Education

Courses

IE 305 Engineering Economic Analysis

IE 510 Network Analysis

IE 513 Analysis of Stochastic Systems

IE 613 Stochastic Production Systems

Related Activities

Professor Ryan pioneered the use of Engineering Learning Portal for Problem Solving to engage engineering economy students in a complex, ill-structured problem solving experiences. Developed by a team in IMSE, cognitive psychology and education, the Portal structures the problem solving process while collecting information on students' metacognition and progress. Faculty in physics, biology and horticulture are also using the Portal at ISU.

With support from a Miller Faculty Fellowship, the team won an award for Best Paper in Engineering Economy for "Student Selection of Information Relevant to Solving Ill-Structured Engineering Economic Decision Problems" in the Proceedings of the 2007 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference.

Sarah Ryan

Associate Professor

Office: 3014 Black Engineering
Email: smryaniastate.edu
Personal Web Page: www.public.iastate.edu/~smryan/
Tel: 515.294.4347
Fax: 515.294.3524

Research Description

Sarah Ryan's research examines the planning and operation of manufacturing and service systems under uncertainty. Currently, she co-directs the IMSE department's Environmentally Sustainable Engineering initiative and conducts research on capacity planning and pricing in closed loop supply chains with remanufacturing. Under an AT&T Industrial Ecology Faculty Fellowship, she is studying the value of product condition information to providers of product-based services. She is developing stochastic optimization models for bulk energy transportation networks and asset management in electric transmission networks in multidisciplinary projects. Her work on capacity expansion and resource allocation was initiated under a National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) award.

Working Papers

Marathe, R. R. and S. M. Ryan, 2006. Capacity expansion under a service level constraint for uncertain demand with lead time.

Vorasayan, J. and S. M. Ryan, 2006. A General queuing network model to optimize refurbishing policies for returned products.

Selected Recent Publications

Serrato, M., S. M. Ryan, and J. Gaytan, 2006. "A Markov decision model to evaluate outsourcing in reverse logistics." International Journal of Production Research 45 (18&19), 4289-4315 (2007).

Quelhas, A., E. Gil, J. D. McCalley and S. M. Ryan, 2007. A multiperiod generalized network flow model of the U.S. integrated energy system, part I - model description. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 22(2) 829-836.

J. D. McCalley, V. G. Honavar, S. M. Ryan, W. Q. Meeker, R. A. Roberts, D. Qiao, and Y. Li, 2006. Auto-steered information-dicision processes for electric system asset management. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3993, 440-447.

Vorasayan, J. and S. M. Ryan, 2006. Optimal price and quantity of refurbished products. Production and Operations Management 15(3), 369-383 (Feature Issue on Closed Loop Supply Chains).