Body of Knowledge Governing Board 2021 - 2023
Fazleena Badurdeen
BoK Governing Board Chair,Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director, Online MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Kentucky; IISE Vice President, Technical Operations
Fazleena has nearly 20 years of engagement with IISE, serving in various capacities within the divisions, conferences, and other activities, and has been dedicated to identifying the industrial engineering community’s needs and helping develop activities of mutual benefit to both the institute and its members. Her research and teaching focus is on product design as well as
manufacturing systems/supply chains with an emphasis on enhancing sustainability. She is also a core faculty member of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing.
Azad Madni
Founder and CEO Intelligent Systems Technology Inc.
Dr. Azad Madni is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Dean’s Professor in USC’s Astronautical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments, and Executive Director of USC’s Systems Architecting and Engineering Program. He is the founder and CEO of
Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc., a hi-tech company that conducts R&D in complex systems engineering methods and processes. He has received numerous prestigious awards and honors from nine professional societies and is a Life Fellow/Fellow of seven professional societies including IEEE, AAAS, INCOSE and
AIAA. He received his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees in Engineering from UCLA.
Chris Masek
Industrial Engineer, Department of Veterans Affairs - Office of Healthcare Transformation
Chris joined Veterans Affairs in July of 2008. He has been involved in managing projects, teaching, and establishing teams in process improvement efforts. Some of his interests include optimization of healthcare systems, decision support systems, modeling systems, and the application of quality tools and techniques
to healthcare. Prior to that, Mr. Masek had worked in manufacturing in the automotive, telecommunications and rubber industries as an industrial engineer for 11 years. Chris is also involved in the Professional Engineering Exam committee with NCEES. Mr. Masek holds a license of Professional Industrial
Engineer in the State of Nebraska and is an American Society for Quality (ASQ) Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He earned a master of science degree in industrial engineering, as well as a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering from University of Nebraska.
Lourdes A. Medina
Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPRM).
Lourdes holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in IE from The Pennsylvania State University, and a BS in IE from UPRM. With eight years of service to IISE’s Manufacturing and Design (M&D) Division, Dr. Medina is currently the past president of M&D. Her prior service include appointments as media director, secretary, president-elect and president. Dr. Medina has also been track chair in the 2015 and 2016 IISE Annual Conferences for the Engineering Education 2015 and Manufacturing and Design tracks, respectively. Her work in research, teaching, and service includes the IDDEAS Research Group, teaching Process Automation and Medical Device Development courses, and coordinating the RealTimePC Outreach Initiative. In 2021, Dr. Medina was selected as part of the first cohort of Penn State’s 40 Under 40 Alumni Award. Other of her accomplishments include the 2016 IISE M&D Outstanding Service Award, 2016 CIAPR Emergent Leader Award, and 2014-2015 IE Outstanding Professor Award.
Soundar Kumara
Allen, E., and Allen, M., Pearce Professor of Industrial Engineering at Penn State
Has an affiliate appointment with the school of Information Sciences and Technology. His research interests are in Sensor based Manufacturing Process Monitoring, Data Science in Manufacturing and Healthcare, Graph Analytics and Large-Scale Complex Networks. He is a Fellow of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP),
American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), and American Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is among the most cited authors in IE with 11,500 Google Citations and a h-index of 44, and his Erdos number is 3. Sixty-one Ph.D. and 70 MS students graduated under his guidance. He has
pioneered nonlinear real-time sensor data analysis techniques for manufacturing process monitoring and diagnosis, and clustering of large-scale sensor networks. He teaches courses in AI and Data Analytics in Manufacturing. One of his papers in Physical Reviews-E is designated as a milestone paper for
2007 by PRE (25 papers, one for each year, were selected out of 50,000 published over 25 years from 1993 till 2018 in PRE).
Tiffany A. Sargent
Senior Principal Engineer and Cheif Technologist for Cloud and Enterprise Sales at Intel Corporation
As a recognized leader at Intel for the past 28 years, she has built a career solving engineering problems that drive business value throughout the company. She develops innovative approaches to solve multi-disciplinary engineering challenges that address both ecosystem inflection points and customer business problems. Her solutions cover the full spectrum of Complex Systems across Internet of Things, Machine to Machine (M2M), Cloud, Enterprise, and Distributed Analytics. Tiffany holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts and North Carolina State University.
Tiffany is a passionate community leader and volunteers her expertise across non-profits, academia, and government.
Dave Harry
CEO of Process Whisperer® Consultants LLC, Lean Six Sigma, Team Dynamics and Toyota Kata Consusltant
Dave Harry is CEO of Process Whisperer® Consultants LLC, a boutique process improvement consulting firm serving industry. As an independent Lean Six Sigma, Team Dynamics and Toyota Kata consultant, Dave has taught and lectured process improvement, project management and Toyota Kata classes throughout the US and internationally for over 20 years.
Dave’s leadership and industry teaching experience includes with Rolls-Royce Energy, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, KMPG Consulting, Training Modernization Group, the University of Tennessee and Simplilearn. He has also had a successful U.S. Navy career as a Naval Aviator, International Defense Cooperation Agreements Negotiator and U.S. Defense Attaché. He has resided overseas in Spain, India, and Sri Lanka. He holds Lean Six Sigma certifications from ASQ, Rolls-Royce plc, SSD Global Solutions, and Northrop Grumman and actively participates on boards and leadership positions with the IISE OpEx Division, ASQ Lean Enterprise Division, IISE Industrial Systems Engineers Body of Knowledge (BoK) Governing Board, Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) Society Advisory Board and the Project Management Office Global Institute (PMO-GI). Dave has presented at IISE, ASQ, IEOM, TapRooT and AQI Conferences for more than 15 years. Dave is a PMI certified PMP®, has Lean Bronze Certification (LBC) through the SME/AME/Shingo Institute Alliance and is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM®).
he has been awarded three master’s degrees, including a MSc Degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. Dave lives in Greeneville Tennessee, USA
Omar Ashour
Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College
Dr. Omar Ashour is an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College. Dr. Ashour received a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering/Manufacturing Engineering and an M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He received his M.Eng. degree in Industrial Engineering/Human Factors and Ergonomics and a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Dr. Ashour was the inaugural recipient of William and Wendy Korb Early Career Professorship in Industrial Engineering in 2016. Dr. Ashour’s research areas include data-driven decision-making, modeling and simulation, data analytics, immersive technologies, and process improvement. He contributed to research directed to improve design and engineering education.
Dr. Ashour currently serves as a Technical Vice President (TVP) on the Technical Operations Board (TOB) of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).