawashdeh says. But as they read up on it, they got all kinds of ideas — from robotics applications for environmental industries, like recycling, to end-of-life e-waste management strategies for robotics components, including their valuable lithium-based batteries. In Mohammadi’s course, the students optimized control algorithms for their lab’s fleet of mobile robots so that the machines would consume less energy while doing the same amount of work.

While the primary goal of the initiative is to develop a more environmentally focused mindset among engineering students, Mohammadi says emphasizing sustainability in CECS programs could also make engineering disciplines more attractive to a broader range of students. “The younger generation cares more about environmental and social issues, and engineering is absolutely a profession where you can make a large impact on society,” Mohammadi says. “But we don’t often describe it that way. So showing them how they can shape the world in a way they care about might make students who’ve never considered engineering before think about it as an option.” To match students and employers, they’ll also be hosting several industry events, where employers can talk with students about their sustainability-focused opportunities and students can showcase their work.

Interested faculty can apply now for minigrant funding by contacting Mohammadi or Rawashdeh. They’re hoping to fund projects in 10-16 courses over three years.

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Story by Lou Blouin

Faculty and Staff

Nature or Environment

Computer and Information Science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Off

Wed, 07/03/2024 - 12:55

Part of being a great engineer these days is understanding the environmental and societal impacts of your work. But how do we train students to be holistic engineers?

Graphic by Violet Dashi. Images by Marianna and KUA g Gear via Adobe Stock

This competition is hoping to address the shortage of EV battery engineers

lblouin — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 17:43:54 +0000

This competition is hoping to address the shortage of EV battery engineers lblouin Mon, 01/29/2024 - 12:43

You need only look at commercials to know that automakers are betting big on electric vehicles. Indeed, nearly all major vehicle manufacturers have announced significant shares of their fleets will go electric by the end of the decade, with more than a handful announcing plans to completely phase-out combustion technology in that timeframe. Not surprisingly, the rapid shift toward EVs isn’t arriving without a few growing pains. One of the biggest current challenges for automakers is simply finding enough engineers who are well-versed in the new technologies, especially the high-capacity lithium-ion batteries that are fueling the EV revolution. A recent report from Bloomberg noted that the workforce shortages are so acute that a senior-level battery engineer can command a salary on par with a company CFO. In Japan, a government-industry partnership has turned to educating high school students for battery-related careers, in an effort to train the 30,000 workers they’ll need to keep the industry thriving.

The U.S. Department of Energy has also taken note, launching a variety of initiatives to help sustain the EV industry and reach the U.S. government’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Among them is the Battery Workforce Challenge, a national competition co-sponsored by the Department of Energy and Stellantis and managed by Argonne National Laboratory, which challenges collegiate student teams to design, build, test and integrate an advanced EV battery system into a future Stellantis electric vehicle. It’s an incredible opportunity for students, says Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Xuan (Joe) Zhou, who’s advising the ��-Dearborn team, one of 12 teams, and the only team in Michigan, selected for the three-year competition. “Stellantis is supplying a real battery cell, the charger, even a vehicle to us, and then the students will design the whole pack, including the battery management system, and put it in a real vehicle,” Zhou says. “I’ve been working with batteries for many years, and even I haven’t had a chance to work with a whole pack! So this is really going to be special for the students.”

Because of the focus on workforce development, the competition is also structured to closely mimic the industry environment, which includes phases for design, simulation, controls development, testing, and vehicle integration and demonstration. Teams will periodically report in with key deliverables, which gives them an opportunity to get feedback on their work, just like they would in a real workplace. Zhou says each team is assigned two Stellantis engineers, who they can consult with during the competition. Two students from each team will also get to complete internships with Stellantis.

Zhou is also excited that the ��-Dearborn team is enlisting the talents of students from neighboring Henry Ford College. In Fall 2023, HFC became the first college in the country to offer a Battery Technician Certification curriculum, which is part of its growing lineup of vocational programs focusing on electric vehicles. “I think the DOE is really excited to see us working with HFC because, of course, we need engineers to design the vehicles, but we also need high-skill technicians who can fix the vehicles,” Zhou says. “Also, we have a very close relationship with HFC, where students with a certain GPA are guaranteed admission to ��-Dearborn. So for HFC students who want to transfer to a four-year engineering program, it’s an excellent opportunity to come to our campus and get hands-on with the latest technology.”

