Kamran Paynabar is the Fouts Family Early Career Professor and Associate Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Iran in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from The University of Michigan in 2012. He also holds an M.A. in Statistics from The University of Michigan. His research interests comprise both applied and methodological aspects of machine-learning and statistical modeling integrated with engineering principles. He is a recipient of the INFORMS Data Mining Best Student Paper Award, the Best Application Paper Award from IIE Transactions, the Best QSR refereed paper from INFORMS, and the Best Paper Award from POMS. He has been recognized with the Georgia Tech campus level 2014 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and the Provost Teaching and Learning Fellowship. He served as the chair of QSR of INFORMS, and the president of QCRE of IISE.

Dima Nazzal is a Principal Academic Professional in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. She is responsible for project-based learning in the Industrial Engineering undergraduate curriculum, including the capstone senior design course, and the cornerstone junior design course. She is also research director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she was Director of Research and Development at Fortna, Inc., an Engineering Design and Consulting company. 

Research: Her research focuses on modeling, design, and control of discrete event logistics systems, including healthcare delivery systems, manufacturing systems, and distribution systems. Her recent work has focused on election voting systems, higher education response to COVID-19, understanding and driving higher childhood vaccination rates in developing countries, modeling of collaborative robots in distribution systems; scheduling and dispatching policies in semiconductor manufacturing, and energy systems development. She has worked with companies, non-governmental organizations, and healthcare providers, including ExxonMobil, Emory University, Samsung, Emory University, Gates Foundation, and Walt Disney World. See here for relevant publications. 

Teaching: Dr. Nazzal enjoys teaching courses in manufacturing, warehousing, and facility logistics system design and operations, as well as advising senior design teams. She is the recipient of multiple teaching awards including the Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Outstanding Teacher Award in 2015, and the Most Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the University of Central Florida IIE Student Chapter in 2011. 

She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2006, her M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Central Florida, and her B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Jordan.

Melkote began at Tech in 1995 as an Assistant Professor. Prior to this, he was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he conducted research in Machining and Machine Tools Systems in the group led by the Late Professor Richard E. DeVor and Professor Shiv G. Kapoor

Leon McGinnis is a Professor Emeritus in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Dr. McGinnis's research focuses on fundamental representation issues in discrete event logistics systems, on performance assessment models, and on the development of integrated computational tools. He has been a leader in developing and administering industry-focused and interdisciplinary education and research programs at Georgia Tech. He helped establish the Material Handling Research Center in 1982 and managed one of five research programs over the next decade. He also helped establish the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems Program in 1983, which received a LEAD Award from ASME for excellence in graduate-level interdisciplinary manufacturing education, and served as Director from 1988 to 1998. As CIMS Director, he lead a team that competed for and won a $1 million TRP grant, resulting in the establishment of the Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute within the Manufacturing Research Center. In 1994, he led a team of Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering faculty to win over $2 million in grants from the W. M. Keck Foundation to create the Keck Virtual Factory Lab as a focal point for IE systems design and control research.

The Institute of Industrial Engineers has recognized Dr. McGinnis with the Outstanding Publication Award, the David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award, and the Fellow Award. He has given the Inyong Ham Lecture at Penn State, the Jones Lecture at Dartmouth, and the Schantz Lectures at Lehigh. 

Dr. McGinnis enjoys teaching students how to think like industrial engineers, particularly in developing and using mathematical and computational models to support design of facilities and control systems. 

He received his BS in IE from Auburn University, and MS and PhD in IE from North Carolina State University. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Georgia.

Regents' Professor and Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Metals Processing, Dave McDowell joined Georgia Tech in 1983 and holds a dual appointment in the GWW School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as Director of the Mechanical Properties Research Laboratory from 1992-2012. In 2012 he was named Founding Director of the Institute for Materials (IMaT), one of Georgia Tech's Interdisciplinary Research Institutes charged with fostering an innovation ecosystem for research and education. He has served as Executive Director of IMaT since 2013. McDowell's research focuses on nonlinear constitutive models for engineering materials, including cellular metallic materials, nonlinear and time dependent fracture mechanics, finite strain inelasticity and defect field mechanics, distributed damage evolution, constitutive relations and microstructure-sensitive computational approaches to deformation and damage of heterogeneous alloys, combined computational and experimental strategies for modeling high cycle fatigue in advanced engineering alloys, atomistic simulations of dislocation nucleation and mediation at grain boundaries, multiscale computational mechanics of materials ranging from atomistics to continuum, and systems-based computational materials design. A Fellow of SES, ASM International, ASME and AAM, McDowell is the recipient of the 1997 ASME Materials Division Nadai Award for career achievement and the 2008 Khan International Medal for lifelong contributions to the field of metal plasticity. McDowell currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals, and is co-Editor of the International Journal of Fatigue.

