Message from the Chair

Harold J. Steudel (33K JPG)

With the spring semester drawing to a close, it's fulfilling to reflect on the completion of another exciting and productive year in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. This newsletter highlights some faculty and students' recent achievements. I think that you will find great interest in the article about Professor Patti Brennan's work with Aurora Health Systems in Milwaukee to develop a computerized in-home patient care system. As a recognized leader in the area of medical informatics, Patti is very active in research and presentations on a global scale. Professor Stephen Robinson received a $4.2 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense to lead a five-year project to explore problems related to protecting critical national infrastructure. This large project involves a team of 11 researchers, including five from UW-Madison and our own Professors Vicki Bier, Pascale Carayon and Mary Vernon.

On the teaching frontier, I hope you will enjoy reading about Professors Harriet Black Nembhard's and Leyuan Shi's new class on financial engineering, as well as my first experiences teaching a class in quality engineering and quality management on the Internet as part of the Master of Engineering in Professional Practice (MEPP) program.

I am also pleased to report that Professor Don Ermer recently received the national Eugene L. Grant Medal for 2000 from the American Society for Quality for his outstanding leadership in developing and presenting a meritorious educational program in quality control.

Our students are excelling in a number of activities, too. In this issue, we tip our hats to the IE scholarship recipients, our graduates and the IE students who participated in Engineering EXPO 2001. I'm sure you'll also enjoy the article on Eric Charpentier, the IE student who competed with the Alpine Ski Team at the nationals meet.

In the last newsletter I reported on the plan for our own centralized home in the new "IE addition" to the Mechanical Engineering (ME) Building and the very generous gift from IE alumnus Jane Mandula to support two new laboratories. I am now delighted to report a $1.5 million pledge from alumnus John Holton to fund new facilities for the Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis (CHSRA) in the new building. CHSRA conducts research in the five major areas of quality assessment and improvement, long-term care, public health policy and program evaluation, consumer decision making, and patient education and support. Holton, who worked with Professor David Gustafson as a student, is now CEO of scheduling.com, an Internet-based business that concentrates on hospital-physician and physician-consumer connections and uses information systems to increase productivity and effectiveness of health care. We are all delighted with John's generous gift that will do so much to improve the research and educational process here in IE at UW-Madison.

I hope that you enjoy this newsletter, and as always, we welcome any comments or suggestions you have.

Harold J. Steudel
360 Mechanical Engineering Building
1513 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706-1572

Tel: 608/262-9927
Fax: 608/262-8454
E-mail: steudel@engr.wisc.edu