��-Dearborn doctoral student Duncan Tyree, whose current research is focused on battery manufacturing, says he joined the Battery Workforce Challenge team to deepen his expertise in one of his favorite subjects. But he’s also hoping the broad scope of the competition will stretch some of his non-engineering skills. As the ��-Dearborn team’s project manager, he’s looking forward to mentoring the younger engineering students, as well as to opportunities for sharpening his communication and meeting facilitation skills. Moreover, because his academic experience has focused mostly on simulation, he’s excited to work on a project that will ultimately have a real-world proving ground. “I think year two is going to be the most challenging — that’s when we actually start putting the battery pack together,” Tyree says. “In some ways, for someone with my background, doing things like putting a battery in the vehicle could be the least exciting thing. But like with any project, there are times when a manager has to step in and help out with whatever needs to get done, and I’m actually really looking forward to that part of it. I’ve had some leadership positions, like with student organizations, and this feels a lot different. This is a national competition, and so there’s a lot more at stake. People are counting on you, and we all want to do as well as we can.”

Zhou and Tyree both say recruiting for the team is going well. The group now includes more than 20 ��-Dearborn students from a variety of programs and another 10 students from Henry Ford College — though Zhou says there’s still plenty of room for more. “Basically, we can’t have enough help,” Zhou says. “It’s a very complex project, and we are up against some top engineering schools like the University of Alabama and Ohio State, who have years of experience doing competitions like this. But I think we have the makings of a strong team. They’re hard-working students and I’m very excited for them to have this opportunity.”

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Are you interested in joining ��-Dearborn’s Battery Workforce Challenge team? If so, please reach out to project manager Duncan Tyree or faculty advisor Associate Professor Xuan (Joe) Zhou. You can also learn more about the Battery Workforce Challenge on the Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions website. Other faculty members supporting the Battery Workforce Challenge team include: Professor Wencong Su, Lecturer Azeem Hafeez, Assistant Professor Jaerock Kwon, Associate Professor Maggie Wang, Assistant Professor Junho Hong, Associate Professor Samir Rawashdeh, Associate Professor Youngki Kim, Assistant Professor Lei Chen, Assistant Professor Zhen Hu and Assistant Professor Zheng Song. Story by Lou Blouin

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Mon, 01/29/2024 - 16:56

The national collegiate Battery Workforce Challenge competition is giving ��-Dearborn and Henry Ford College students a rare opportunity to train on real EV batteries and real vehicles, while preparing them for in-demand careers.

From left, Julian Summers, Duncan Tyree, Steve Su and Nicholas Wheelock are among the more than 20 ��-Dearborn students who've joined the Battery Workforce Challenge team. Photo by Emily Barrett-Adkins

��-Dearborn and the Department of Defense are teaming up to modernize the DoD’s engineering ecosystem

lblouin — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 17:42:16 +0000

��-Dearborn and the Department of Defense are teaming up to modernize the DoD’s engineering ecosystem lblouin Wed, 01/17/2024 - 12:42

The Department of Defense is in the midst of a big modernization push and is enlisting an interdisciplinary faculty team from ��-Dearborn to reimagine how it designs, tests and manufactures new systems. Led by Mechanical Engineering Professor Pravansu Mohanty, the 18-month, $3.5 million project will focus on helping the DoD adopt the iterative design-build strategies and secure cloud technologies that have become the gold standard in modern manufacturing. “The key challenge is that a lot of things at the DoD still happen in silos,” Mohanty explains. “But in today’s manufacturing environment, you want the design teams, and the testing and validation people and the people working in the field to be communicating with each other and sharing information so they can make continuous improvements.”

At the heart of the ��-Dearborn team’s reimagined DoD engineering ecosystem is an integrated approach to design, testing and manufacturing. We often imagine the process of creating something as progressing sequentially from an initial concept stage to a final building stage. But Mohanty says in a modern manufacturing environment, information is continuously flowing in many directions. For example, after an initial design for a physical component is created, that design can be subjected, through simulation, to various technical and material analyses. If any issues are discovered, the design team can make improvements before moving on to the next stage. Similarly, manufacturing processes, like 3D printing, can utilize sensors and machine learning algorithms, giving testing and validation teams opportunities to identify issues long before parts are ever tested in the field. Mohanty says manufacturing strategies like this yield time and cost savings, as well as higher quality products.

Mohanty's interdisciplinary team includes six other ��-Dearborn faculty and multiple graduate students, including Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chris Pannier (left) and graduate student Maximilian Ullrich. Photo by Emily Barrett-Adkins

Security is the other major focus for the ��-Dearborn team. Anytime you’re allowing information to flow more freely amongst people, especially if that involves cloud-based sharing and outside contractors, you’re introducing potential security risks. For the DoD, these are also national security risks. To protect against cybersecurity threats, Mohanty’s team and their collaborators are building the information-sharing ecosystems around secure cloud technologies.

