Janet Allen

Email: janet.allen@ou.edu
Office: Carson Energy Center, Room 116G
Phone: (405) 403-3296

Education
Ph.D., Biophysics
The University of California at Berkeley
S.B., Life Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research Interests

• Design of Evolving Cyber-Physical-Social Systems
• Simulation Based Design
• Managing Uncertainty in Design
• Sustainability
• Design Pedagogy

Biography

Janet K. Allen has held the John and Mary Moore Chair and has been a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering since her arrival at the University of Oklahoma in August 2009 from Georgia Tech.  She received her S.B. in Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her PhD in Biophysics from the University of California. She has co-authored one textbook, four monographs and more than 350 technical papers dealing with the co-design of materials, products and associated manufacturing processes, the design of mechanical, thermal and structural systems; ships and aircraft; and engineered networks such as supply chains.

Janet K. Allen and her husband, Professor Farrokh Mistree, who holds the L.A. Comp Chair in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, co-Direct the Systems Realization Laboratory which is home to students from various disciplines. Our mission is to provide an opportunity for students to learn how to rise to their full potentials to become the next generation of professors.

Allen and Mistree hypothesize that

•     ALL grand challenges can be modeled as Cyber-Physical-Social (CPS)    systems. 
•     Public policy is foundational for addressing any grand challenge. 

Hence, their interest in evolving CPS to support policy making.  They seek to model evolving CPS systems as multi-echelon networks of services thereby ensuring the computational platform to be used to design and manage an evolving CPS is agnostic to domains of application.  Their quest for answers to the key challenges associated with evolving CPS systems are anchored in the following research thrusts:

Platformization: Knowledge-Based Platform for Decision Support in the Design of Engineered Systems

• Predictive Analytics: Simulation of Future Outcomes using Limited Data
• Knowledge-Based Management of Computational Complexity and Risk
• Knowledge-Based Exploration of the Solution Space

Disruptive Innovation in the Cyber-Physical-Social Space

•  Rural Development Policy: Evolving Food-Energy-Water Nexus for   Sustainable Development
•  Healthcare Policy: Evolving Fail-Safe Healthcare Networks
•  Dynamic Management of Evolving Power Systems
•  Contextual Assessment of Student Learning through Reflection on Doing

The Allen-Mistree education focus is on creating and implementing courses aimed at educating strategic engineers—those who have developed the competencies to create value in digitally transforming enterprises through the realization of complex engineered systems.

Experience and Awards

• Janet K. Allen Received the Inaugural Award for Excellence in Applied Research and Engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 2021 in recognition of career long, exceptional research contributions in engineering that are characterized by their impact in addressing major technical, social, and economic problems in society, and have garnered international visibility and recognition.  In 2019, she received ASME’s Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator Award. In 2020 in a study from Stanford University, Janet Allen was cited as one of the world’s 100,000 researchers who have had the greatest impact.