Center News

Cody Pennetti Named a Finalist in Society for Risk Analysis’ Student Merit Competition

Cody Pennetti, a Ph.D. student working with Engineering Systems and Environment professor James H. Lambert at the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, is a finalist in the Student Merit Competition organized by the Society for Risk Analysis’ Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group. The competition promotes excellence in risk analysis research for engineering and infrastructure management.

As a finalist, Cody submitted a video and will be prepared to present his research at the society’s annual meeting in December. The video explains his research on multiple objective risk analysis that aims to help decision-makers, community planners and transportation agencies design infrastructure for a future that includes the integration of autonomous vehicles. Watch the video to learn more about Pennetti's research.

Dan Andrews Presents at 87th Symposium of the Military Operations Research Society

Dan Andrews, a Ph.D. student at the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, presented at the Military Operations Research Society ’s 87th Symposium, “Advancing Analytics to Support National Security,” which was held June 17-20, 2019, at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Dan’s presentation addressed operational innovations and enterprise resilience through adoption of technologies and operational methods for container ports, mobile broadband networks for public safety, management of transportation corridors and smart-grid applications.

The mission of the Military Operations Research Society is to enhance the quality of analysis that informs national and homeland security decisions.

SAMSI Games, Decisions, Risk and Reliability Program kickoff

Ph.D. student Shravan Sreekumar participated in the kickoff of the Games, Decisions, Risk and Reliability (GDDR) SAMSI GDDR workshop of the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, SAMSI on August 5-9, 2019 in Durham, North Carolina, USA.” The GDDR is a year long program that plans a semester of research on game theory and adversarial risk analysis. 

Kelsey Hollenback Awarded a Department of Defense SMART Scholarship

Kelsey Hollenback, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, has been awarded a SMART Scholarship (Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation Scholarship) by the Department of Defense. She will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering Research and Development Center on its Risk and Decision Science Team. Kelsey’s scholarship will cover tuition and fees and includes an allowance for books, supplies and an annual stipend.

The SMART Scholarship is designed to enhance the Department of Defense's workforce by supporting talented and innovative scientists, engineers and researchers while in school and through summer internships. Upon degree completion, SMART scholars work in a civilian position for his or her sponsoring facility.

Lambert Gives Keynote at Conferences in U.S. and China

Center Director and Engineering Systems and Environment Professor James H. Lambert presented research related to advances in enterprise systems risk and resilience at two major conferences in summer 2019.

He presented “Risk and Resilience Management of Enterprises and Systems” at the Society for Risk Analysis Second Conference on Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis and Security in Buffalo/Niagara Falls, N.Y. in August. He also spoke at the biennial International Conference on Cybernetics, known as CYBCONF, organized by the University of Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing in July.

CYBCONF-2019 was sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and supported by the institute’s Technical Committees on Social and Economic Security and Systems Council Analytics and Risk Technical Committee. The conference provided a premier international forum for researchers and practitioners to report innovations, summarize the state-of-the-art, and exchange ideas and advances in all aspects of cybernetics.

Both talks addressed risk and resilience as quantifiable influences of disruptions to systemic priorities applied to systems such as maritime port operations, charging of electric-vehicle fleets and coastal communities with sea rise.

New Metrics Published for Springer Journal “Environment Systems & Decisions”

Google Scholar recently published their annual journal metrics which measure the impact of scholarly journals. The Springer journal “Environment Systems & Decisions” (https://www.springer.com/environment/journal/10669) received an h5-index of 21. This year’s score shows a continued upward trend. The scores from the previous three years have been 18, 16, and 14.

Dr. James H. Lambert, Director of the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, and Dr. Igor Linkov, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, both serve as Editor in Chief. The Managing Editor is Dr. Zachary A. Collier, President of Collier Research Systems and Fellow of the Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems.

According to Google Scholar, the h5-index is defined as “the largest number h such that h articles published in 2014-2018 have at least h citations each.” The h5-index considers papers published in a journal over the last 5 years. 

Hollenback Completes NSF CyberTraining Workshop

PhD candidate Kelsey Hollenback completed the CyberCarpentry: Data Life-Cycle Training with the Datanet Federation Consortium Workshop funded by the National Science Foundation on July 15-26, 2019 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The CyberTraining program of the National Science Foundation sources and educates the national scientific workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure that enables cutting-edge science and engineering research.

Emerging cyber-infrastructure solutions necessitate addressing the needs of domain scientists from multiple angles, including data access, metadata management, large-scale analytics and workflows, data and application discovery and sharing, and data preservation. This two-week workshop cybercarpentry.web.unc.edu provided doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers with an overview of best data management practices, data science tools, and concrete steps and methods for performing end-to-end data intensive computing and data life-cycle management. Participants applied aspects of the data-intensive computing environment through collaborative research among domain scientists and computer and information scientists.

Lambert Chairs Fifth World Congress on Risk

Professor James H. Lambert, who directs Engineering Systems and Environment’s Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, chaired the 2019 Fifth World Congress on Risk. The Congress is organized by the Society for Risk Analysis in partnership with the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Africa Biennial Conference to grow innovation and knowledge across risk analysis and management communities. It brought together government, industry and academic scientists and experts from a variety of disciplines to exchange ideas and research related to this year’s theme, “Development and Resilience.”

As hosts, the partnering organizations continue a tradition of providing global leadership in risk analysis and management science and policy. Participants in the Congress exchanged academic research, innovations, and practical knowledge and experience to expand the frontiers of risk analysis. Combining their interdisciplinary expertise, the participants aim to leverage their insights and grow capabilities to address world societal challenges involving health, safety, environment, engineering and infrastructure, enterprise, emerging technologies, regulation, communication, security, policy and finance. Read more about the program here.

UVA’s Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems was represented at the Fifth World Congress on Risk in by Professors James H. Lambert, Marwan Alsultan, and Ayedh Almutairi and Alexander Ganin, Zachary Collier and Heimir Thorisson.

CCALS and UVa Tackling Logistics Problems

Virginia has been identified as one of the most promising logistics hubs on the East Coast. The public-private partnership (of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Logistics) utilizes the research expertise of UVa and a consortium of state universities to tackle logistical issues with Virginia’s highway, rail and port assets. 

http://www.virginiabusiness.com/news/article/tackling-problems

Center Founder, Yacov Y. Haimes retires

During his more than 30 years at the University of Virginia School of Engineering, Yacov Haimes forged an international reputation for his insights into the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of large interdependent and interconnected systems. Haimes founded the Center in 1987 and developed into an important contributor to the understanding of engineering risk and resilence. His many accomplishments to the University were covered in a story by UVA Engineering.