 It's my pleasure to introduce my colleague Barrett Caldwell, who's the interim head for industrial engineering to introduce our next associate professor. Barrett? And so the next associate professor is actually on this slide. Can you find them? Oh, no, too late. Okay. Yeah, it's quite all right. I'm supposed to do this as a tag team with John Sutherland, the head of Tripoli. He'll be here. And he'll be here real soon, I promise. I also run into the problem that if I took the time to do a full introduction of Dr. Kai, she would run out of time to actually present. So I'm going to try to go through this fairly quickly and not talk about all the wonderful things that you've been doing. So Professor Wakai is an associate professor at Purdue University with a joint appointment in the School of Industrial Engineering and environmental and ecological engineering. She received her PhDs from the University of Michigan in 2015, and her research focuses on systematically evaluating the environmental impacts of engineering technologies. She's won a number of national and international academic awards, including the prestigious NSF Career Award. And her research is also making policy, industry, and society impacts informing the decisions of the City of Chicago, the Indiana Department of Transportation, Ford Motor Company, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to help develop more sustainable shared transportation systems. You're now seeing what I mean about doing all of this. She collaborates across disciplines, as we just saw, including helping food scientists and nutritionists to build models to study the life cycle environmental impacts of emerging food technologies, such as nano-packaging and nutrition-enhanced eggs. She is working on projects under development by the United Nations Environment Program, and she is co-chair of the Sustainable Urban System Section for the International Society of Industrial Ecology and the Associate Editor for the Journal of Cleaner Production and a Guest Editor for Transportation Research, Part D, Transport and Environment. And we were just talking recently about this wonderful idea that she has for updating engineering economics education. So I'm only confused about when you actually go home and sleep. So at this point, I will introduce Professor Lockhart. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Barrett. Thank you, everyone. I'm very humbled to be here today and share with you a little bit about my journey to Purdue and also what we do at my research group. So I was born in Kunming, Yunnan province in China, which is southwestern city in China. It's high plateau area elevation about 6,000 feet. You have an inland lake you can see where we actually have seagull this time of the year coming from Siberia to spend the winter there every year. Now that's also the lake where I was born. My dad was trying to teach me swimming and I almost got carried away by the waves, but that's a different story. So that lake, when during the time I grow up from time to time, you will see the lake in this color. That's the algae boom from all the pollution with the industrialization of the cities caused all the pollution. So that's actually the start of how I got interested in environmental problems and why I studied environmental engineering in Tsinghua University in Beijing and then at Penn State. And then work as the environmental engineer and lab manager for remediation technology in Seattle for about four years. So up to that point, my career goal was to be an environmental engineer, master all the best technologies to solve the problems other engineering created for the environment. But during the process, I learned three things that actually changed my career path. So number one is technology is very important, but that's not the only part that matters to solve a problem. And number two is when I do more and more projects, I realize to fix the problem after it has happened is too late. We pollute a site in a couple days, months, but when we design the system to clean it up, we're designing system that will be operating for 30, 50, 100 years. So is there anything we can do better ahead of time to avoid having those problems so we don't have to fix them afterwards? So that's the time when I got interested in system engineering, prospective modeling, complex system, etc. So I started to read and learn about those things. And number three was during the time I was doing my masters and during my work at the R&D internal lab, I realized doing research is such a fun thing. But at that time, I only have the opportunity to implement other people's idea and I want to generate my own idea and do research to test my idea. So those three things combined together is what drive me to get my PhD at Michigan. I want to study sustainable system modeling. So I actually customized my PhD. So my co-advisor Peter Agents and Ming Xu was very supportive for me to customize my PhD doing a joint degree from two departments in environmental engineering and also a School of Natural Resource and Environment. And I also got two graduate certificates, one in complex system, one in science, technology and public policy. So I have the knowledge to do the research I really want to do. So one thing I learned during my time in the US and in my PhD is you don't have to order from the menu. If you have a vision and there's a lot of resources that you can find to support to achieve what you really want to do. So and then in 2015, I joined Purdue and my research focus nowadays is on the urban sustainability using prospective modeling. So right now about over half of the population already live in urban area. And to support all those people, we need resources and the resource consumption needs, brain challenges and also opportunities to serve all the needs. And this urbanization trend is going to continue. And by 2050, we expect to have almost 70% of the global population live in urban areas. So we need to ensure that we stay on a sustainable development path. And to do that, and also as the society develop, there will be new technology, new system developing. So when we have a new system or in the earlier adoption phase, there's a lot of options, very little data on what's going to happen, what works. But there's a lot of choices we can do to change the system. As we gradually adopt into a system and