Stochastics and Computational Techniques

Jean Parks (PhD in Mathematics), Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Variability Institute. Parks had prior experience in many areas of Applied Mechanics at Lockheed Martin Space Division (in its early days) and SRI International (as a Research Mathematician) before family situations necessitated a long career break, after which she joined Xerox for which the major problem was dealing with variability. Initially she devised a new technique for Failure Analysis, but then detoured into engineering management where she advanced rapidly to lead very large organizations in developing advanced electro-mechanical technologies and in systems integration; this provided her invaluable understanding of product development needs which coincided with her expertise. Thus, she began to develop the tools and techniques that have evolved to revolutionize Stochastics, titled the HPD Software & Methodology. She retired from Xerox as a Fellow and joined the University of Rochester as a Professor of Mathematics for 5 years to share her expertise and to begin productizing HPD.

Chun Li (MS in Mechanical Engineering), chief developer of HPD software capabilities. Chun had 35 years of prior experience in development of complex engineering software at Boeing and Xerox before joining the HPD development effort.

Mohammad Noori is an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds, UK where he is a founding director of Intelligent and Resilient Infrastructure Center. Noori is a Fellow and Life Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, has been a Fellow of the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science and has held distinguished visiting professorships at several universities abroad. His work in modelling the complex hysteretic behavior of structural systems, including pinching phenomenon, is widely cited in the literature as the Bouc-Wen-Baber-Noori (BWBN) model. It has been used in nonlinear random vibrations , for seismic response analysis of concrete structures and other applications, and has been incorporated in OpenSees seismic analysis program and ABAQUS finite element software. His work in non-zero mean, non-Gaussian response analysis of hysteretic systems in random vibrations are also original contributions. He has also carried out pioneering work in seismic isolation using shape memory alloys and holds 2 US patents in that area. Noori has been a pioneer in the application of AI based methods and wavelet transform for structural health monitoring. He has authored over 300 refereed papers, 7 scientific books, 32 book chapters and has edited 25 scientific books and special journal volumes. Noori directed the Sensors Program at the NSF in 2014. He served as the dean of engineering at Cal Poly, as the Higgins professor and head of ME Dept. at WPI and as the Reynolds Professor and head of MAE Dept. at NC State University. Noori also served as the Chair of the national committee of mechanical engineering department heads, and was one of 7 co-founders of the National Institute of Aerospace, in partnership with NASA Langley Research Center.

Sabina Saib (PhD in Computer Engineering), chief developer of HPD's GUI (graphical user interface). Sabina had 40 years of experience in embedded computer applications (at, e.g., ITT & Cisco Systems) before retiring from Cisco, where she was a Department Director, and before joining Variability Institute.