IMSE News 2024

Letter from the chair

Dear IE alumni and friends,

Walls are taped and mudded. Doors have frames. The new building is taking shape in exciting ways with the move in date now less than a year away.

Fun Fact: Danelda Allen, an IE alum, was assigned construction manager of the building as her final large project before retirement from Iowa State’s Facilities Planning and Management.

Industrial engineering students continue to find and create jobs in a variety of industries. The broad range of IE graduate job opportunities remains one of the department’s greatest strengths.

One of our newest faculty, Dr. Jundi Liu, hit the ground running with research on human trust/behavior with AGVs in the workplace. His graduate student’s (Mobina Amrollahi) poster won this spring’s graduate research poster competition.

Familiar to many of you, Leslie Potter continues to excel in teaching as well as maintain meaningful IE alumni relationships well past graduation.

Thank you to our generous alumni who have and continue to make the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering building come alive.

We love sharing department and alumni news. We also love following your continued journeys of excellence.

So much to celebrate and be thankful for! Go Cyclones!

Sarah Ryan
C.G. “Turk” and Joyce A. Therkildsen Department Chair and Professor

Building in progress: Career comes full-circle for industrial engineering alum

For Danelda Allen (B.S. ’88, industrial engineering), being assigned construction manager of the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building project on campus is a full-circle engineering moment.

When she moved to Ames in the late 70s, a career in engineering wasn’t even a consideration. It was becoming clear to her, however, her job as a secretary in Des Moines wasn’t where she wanted to be long term. Looking for something different, Allen enrolled as an adult student in classes at DMACC.

It was her physics professor who introduced the idea of studying engineering. At his persistent prompting and with additional encouragement from other great mentors and teachers at DMACC, Allen enrolled as an industrial engineering (IE) major at Iowa State University (ISU) in 1984.

Why industrial engineering? For Allen, it was the variety of potential jobs available to an IE graduate.

“I could paint with such a broad brush with an industrial engineering degree,” she says.

Allen models the varied career paths available to IE majors. Her first job was at 3M in process engineering. She later moved into a project engineering job at Burke Corporation, a subsidiary of Hormel Corporation.

There have been a few other jobs since in ethanol processing and the biopharmaceutical industry, but eventually all roads led to Allen’s current position as construction manager at Iowa State University. Seven years since her beginning at Iowa State, she is nearing retirement. Having her last large project assignment be the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building feels significant.

“College and universities have a higher calling,” says Allen. “We are giving back to students and our state in a meaningful way.”

For Allen, being a part of the new department home for current and future IE graduates is a perfect, high note end to a rewarding IE career.

“I look forward to driving by the new building and knowing I had a part in it,” she says.

Welcome, new faculty and staff!

From Cyclone Nation to Magic Kingdom

For Allie (Harris) Millikan (B.S. ’19, industrial engineering; concurrent MBA ’19), the industrial engineering (IE) road led from Cyclone Nation to Magic Kingdom.

Even though she grew up in a family of industrial engineers, she wasn’t sold on pursuing it for herself. Hearing “Industrial engineers can work at Disney” changed her mind.

“I have such incredible memories from our family Disney trips growing up. I couldn’t imagine a more magical place to work,” she says.

Almost ten years later, she has her Walt Disney World dream job.

While the job looks different every day, the primary focus is optimizing the Guest experience. “My goal is to make sure our Guests can have the best day possible when they visit the Magic Kingdom,” says Millikan.

At Disney, the industrial engineering department operates as internal consultants supporting all lines of business in the company: theme parks, resorts, cruise lines and distribution centers for merchandise, food and beverage, and general supplies.

“IEs have the opportunity to rotate and grow within the IE department, supporting many of these lines of business as they go,” she says.

In her first full-time job post-graduation, Millikan worked at Disney as an associate industrial engineer supporting distribution centers, providing merchandise, food and beverage, and general supplies to all four parks, the resorts and the cruise line. When promoted to industrial engineer, she supported the food and beverage operation for two of the four parks.

Her move to Magic Kingdom as senior industrial engineer happened two and a half years ago, and earlier this year, she became industrial engineering project manager of Park Operations.

Millikan believes Iowa State and the IMSE Department played an important role in her current success. While going to school, Millikan had six internships at four companies, spent a full semester studying abroad, took two spring break trips abroad and was a campus tour guide, active WiSE member, member of the Greek community and in multiple other clubs and organizations.

“Every single class, internship, trip, and club helped shape me into the industrial engineer I am today, and I’m thankful I was given the freedom and support from the IMSE Department to not just become another industrial engineer, but to become the industrial engineer I wanted to be,” she says.

Millikan’s most recent magic making? She supported logistics for the opening of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, an exciting new water ride with a 50-foot plunge, that opened at the end of June. Last year, she did the same for the TRON Lightcycle Run – “a high-speed adventure, racing against the Grid’s most menacing Programs” and one of the fastest Disney coasters in the world.

“Every day when I walk into work I get to see a castle, and I regularly hear parades and fireworks from my office. It’s surreal to remind myself this is my job,” says Millikan. “Getting to see the impact our work has on our Guests is the most rewarding part of the job for me.”