In a design challenge model that will be familiar to many engineering students, the DoD initiative will be centered around a surrogate project: creating an optionally manned fighting vehicle. The ��-Dearborn team won’t actually be creating anything quite so flashy, but Mohanty says they will be working with real designs and manufacturing and testing actual components to ensure their design-build system can stand up to the rigors of the real world.

In addition to Mohanty, ��-Dearborn faculty involved in the project include:

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chris Pannier
Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Georges Ayoub
Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Zhen Hu
Associate Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Abdallah Chehade
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Xuan (Joe) Zhou
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Lei Chen

Additional industry and academic partners include the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technologies, the University of Maryland and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences.

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Story by Lou Blouin

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Wed, 01/17/2024 - 17:37

An interdisciplinary team led by Professor Pravansu Mohanty is helping the DoD adopt the design and data sharing strategies that have become the backbone of modern manufacturing.

Professor of Mechanical Engineering Pravansu Mohanty. Photo by Emily Barret-Adkins

Two ��-Dearborn students awarded prestigious Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

lblouin — Mon, 15 May 2023 16:03:34 +0000

Two ��-Dearborn students awarded prestigious Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship lblouin Mon, 05/15/2023 - 12:03

Back in 2019, the four doctoral programs in ��-Dearborn’s College of Engineering and Computer Science kicked off a formal partnership with the Rackham Graduate School at ��-Ann Arbor. The Rackham affiliation did more than just add some additional cachet. Brahim Medjahed, CECS Assistant Dean and our campus liaison with the Rackham Graduate School, says it’s helped us strengthen those Ph.D. programs in fundamental ways, including adding evidence-based strategies for effective mentoring and a curated lineup of professional development opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, it’s now a standard requirement that all doctoral students be fully funded with a graduate assistantship — a feature that’s designed to help students finish their degrees as quickly as possible, while their research and dissertation work is still relevant.

Graduate assistantships, which require doctoral students to have campus employment duties such as teaching courses, are a key part of making doctoral programs affordable. But teaching classes while conducting research, taking doctoral courses and working on a dissertation can obviously be a lot to handle. One thing that can be a big help: the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, a competitive program that provides a $36,084 stipend, plus doctoral candidacy tuition and fees, for especially promising doctoral students in their final year. This means they can forgo their regular instructional responsibilities and focus solely on their research and dissertation. “That last year is so crucial,” Medjahed says. “It’s when students start publishing research results, finish their dissertations and start looking for jobs. So the fellowship puts students in a much stronger position to launch their careers. And it’s also obviously a great thing for a resume because it’s a highly competitive and prestigious fellowship.”

The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship is traditionally awarded to around 100 doctoral students on the Ann Arbor campus. But this year, for the first time, two students from CECS’s doctoral programs were named to the list of fellows. Look at their work and it’s easy to see why Computer and Information Science student Nada Lachtar and Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering student Dania Ammar were given the nod. Both are working on high profile problems: Lachtar is developing broadly applicable, novel solutions to ransomware attacks, while Ammar is designing human-machine interfaces that will help pedestrians interact safely with autonomous vehicles. As doctoral students, both have published in high quality journals and presented at top conferences. And even with their busy schedules, both have found time to serve on university committees and mentor ��-Dearborn students coming up behind them.

Lachtar says she first developed an interest in ransomware when she was an undergraduate student in 2016, the year ransomware blossomed from a niche attack strategy to a major cybersecurity threat. At the time, Lachtar was looking into graduate programs and ended up connecting with ��-Dearborn Assistant Professor Anys Bacha, who was also working in this area. Over the past five years, they’ve tackled a broad range of ransomware related issues. One of Lachtar’s earliest projects was a machine learning threat detection system that was 99% effective at recognizing malware. Later, she developed operating system-level defenses that were capable of shutting down attacks and limiting damage. She’s also worked on strategies for detecting adversarial machine learning, a type of attack that actually uses machine learning to sidestep machine learning-based defenses.

Ammar’s research is exploring one of the more fascinating emerging challenges related to autonomous vehicles: How will pedestrians safely interact with cars when humans aren’t doing the driving? Ammar says we typically rely on visual signals, like eye contact, to negotiate who has the right of way, and absent a human driver, cars will presumably have to have some way of declaring their intentions. For example, through her research, Ammar has discovered that pedestrians tend to favor technologies that closely mimic their interactions with human drivers — say, a visual or auditory message, delivered from the car, that says “I see you! It’s safe to cross.” Ammar’s dissertation work is focused on resolving many such design complexities, including the incredibly murky territory of “trust calibration.” Essentially, she says, keeping traffic moving efficiently and keeping humans safe rely on pedestrians being both trusting of vehicles and sufficiently wary so they can adapt to surprises. Designing systems that encourage this “sweet spot” behavior will be just as key to making autonomous vehicles a reality as the core technology now being developed by automakers.

