The Institute consists of a core team of IEMS individuals who facilitate the planning and prioritization of program activities, and enable and coordinate the network of partners and stakeholders who participate in Institute research and programs. Overall, the Institute is the combination of collaborative faculty, staff, partners, and students who collectively are conducting research or building service products at any given time.
The intent is to conduct research and service work across the many disciplines that make up quality management and engineering, and to allow distinct colleges and departments to continue to do their own disciplinary work. The Institute is not intended to usurp any existing or forthcoming research in any single existing department or college.
Directors
Ahmad K. Elshennawy is Professor and Executive Director of the UCF Quality Institute in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida (UCF). Dr. Elshennawy combines over 30 years of international experience with exemplary academic record in the areas of quality management and strategic improvement, as a researcher, academician and a consultant in the United States and different parts of the world.
Dr. Elshennawy received a BS and MS degrees in Production Engineering from Alexandria University and M.Eng. & Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Penn State University. His teaching and research areas of expertise include Quality and Reliability Engineering, Quality Systems and Management, Six Sigma Quality/Lean Six Sigma, Statistical Process Control, Lean Service, and Business and process Performance Improvement and Management.
Elshennawy is a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Senior Member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He is an ASQ Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) and a Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) and is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Dr. Elshennawy has served on the Editorial Review Board of Quality Press of the American Society for Quality and currently serves on the Editorial Board of Quality Progress and is a Senior Editor for the Journal of management and Engineering Integration.
Richard Biehl received M.S. in Educational Change & Technology Innovation and Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences in 2008 form Walden University in Minneapolis Minnesota.
He is currently an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, and Co-Director of the UCF Quality Institute, University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA. His areas of research and teaching interests include systems and quality engineering, healthcare systems and informatics. He is an ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) and Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE).
He has many years of experience in information technology and quality, designing and building data warehouses, consulting, instructing, and mentoring independently for the past 30 years. He taught and mentored Six Sigma projects as Black Belt for over 12 years, published expert in quality management, data modeling, and process analysis disciplines, and an author of numerous data, process, architecture, and quality course curriculums.
Dr. Biehl is a member of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineering (IISE), International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), American Society for Quality (ASQ), Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Project Management Institute (PMI), and IEEE Computer Society.
Dr. Luis Rabelo received the BS in Electro-Mechanical Engineer from the Technological University of Panama in 1983, an MS in Electrical Engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1987 Master’s and Doctorate in Engineering Management from the University of Missouri. He was a Postdoc at the University of Missouri in Nuclear Engineering. Dr. Rabelo received a dual MS in Systems and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Rabelo has worked for the Advanced Technology Group (Goodrich) and Honeywell Laboratories. Dr. Rabelo was a NASA Fellow from 2002 to 2005, and a Project Manager at NASA from 2009 to 2011. He is currently Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Systems Department at UCF. Dr. Rabelo is also the Undergraduate Coordinator. He has written more than 300 articles, a book in Artificial Intelligence, and an upcoming book in Engineering Analytics.
He has been the principal advisor for 39 Master’s students and 29 PhDs. He received the award for the Best Scientific Article of the Year 2004 from the Society of Automotive Engineers, received the distinction “ONE NASA” in 2006. He was the recipient of the Fulbright Distinction in 2008. In November 2008, he received the honor of the Technological University of Panama (UTP) of being the 2008 Distinguished Alumni. In 2011, he was the Henaac Award Winner in Education. In 2013 and 2018, he received the Forest R. McFarland Award from the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE). Lately, he received the SAE Russell S. Springer Award for his article on the modeling of space operations systems in 2017.
Students
- Ashley Vezina-Johnson
- Quality by Design in Pharmaceutical Industry
- Thomas Jones
- Quality 4.0 and Analytics
- Blaine Lorimer
- Statistical Process Control
- Bandar Alzahrani
- Quality 4.0 Challenges and Implementation in International Education Programs
- Anis Nizamuddin
- Managing Functional Project Operations in a Multi-Project Manufacturing Environments
- Ryan Rust
- Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages
- Corey Gellis
- Assessment of Leadership Styles and Lean Six Sigma Effectiveness
- Fiorella Yanovich Velasquez
- Managing Healthcare Quality in South American Healthcare Organizations
Alumni
- Dr. Sandra Furterer
- Chair, Department of Engineering Management, Systems & Technology, University of Dayton, Ohio, USA
- Jodie Giambarberee
- Quality Analyst at Advent Health, Orlando, Florida, USA
- Dr. Hani Aburas
- Former Mayor, Jeddah, and Professor, King Abdul Aziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
- Dr. Adam Maamoun
- Quality Assurance Engineering Manager, Intelligence & Security, BAE Systems, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, USA
- Dr. Haitham Bahaitham
- Associate Dean, King AbdulAziz University, Sabbegh, Saudi Arabia
- Dr. Murad Andejany
- Chair, Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Jeddah and Chief Executive Officer at Investment Fund, University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
- Dr. Abdulrahman Albar
- Assistant Professor at Jazan University & Development and Consultant in Private Sector, Saudi Arabia
- Dr. Ana Fereras
- Senior Program Officer, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, DC, USA
- Dr. Mohammed Alomairy
- Executive General Manager of Business Excellence at Alinma Bank Saudi Arabia