Industrial Innovation in the Era of AI
June 15-18 2025 ● University of Washington ● Seattle
Conference Honoree and Keynote: Roger Hoerl
Roger W. Hoerl is Brate-Peschel Professor of Statistics at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. Previously, he led the Applied Statistics Lab at GE Global Research. Hoerl has been named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Society for Quality, and has been elected to the International Statistical Institute and International Academy for Quality. He has received the Brumbaugh, Bisgaard, and Hunter Awards, as well as the Shewhart Medal, from the American Society for Quality, and the Founders Award and Deming Lectureship Award from the American Statistical Association. His introductory text Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, co-authored with Ronald Snee and now in its 3rd edition, was described as “…probably the most practical basic statistics textbook that has ever been written within a business context” by the journal Technometrics.
Plenary Speaker: Kamran Paynabar
Kamran Paynabar is the Fouts Family Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering and an M.A. in Statistics from the University of Michigan. His research interests encompass both methodological and applied aspects of machine learning and statistical modeling integrated with engineering applications, particularly in predictive modeling, system monitoring, control, and prognostics, and sequential sampling and optimization. His research is supported by organizations such as NSF, NIH, DOE, the Air Force, and industry leaders including Samsung, Ford, and Boeing. Professor Paynabar’s work has been recognized with best paper awards from INFORMS, IISE, ASA, and POMS. He has also received multiple teaching awards from Georgia Tech, IISE, and NAE. He currently serves as the Editor-Elect for Technometrics and has previously served as a Department Editor for IISE Transactions and as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Quality Technology. He has chaired the Quality and Reliability divisions of both IISE and INFORMS and has been honored as a Fellow of ASQ and an elected member of ISI. Additionally, he is a co-founder of ProcessMiner, a startup company specializing in AI/ML applications for quality improvement in continuous manufacturing.
Plenary Speaker: Jennifer Mullekom
After a 20-year career in industry, Dr. Jennifer Van Mullekom joined Virginia Tech in Fall 2016 as the Director of the Statistical Applications and Innovations Group (SAIG) where she is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Statistics. In addition to directing SAIG, she teaches collaboration skills and design of experiments to graduate students while serving as an active member of the global statistical practice community. Formerly, she was a Senior Consulting Statistician and Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt in DuPont's Applied Statistics Group, supporting the DuPont Protection Technologies business. At DuPont, she provided statistical leadership to the Tyvek® Medical Packaging Transition Project in the areas of product development, quality, commercialization, and regulatory. Her contributions to this project earned her a DuPont Engineering Excellence Award, one of the company’s highest honors. She continues to collaborate with DuPont on various projects to maintain and grow her skills as a professor of practice. Jen is active in professional societies, holding leadership roles in the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ). She is an inventor on two US Patents and has also worked at Lubrizol and Capital One. Dr. Van Mullekom is a regular participant at the Conference on Statistical Practice on topics such as communication, collaboration, leadership, and ethics. In 2024, Jen was honored with the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistical Consulting Mentoring Award for her role mentoring junior employees, colleagues, and students. She holds an MS and PhD in Statistics from Virginia Tech and a BS in Mathematics and a BS ED in Mathematics Education from Concord University.