As someone who’s been key to building CECS’s doctoral education culture, including the affiliation with Rackham, Medjahed is proud to see students from the ��-Dearborn campus earning this recognition. “Both Dania and Nada are extremely deserving,” he says. “You look at what they’ve accomplished — the research maturity, the level of productivity and their engagement with the university — they’re everything you’d expect from the top Ph.D. candidates in top Ph.D. programs around the country.” Mike Solomon, dean of the Rackham Graduate School, also sees it as an important milestone for the Dearborn campus. “The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship is an important part of our school’s rich legacy,” Solomon says. “That legacy has been enhanced by the addition of Ph.D. programs at ��-Dearborn, which are now fully integrated with the graduate school. I am therefore very pleased to welcome this inaugural cohort of Dearborn Rackham Predoctoral Fellows, and I thank the many staff and faculty on both the Dearborn and Ann Arbor campuses who have worked to make this opportunity possible.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Computer and Information Science

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Mon, 05/15/2023 - 16:02

Nada Lachtar and Dania Ammar are the first ��-Dearborn doctoral students to be recognized with the competitive fellowship from one of the country’s premier graduate schools.

Nada Lachtar (left) and Dania Ammar were recently awarded the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship.

Two new CECS master’s programs to launch this fall

rudmehta — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:09:35 +0000

Two new CECS master’s programs to launch this fall rudmehta Wed, 11/30/2022 - 13:09

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Professor Sang-Hwan Kim won’t be surprised if ��-Dearborn soon becomes an epicenter for human-centered design—an emerging field focused on the intersections of technology and human experience.

The fact that his department is so stacked with faculty specializing in ergonomics and human factors (a more psychological cousin of ergonomics) is a great start. And come fall, the launch of a new Master of Science degree program in Human-Centered Design and Engineering will make the university one of the few places in the country—and the only in the region—to offer a degree that Kim says is in demand.

“The automotive companies, in particular, are hiring tons of people in this field as they focus on developing user experiences in their cars,” Kim said. “But here in southeast Michigan, there is no institute or university where students can get in-depth training in user interfaces or user experiences. Right now, companies are having to look well outside the region to fill those positions, so we think we can help open a new local talent pipeline.”

Kim’s colleague, Assistant Professor Feng Zhou, explained that the demand is reflective of a continuing evolution in our relationships to technology, which is becoming less about functions and more about experiences.

“Cars, for example, used to just be about moving from point A to point B, and so most of the engineering was focused on that kind of performance. But as we move to cars that do more of the driving for us, the design will be more about how cars can make you happy while you’re moving from point A to B.”

Human-centered design is all about how those new systems can be designed to be more efficient, effective and enjoyable—whether they’re in your car, phone or any other piece of technology. And that, Zhou said, can call on deep training in a variety of different fields.

Students in the new 31 credit-hour program can expect cross-college coursework in engineering, art and design, marketing, and even human psychology. And as far as engineering degrees go, it’s also a pretty non-technical one (as in, no advanced math skills required); so Zhou and Kim are hopeful the program will attract students from all kinds of undergraduate backgrounds.

Mechanical engineering master's degree student Safwan Ul Ferdous works on a low-cost humanoid robotic hand in Assistant Professor Yu Zheng's electrical engineering lab.

The new Master of Science in Engineering degree program in Robotics Engineering also is rooted in a burgeoning demand, and Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Yu Zheng said a lot of that energy is coming from students themselves.

“We started our undergraduate program in robotics in 2014; so now, we are starting to see graduates from that program who want to continue their studies. Plus, we often receive questions from students about whether we have a robotics master’s program or had plans to start one,” Zheng said.

The 30 credit-hour program gives students the chance to dig into several emerging robotics disciplines, including autonomous vehicles, drones and other flying robots, and the component systems that make them all work.

Zheng himself is excited to help launch a new research initiative into humanoid robots that are designed to function as human assistants. (The ones arriving on campus in the fall will even have faces and five-fingered hands.) That’s brand new technology for ��-Dearborn that will push students into one of the more complex and buzzworthy robotic platforms around today.

In fact, the fact that ��-Dearborn faculty are working on so many bleeding-edge projects in so many robotics disciplines was another big motivation for the new master’s program.

“One of the main challenges we’re facing now is finding students to work in our labs on all these projects,” Zheng said. “So we’re hoping the program attracts students with strong backgrounds in robotics—and those who want to continue building those skills.”

No doubt, the opportunities for cool research won’t be in short supply. Nor will the job opportunities, according to Zheng. As it is with human-centered design, demand for robotics expertise is growing across a broad range of industries, including many here in southeast Michigan.

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