when we have more and more infrastructure built, very expensive infrastructure built to support those systems, we're gradually locked in. We're going to have a lot of data. By then, there's very little flexibility in terms of what we can do to change the impacts. So my focus is when we are in the earlier phase one, how can we build models to identify what's going to happen in different scenarios so we can inform the system development so we make better decisions now to avoid negative unintended consequences later on. And specifically, the sectors that I have been focusing on is the transportation sector because it consumes about 90% of the gasoline and generates about a third of the emissions globally and also in the US. And in transportation, there are three trends that are changing the system. That's shared mobility, autonomous driving, and electrification. So we have the opportunity to decide what do we do today in terms of utilizing these opportunities and technologies and what kind of future transportation system do we build. Depending on what system we support and design and use, they could bring a utopia sustainable transportation system or they could bring a dystopia system, a lot of data lysing, what do we know today and what do we do today. So when we look at the environmental impacts of a system, we cannot only look at the parts that we're using the system. We need to look at a life cycle perspective, looking at what the car is made of, what's the process of making the fuel. That life cycle impacts is the impact of a vehicle. And when we electrify a vehicle, we also need to think about where the electricity coming from, not because they don't have tailpipe emissions, they're clean. We also need to think about what's additional changes we need to make. For example, batteries, and this is more of a traditional life cycle of an electric vehicle. But there's still something missing. That's the human being part, how we drive and where do we travel from? When do we stop? Where do we have charging opportunities? We'll also influence how we use the vehicles, what the electricity we're using is from and that will contribute to the impacts as well. So we were among the first to use large-scale mobility data captured from our vehicle GPS to try to understand the travel pattern and how they will impact the environmental impacts of electric vehicles. So on the shared mobility side, about 2017, 2018, a lot of the shared bikes, shared e-scooters just appeared in cities. And the cities don't know are they sustainable, right? But if we take a life cycle perspective, they're not necessarily emission-free because it takes energy and material to make them. It also requires rebalancing, which are using vehicles to move the bikes and scooters around. So we build models to establish emission factors for these shared mobility modes to understand how sustainable they are. And also they don't appear in isolation, they appear as part of the existing system. So we also work with INDOT, Indiana Department of Transportation, trying to understand are the e-scooters competing or complementing existing bus systems. And also we build collaborating with Nadia Grisha from Civil Engineering. We also conducted a survey to understand the travel pattern and the mode choice behavior in Indianapolis, build agent-based models, trying to understand if we change the distribution and pricing of the system, how would the mode choice change in terms of these modes, change vehicle ownership and use. And also many cities are also wondering how many do we need, how many should we allow, and we also build models trying to inform those decisions as well. And shared mobility is more than shared micro-mobility. We also have shared vehicles, shared rides. And the three emerging trends are also not happening in isolation. They are happening at the same time and they may prevent or stimulate each other. We may have electric vehicles first and then they become shared and autonomous. We may have a autonomous vehicle first and then that will actually promote electric vehicle. So when we build charging stations, we also need to consider all these changes that's happening in parallel and they may have different development pathways. So we build agent-based models trying to understand if we have different development pathways, how would that impact our charging infrastructure needs as well. So we do models trying to understand what's the environmental performance of a product or system, but eventually to really have an impact, as Xiaoshuai mentioned, we also need to provide information to consumers and that information is normally come in the form of eco-label stickers. So working with human factor experts, Mark Lekto, we use food eco-labels trying to understand how people evaluate product and how much attention they put on the eco-labels using eye-tracking glasses in real-world shopping environment. So this is an example of a project that I wouldn't be able to do if I'm not hosting industrial engineering and next to the human factor researchers knowing what they're doing and normally as industrial ecologists we stop at the modeling and getting the number and we sacrifice with that. So very briefly about teaching, I teach both in IE and the triple E and because I'm running short on time, I will skip some of the details and I'm also doing some work as Mark mentioned for the New York State Climate Impact Assessment using the results in my research trying to inform their preparedness for the climate change as well. So I couldn't be here today doing what I'm doing without an incredible supporting system with my formal mentors, informal mentors and also my collaborators. I learned so much from every single one of you so I really want to thank you for your support and also I couldn't do all those work by myself without my students so I often ask myself what did I do to be blessed with all these great students to work with me so every day they inspire me so I also want to thank them and also the funding agencies that are supporting my research so thank you very much. Thank you. Hi John. Hi, we have time for questions I believe otherwise I'm going to pick on somebody. What suggestions do you have for assistant professors to be productive in research among many detracts from other responsibilities? So this is a great question and that's also one that I struggled