Janet Allen

Janet K. Allen is a Professor and John and Mary Moore Chair in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. She co-directs the Systems Realization Laboratory @ OU (SRL@OU) with Professor Farrokh Mistree, focusing on educating strategic engineers capable of designing complex engineered systems within evolving Cyber-Physical-Social (CPS) systems. Her research addresses computational platforms for CPS systems, sustainable development, hydrogen economy strategies, and education frameworks for Industry 4.0. Allen holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and an S.B. from MIT.

Research Interests: Platformization for decision support, predictive analytics with limited data, knowledge-based management of complexity, disruptive innovation in CPS, supply network sustainment, rural development through the food-energy-water nexus, and hydrogen economy monetization. She emphasizes education in strategic engineering competencies and has contributed to curricula for digitally transforming enterprises.

Awards:

• Norman Campus-Wide Research and Creativity Award (2021)
• ASME Ruth and Joel Spiro Outstanding Design Educator Award (2019)
• ASME Fellow (2005)
• AIAA Senior Member (2003)

Grants & Labs: Leads the SRL@OU, which emphasizes multidisciplinary approaches to CPS systems. Her work includes funded projects on hydrogen hub analysis, defense supply networks, and public policy modeling. Recent efforts focus on AI-driven systems for self-organizing control and surrogate model applications.

Education Focus: Develops courses and reflective learning assessments using sentiment analysis and text similarity metrics to evaluate student growth. Pioneered methods like contextual assessment through reflection-on-doing essays and self-tutoring systems for engineering education.