News Briefs

Mortar Board Faculty Award and continued his research in data mining and machine learning. He submitted two journal papers on imbalanced classification approaches and applications and both have been reviewed and accepted for publication in 2022.

Jae Kim, PhD, chair and associate professor of industrial and systems engineering, stepped into his new role as department chair in Fall 2022.

Jennifer Olsen, PhD, assistant professor of computer science, was instrumental in the launch of the new humancomputer interaction concentration now offered within the computer science degree program. She also served as the keynote speaker for the "Reimagining and redesigning digital learning and teaching in the post-pandemic world" ForBiLD International KickOff-Symposium at the University of Duisburg-Essen in the summer of 2022.

Leonard Perry, PhD, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering, continues to serve as the faculty lead and completed the fifth cohort of Industry Scholars. In his Lean Six Sigma Course (ISyE 335), students collaborated with facilities management to apply concepts learned in their classroom on 10 process-improvement projects. Ultimately, all of the project teams came together to share their best practices to make their processes more efficient.

All USD Engineering Programs are ABET Accredited

The University of San Diego's BS/BA in Engineering degree program — housed within the Integrated Engineering department at the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering — is the latest program to join the school’s accredited engineering programs, including electrical engineering, industrial and systems engineering and mechanical engineering. With this noteworthy achievement taking effect for the 2021-2022 accreditation cycle criteria, all undergraduate engineering degrees offered at the University of San Diego are now ABET accredited.

Fall 2022 New Hires

The Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering successfully onboarded a cluster hire of four tenure-track faculty members who are working in support of USD's vision as teacher-scholars to develop the next generation of Changemaking Engineers. We are excited to introduce our newest engineering faculty members: Paulina Diaz-Montiel, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; Marissa Forbes, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering; Vahraz Honary, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering; and Nadieh Moghadam, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering.

Chandra Family Endowed Scholarship

We are extremely grateful to Ravi and Suman Chandra for establishing the Chandra Family Endowed Scholarship to support undergraduate women students studying computer science at USD, with a preference for African-American and/or Latina women. The Chandra family has committed to $125,000 in funding, to be matched by USD’s Horizon Project. Ravi and Suman are the parents of Surya Chandra, a current undergraduate student at USD, and the late Nila Chandra. As a senior VP at Cisco, Ravi recognizes the importance of recruiting diverse women to the field of computer science.

NASA Astronaut Matthew Dominick ’05

MATTHEW PIECHALAK In his first official visit back to his alma mater, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick '05 (EE) was the special guest of Toreros in Space, a homecoming event hosted by the ShileyMarcos School of Engineering that featured a meet-and-greet brunch and a live one-on-one interview with Dean Chell Roberts, PhD. Dominick also made a halftime appearance at the homecoming football game with USD President James T. Harris III, DEd.