At the end of May this year, she married John “Jack” Millikan (B.S. ’19 industrial engineering, concurrent MBA ’19), adding one more to a family of industrial engineering graduates.

Staying connected is the solution

Making connections and staying connected is important to Leslie Potter (B.S. ’91, industrial engineering), Distinguished Teaching Professor, whether it’s with potential industrial engineering (IE) students, current students or alums.

“I don’t think everyone should be an industrial engineer, but I think everyone should know about it before they decide on a career,” says Potter.

Potter worked alongside IMSE colleagues and undergraduate and graduate students to coordinate volunteer outreach with FIRST LEGO League, 4H State Science Fair, Girl Scouts, LegaCy Camp (ISU Alumni Association) and RISE with WiSE on campus this year.

Many of these on-campus events for young people in early stages of their science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning and discovery involved IE educational sessions and lab tours.

“My goal is to reach as many K-12 students as early and as often as I can to help them understand IE,” says Potter. Potter, in her 24th year at Iowa State, also teaches IE 1010: Industrial Engineering Profession, IE 1480: Information Engineering and IE 2220: Design & Analysis Methods for System Improvements. Former students often come back to campus to share their experiences in Potter’s classes.

“I am so grateful for all IE alumni who say yes, without hesitation, to participating in my classes when I ask them,” says Potter.

Blake Clark (B.S. ’22/M.S. ’23, industrial engineering), who works for Chevron Renewable Energy Group, recently helped her teach 19 K-5th grade educators about industrial engineering in the energy sector, giving teachers in attendance real-life examples to use in their elementary classrooms.

Clark considers Potter to be one of his most influential mentors at Iowa State. A game day jersey he signed for Potter during his ISU football playing days reads, “Thank you for inspiring the next generation of engineers! Go Cyclone IEs ~ Blake Clark #10”.

For Potter, this is the highest compliment.

“If I can help one student, or one alumnus, or one community member, I have accomplished something,” says Potter.

Trusting the robot in the workplace

Modern manufacturing is seeing rapid changes in the workplace. One change is integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated technologies like Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) into operational processes.

Jundi Liu, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, graduate student Mobina Amrollahi, and undergraduate research assistant Rindirisia Wangira are actively conducting AGV/human trust laboratory studies using a virtual reality apparatus for human-robot interaction research.

Trust plays a crucial role in human-autonomy interaction, acting as a cognitive mediator influencing human behavior during these interactions.

Use of AGVs offers increased flexibility, better space utilization, improved factory floor safety, reduced overall operating cost and more accessible interfacing with other automated systems for manufacturers. Variability in human trust, however, plays a part in optimizing AGV effectiveness.

For workers in the manufacturing environment who are more cautious, gaps in efficiency arise as they intentionally slow their path to let the AGV pass in front of them. Insufficient trust, or undertrust, can result in underutilization of autonomous systems.

Conversely, workers with a higher risk tolerance will speed up to try and get in front of or beat the AGV path. Excessive trust, or overtrust, can lead to misuse or over-reliance on autonomy, potentially compromising safety during interactions.

Liu and his team hope to bridge the gap in research supporting development of an adaptive framework accounting for human trust in the context of human-AGV interaction within the manufacturing environment.

By formulating computational models to predict workers’ trust in large manufacturing sites, researchers hope to develop an adaptive human-in-the-loop framework to dynamically control and plan the paths of AGVs.

Successfully calibrating AGV technology in alignment with human trust, will help AGVs be seen as cooperative partners that aid human workers rather than intrusive elements.

“My hope is to make AGV integration into manufacturing plants a smoother process,” says Liu.

Industrial engineering outstanding seniors

URA Symposium

Capstone Projects

Michael Dorneich named Morrill Professor

Michael Dorneich, Joseph Walkup Professor of Engineering and professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering has been named Morrill Professor.

The Morrill Professorship is a university award recognizing faculty members for their national and international reputation of demonstrated outstanding success in teaching and learning in undergraduate, graduate and/or extension/outreach programs.

Dorneich is a distinguished leader in creating high-tech adaptive systems helping people perform in complex and often stressful aviation, military, robotic and space environments. In addition to his research in the department, Dorneich contributes his unique expertise in human-machine systems to interdisciplinary Iowa State programs, including the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) graduate degree program, the VRAC and the Game2Work research initiative.

He is committed to offering students engaging, hands-on research opportunities in his Adaptive Cognitive Systems Lab. Dorneich has served as a research mentor for more than 70 undergraduate research assistants and as major advisor or committee member for over 80 graduate students.

Dorneich teaches IE 3610: Statistical Quality Assurance, IE 4720: Design and Evaluation of Human-Computer Interaction, IE 5760: Human Factors in Product Design and IE 6720: Human Factors in Automation Design.

“Michael Dorneich has been a campus leader in team-based learning while making continuous improvements to our core course in Statistical Quality Assurance. We are fortunate to have him on our faculty,” says Sarah Ryan, C.G. “Turk” and Joyce A. Therkildsen Department Chair and Professor.

Dorneich will be recognized as a Morrill Professor throughout his tenure at Iowa State.

Department Awards