CEE Seminar – Data Analytics and System Optimization in Sustainability

Dr. Guiping Hu

Department Head in the Department of Sustainability,

Rochester Institute of Technology

Abstract: Sustainability requires harmonic interactions among human, social, economic, and environmental systems, which is challenging yet inevitable for humanity to survive and thrive in the long term. As a pivotal approach to addressing challenges in achieving sustainability, system analysis, design, and optimization play an increasingly important role, especially as the systems become ever diverse and dynamic. Meanwhile, as large volumes of data become available and accessible, machine learning and data analytics are essential for the integration and implementation of decision support tools. In this seminar, Dr. Hu will give an overview of her research portfolio in system design and decision support tool development in relation to sustainability. Multiple applications will be introduced, including sustainable supply chain design, renewable energy production, sustainable manufacturing, and sustainable agriculture. Machine learning methods and analytics tools used in these applications will also be presented. Finally, challenges and opportunities for future research in this area will be discussed, which are motivated by the gap between systems analytics theory and sustainability applications.

Bio: Dr. Guiping Hu is the Department Head in the Department of Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research has focused on operations research and data analytics with applications in bioinformatics, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy systems, and sustainable supply chain design. Dr. Hu’s research has been supported by NSF, USDA, DOE, and DOD with over $11M funding. She received the Mid-Career Research Award and has been recognized as a Plant Sciences Institute Scholar at Iowa State University. She has published over 80 journal articles and 40 conference proceedings. In addition, Dr. Hu is active in serving the profession of industrial engineering, including as current president of the Operations Research division and past president of the Engineering Economy division in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), and as the vice chair of the Service Science section in the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).