Three IOE faculty promoted
On May 15 Leia Stirling and Mariel Lavieri were promoted to full professors and Michael Craig was promoted to associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE).
The University of Michigan Board of Regents has approved the promotion of Leia Stirling and Mariel Lavieri as full professors and Michael Craig as associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE). The promotions, finalized at the May 15, 2025 meeting, recognize their outstanding contributions in teaching, research and service.
About Mariel Lavieri
Mariel Lavieri’s research and models, grounded in dynamic programming and stochastic control, support personalized care policies and improve the efficiency of health care delivery. Her work spans a wide range of medical challenges, including the treatment and monitoring of chronic diseases such as glaucoma, coronary heart disease, cancer, concussion and more. Her models also inform strategic workforce and capacity planning for health systems.
“Using practical applications to drive rigorous mathematical innovation is essential,” said Lavieri. “When our research is grounded in real-world challenges, it not only advances theory but also delivers tangible benefits. In my lab, that means improving patient outcomes and demonstrating how applied research can truly change lives.”
Lavieri has received national recognition for this research, including being named a New Voices Cohort Member by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and earning the Sanjay and Panna Mehrotra Research Excellence Award from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Lavieri has also been honored with the Willie Hobbs Moore Aspire, Advance, Achieve Mentoring Award from the U-M and the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her potential to make transformative contributions to health care operations research.
In addition to her research and awards, Lavieri is a dedicated educator. As associate chair for undergraduate studies at U-M IOE, she is responsible for ensuring a meaningful and informative education for the Department’s undergraduate students.
About Leia Stirling
Leia Stirling’s research is at the intersection of human factors and robotics. In her career, she has led efforts to improve how humans physically and cognitively interact with emerging technologies, including wearable sensors, exoskeletons and robotic systems for a variety of applications, including aerospace, manufacturing, health care and more.
Stirling’s research on wearable motion sensing helps identify injury risk and inform ergonomically responsible decision-making. She also develops co-adaptive algorithms for powered exoskeletons that enhance user trust and performance. In the aerospace domain, her collaborations with NASA have shaped astronaut readiness protocols and advanced the design of human-aware space robotics.
Going beyond her research, Stirling has received numerous accolades for her excellence in teaching and service, including the U-M Neil Van Eenam Memorial Undergraduate Teaching Award, the U-M Rackham Graduate School Partnerships for Access, Community, and Excellence (PACE) Fellowship for Graduate Student-Faculty Pairs and the U-M Industrial and Operations Engineering Wilson Faculty Fellowship. Nationally, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded her a CAREER award, and she is also a senior Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) member and an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) associate fellow.
“Teaching is about more than communicating technical content,” said Stirling. “It is about students understanding why that material matters, what their responsibilities are as an engineer, being given space to practice concepts and learning how to communicate their knowledge.”
Within the U-M IOE Department, Stirling has led structural and cultural initiatives to support a community of engineers who are heard and successful. She was also awarded the U-M North Campus Deans’ MLK Jr. Spirit Award in 2023 for her work in launching a community dialogue series to hear and engage with diverse viewpoints, ideas and experiences to understand differing perspectives.In addition to her role at U-M IOE, Stirling is also a faculty member and associate chair of undergraduate studies in the U-M Robotics Department.
About Michael Craig
Michael Craig researches energy system models that tackle emerging challenges in decarbonization, climate adaptation and equity. He is dedicated to equitably reducing the global and local environmental impacts of energy systems while making those systems resistant to future climate change. He applies these models to real-world systems to gain insights in engineering, economic, climatic and policy features. Craig collaborates with experts across many disciplines including climate scientists, hydrologists, economists, urban planners, epidemiologists and diverse engineers.
Craig has won many awards including the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE) Energy Systems Division Young Investigator Award along with funding awards from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technology Office, Nuclear Energy University Program, U.S. National Science Foundation, Idaho National Laboratory and the U-M Graham Institute for Sustainability.
He is a program faculty at the Institute of Public Utilities, faculty affiliate of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Certificate Program, contributing author to IPCC’s 6th Annual Review and a steering committee member of the University of Michigan College of Engineering Institute for Energy Solutions.
Prior to his time at U-M, Craig worked as a research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is also a faculty member in the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability.