Dima Nazzal, a senior academic professional in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), has been awarded first place in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Innovation in Education Competition. Nazzal will be presented with the award on May 23, at the annual conference and expo in Seattle, Wash.

In addition to participating in the honors and awards banquet, Nazzal’s award will be published in the ISE magazine, as well as be featured on the IISE website.

The award is for developing an early design course, titled Cornerstone Design, which focuses on “framing the problem” without solving it. 

“The course lays out the foundation for design thinking using a project‐based learning approach, interactive sessions with instructors, and a goldmine of past capstone senior design projects that ISyE has kept for years organized in a database,” Nazzal explained. “That includes all the relevant data files, original team notes, deliverables, and code.”

Design aims to address the engineering design skill gaps by offering a learning environment that utilizes multiple past capstone senior design projects complemented with lessons on key engineering design and industrial engineering principles, Nazzal said of the study.

“Through multiple diverse projects, students develop the skill to structure the way they approach complex undefined problems that are fraught with data gaps, uncertainty and ambiguity in objectives, and conflicting priorities,” she said. “Students learn how to communicate the motivation effectively and succinctly for solving a problem and the scientific evidence supporting their design solution hypothesis.”

Nazzal has additional research that focuses on the control of discrete event logistics systems such as distribution systems, healthcare delivery systems, and manufacturing systems.