Douglas C. Montgomery Distinguished Lecture Series

During February 2024 a report by the fast-track action subcommittee on critical and emerging technologies listed among others: Sensor Networks, Data Fusion, AI, and Machine Learning as critical and emerging technologies. From manufacturing to healthcare these technologies will assume a critical role for scientific advancement, national security, and economic development in the United States. These ideas will form the foundation for the talk and the focus will be on the speaker’s research journey covering the application of AI & ML in sensor-based monitoring, taking the audience through highlights of research from application of ANNs in the late 1980’s to sensor network signature management, and Welding defects analysis through Attention Networks in 2024. These research efforts are interdisciplinary combining Domain Knowledge, Computing, AI&ML, Statistics, and Physics. The focus of the talk will be on the tools and techniques used and their usefulness and insights for real-time inference from observed data.

Soundar Kumara’s research interests are in complex systems, network science, AI&ML in Manufacturing and Healthcare. He has worked as an advisor or co-advisor with 69 Ph.D., and 80 MS & M. Eng., students during his career. He is a Fellow of IISE, ASME, CIRP, and AAAS. He is the recipient of David Baker Distinguished Research Award from IISE, Excellence in Research Award from ASME Computers & Information Engineering (CIE) division and Listed among the 20 most influential academics in smart manufacturing by Society of Manufacturing Engineering. He has received the Outstanding Industrial Engineer (School of IE, Purdue), and Distinguished Alumnus (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras) Awards.