Dr. Mayor is a distinguished expert in thermal sciences, electro-mechanical machine design, and micro-manufacturing. As the inventor of the DwHX cooling technology for electric machines, he specializes in the research and development of advanced power electronics cooling, electric machine design, micro-power generation, and sustainable energy systems. Alongside his technical pursuits, Dr. Mayor has a rich entrepreneurial backdrop, having navigated product-oriented tech startups and led multiple advanced research and development programs. His expertise is sought in IP litigation, where he serves as a technical authority. 

He has presented keynotes and seminars on diverse topics, from micro-manufacturing and electric machines to energy systems. He teaches courses in mechanical engineering courses at Georgia Tech, including machine design, manufacturing processes, design thinking and internal combustion engines, including H2ICE, and has taught courses as a visiting lecturer in China, France, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. He has a substantial academic contribution with over 120 publications in leading archival journals and conferences and is a member of ASME and IEEE and SME. 

Dr. Mayor's commitment goes beyond teaching and research as he engages in service as the Secretary of the Faculty. He strives to build on the learnings from the pandemic to expand the resourcefulness, understanding, and trust in shared governance. Moreover, Dr. Mayor serves as the faculty advisor for the Student Competition Center, further highlighting his commitment to student mentoring and leadership development. He looks forward to implementing AI in a robust manner in institute learnings, as a core capability in education.

Jye-Chyi (JC) Lu is a professor in in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech (GT).

Dr. Lu is active in promoting research, education and extension-service programs with focus on engineering statistics and analytics areas. Dr. Lu received a Ph.D. in statistics from University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1988, and joined the statistics faculty of North Carolina State University, where he remained until 1999 when he joined GT-ISyE. He has 82 journal publications in engineering and statistics journals. Twenty seven Ph.D. students has graduated under his supervision.  His research has been supported by many NSF awards and industry grants. He serves as an associate editor (AE) for the Journal of Quality Technology and had served as AEs for Technometrics and IEEE Transactions on Reliability.  He is a Fellow in the American Statistical Association, and has been INFORMS Quality, Statistics and Reliability section chair.

Zhiqun Lin is currently Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on nanostructured functional materials (NanoFM). An extensive list of materials currently under investigation in his group includes polymer-based nanocomposites, block copolymers, polymer blends, conjugated polymers, quantum dots (rods, tetrapods, wires), magnetic nanocrystals, metallic nanocrystals, semiconductor metal oxide nanocrystals, ferroelectric nanocrystals, multiferroic nanocrystals, upconversion nanocrystals, thermoelectric nancrystals, core/shell nanoparticles (nanorods), hollow nanocrystals, Janus nanocrystals, nanopores, nanotubes, hierarchically structured and assembled materials, and semiconductor organic-inorganic nanohybrids.

The goal of his research is to understand the fundamentals of these nanostructured materials. His group intends to create these nanostructures in a precisely controllable manner and to exploit the structure-property relationships in the development of multifunctional materials for potential use in energy conversion (e.g., solar cells, photocatalysis, and hydrogen generation) and storage (e.g., batteries), electronics, optics, optoelectronics, magnetic materials and devices, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.

Tim Lieuwen is the executive vice president for research (EVPR) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In this role, he oversees the Institute’s $1.37 billion portfolio of research, economic development, and sponsored activities. This includes leadership of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Enterprise Innovation Institute, nine interdisciplinary research institutes (IRIs), and related research administrative support units.

In his 25-plus years at Georgia Tech, Lieuwen earned his master's and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering (1996 and 1999, respectively) and has held multiple leadership positions. He has been the executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) since 2012 and began serving as the interim chair of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering in 2023.

Lieuwen has received numerous honors and recognition for his work in clean energy systems and policy, national security, and regional economic development. Additionally, he has been awarded the titles of Regents’ Professor and the David S. Lewis, Jr. Chair in AE. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.