with when I started with and I got many advices about time management from different people and the one strategy that I found was really helpful for me is to prioritize what's important so I identify a task that I think I have to get this done today. This is the most important task and then I work on that before any other distractions so I prioritize my research time and that will not come without cost so that would mean maybe I'm slowing and responding to emails, et cetera but I think you have to prioritize and doing some tradeoff here. That's good. How about somebody down here? Maybe this is in line with opening more collaborations. Have you thought about some of your methods applied to aviation? So both Dr. DeLaurentis and I have looked at some environmental impacts of aviation, sustainable aviation, electric air mobility. Just curious about what your interest might be in that area. Yeah, air mobility and air taxi for example is receiving more and more attention. I'm interested so I haven't got the time to do much but that's definitely an area I'm kind of watching the literature so if there's interest to collaborate I would be very happy to talk more about that. Yeah, this was an issue that came up with our friends at Cranfield. Thanks John. Well, what stands out for me in a lot of the research that you presented is the impact towards the ultimate beneficiary, how do the findings of your research make it to those who take decisions. It's sort of big in what you do. That's not often the case with a lot of other faculty that they're not necessarily have to worry a lot about that. What resources have you found are available and what resources would you like to see here that help faculty with that transition to having policy impact? So first of all I think different research have different nature. Some work is more theoretical and then for them to have the real-world impacts that may require some collaboration with more people who do more applied work like me. So that would help and I think we already have a lot of supports on campus building connections to talk to INDOT or Ford or the Center for Environment for example, building the connections, sharing opportunities to identify those opportunities so we can reach out to the stakeholders. So I think to know the opportunities and information is the first step and then that will lead to opportunities to talk to the decision makers and make the impact. Thank you for sharing this great story. So yeah, sometimes I drive my car and I hear the radio and PR news talk about her research so this is kind of very impact, right? So I wonder what you do have any comments about that say how did you identify this kind of very impact for research topic? Did you read a lot of literature review, find a problem or did you talk with a lot of people or go to conference and talk with people? So do you have any suggestions to find a very impact for research topic? Thank you for the question. So when I do the research I didn't think much about what would happen after that I can predict which one will catch more media attention and that was not part of I was thinking about when we decided which research topic to do. I think for research projects I identify a need, a gap, and then I pursue that project. Some of the questions do come from talking to the stakeholders. For example we look at rebalancing because when we talk to the bike share companies they mention they have that issue and then that also help us to reshape our research questions as well. I think for applied research talking to the stakeholders is definitely helpful and then that also combines with the research gaps. Nowadays I didn't get time to mention nowadays when we have more and more large-scale high-resolution data sometimes we're limited by our method so there's also needs to develop better methods so we can fully take advantage of the data we have and those method development researchers also are important but they may not be the high-impact research that will get more media attention. Yes. Thank you. This has been great. I want to get back to a comment that you made about the opportunity for collaboration and interdisciplinary work. Some of us with a little bit more gray hair are used to an academic environment where there's been such an emphasis on independent work and solo work. What do you think is both the challenge but also the advantage of developing these bigger, more interdisciplinary, more integrative types of projects and for your scholarship not just the project itself? Thank you, Barrett. So I think the Purdue environment definitely cherishes interdisciplinary collaboration. For myself I feel that I still, I think there's still a lot of opportunities that hasn't been captured. There are colleagues that I want to work with but I don't have the time span where they don't have the time span where we haven't find the correct project to work together. So I feel like that I want to spend more time or more attention spend to further develop these collaborations that could lead to larger projects that's kind of still on my wish list that knowing what other peoples are working on what are the common interests that can help build more of these interdisciplinary collaboration. Does that answer your question? Hello. I've had the pleasure to TA with you and although you had to briefly skip over it I'm really interested in hearing how you translate your research, your experiences, your own education into the classroom. And as Dr. Barrett mentioned, you've got new ideas for engineering economics. I'd just like to hear a little bit about, I guess, your philosophy in pedagogy. So the great side of working with great students is they challenge you every day. So for teaching and research, so some of the teaching is linked to my research so I also introduce the project. I do the challenges we do to the students in the classroom. So I think teaching the students the classical methods and also contemporary issues are both important. So they have the knowledge to work to solve the problem but also have the contacts of what's going on in real world and how they can apply those methods to solve those problems is also very important. So I try to combine that and find ways to deliver that information more effectively and also in a fun way. I think learning should be fun. Alright, let's thank Dr. Barrett. Thank you.