Alumni Spotlight

Desiree (Blais) Azzalina, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Faculty Snapshot: Simon Dao 

Part-time Lecturer & Industry Professional

Dr. Simon Dao, part-time lecturer and entrepreneur, teaches "Economic Decision Making" and "Engineering Project Management", two of the four core courses in the Engineering Management (EM) program.

As an experienced entrepreneur, Dao joins or founds very small start-up teams and invests his own money, if needed. "I think of it as being an entrepreneur who puts in time and sometimes the money," he says. By sharing real-world situations that are topical and fascinating, he keeps his students engaged in the classroom. Each week, he presents one major subject, underlined with fascinating real-world stories , which help students improve their understanding of the importance of a topic. According to Dao, the EM program is unique in the way that it allows students to be exposed to the complexities of the real world in the classroom. "We hope to give students insight they really can't get elsewhere in an organized and structured learning program," Dao says.

In response to describing the educational and real-world benefits for an EM student in learning from both an engineering perspective and a business perspective, Dao notes, "I can't begin to describe in such a way as to capture it all. Think of it like this: Few engineers possess the intuition to be great business people. Few business people possess the intuition to be great technology leaders. We hope we are training people to have that powerful intuition."

Dao received his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Among other ventures, he is co-founder and developer of the Baby Boost product line (now owned by KIS LLC Product Solutions), items containing a special fiber technology that greatly reduces the risk of developing childhood asthma and allergies. He joined the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University as adjunct faculty member in 2005.

Faculty Snapshot: Professor Emanuel Melachrinoudis 

Associate Chair and Director of Industrial Engineering

In addition to many other undergraduate and graduate courses in industrial engineering and operations research, Dr. Emanuel Melachrinoudis teaches "Deterministics Operations Research", one of the four core courses in the Engineering Management program.

Melachrinoudis' research interests focus on network optimization, multiple criteria decision making, facilities planning and location, vehicle routing, supply chain management and logistics and network reliability. He has 1451 citations in 68 publications per Google Scholar, 63 refereed journal publications (four under review), 9 book publications, and 47 reviewed/refereed proceedings papers. He served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI in 18 research grants and carried out several research projects with local agencies and industries. Examples of his publication topics include the location or relocation of manufacturing facilities and airports using multiple criteria optimization, the routing of hazardous transport vehicles, and the optimal location of service centers in a network to maximize network reliability. Of recent interest is the location of base stations in cellular radio communication systems, routing of base stations for prolonging wireless sensor network lifetime, and the distribution network design in supply chain management.

Melachrinoudis has talked at 66 conferences and events, nationwide and internationally, including INFORMS Beijing in June 2012 and IFORS Melbourne in July 2011, and has served as chairman for multiple conference sessions. He is a member of several societies, including the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS). He serves as project, thesis, and dissertation advisor for numerous MS and PhD students. He has received multiple honors and has participated in several committees across the college and university.

Melachrinoudis received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research ('80) and an M.B.A. ('76) from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He holds a five year Diploma in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He started at Northeastern University as an assistant professor in 1979 and became Director of Industrial Engineering and Associate Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in 2003.