What do I do?

Today was a good example of what I do (besides teach class): First I participated in a Ph.D. dissertation defense for a student in our reliability engineering graduate program. That lasted a couple of hours.

Then I met with Dan Fitzgerald, who is working at Black & Decker and on his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and discussed his progress on his research (he was on campus to give a guest lecture on design for the environment in ENME 472, our senior capstone design course).

After that I met with three QUEST students on a team in the BMGT/ENES 490H course. I am the team's faculty advisor. The students are working with Lockheed Martin on a spreadsheet tool for evaluating the financial aspects of facility improvements that reduce energy and water consumption.

After eating lunch, I drove across campus to the Van Munching Building give a guest lecture in BMGT/ENES 190H, another core course in the QUEST program. My lecture was on DFX (Design for X). I had some Powerpoint slides and had the students do an in-class exercise on DFX related to their project (which involves designing a product, software, or service).

Then I drove to the University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore to meet with faculty and hospital managers about using operations research to help them improve their processes. That was over by 4:30 p.m. When I left traffic was bad and various roads were closed, so it took longer than normal to get home. (Fortunately I was not trying to go north from Baltimore; a big accident earlier in the day completely closed I-95 in that direction for most of the afternoon.)