Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, has appointed Dr. Richard Malak the Morris E. Foster Faculty Fellow I in Mechanical Engineering in recognition of his many accomplishments and future potential. The endowed faculty fellowship appointment was effective June 1.
Malak is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He joined the Texas A&M engineering faculty in August 2009. He received both his Ph.D. and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He also received a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and his bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Stony Brook University.
Malak is the principal investigator for a Texas A&M research team that was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant through the Emerging Frontiers of Research and Innovation (EFRI) program in 2012. The four-year was for nearly $2 million.
Malak’s research interests include discovering new principles, methods and tools for systems modeling and decision making; predictive modeling; multi-attribute decision making; data-driven design evaluation and synthesis; model validation; set-based design; decision making under uncertainty; cyber-physical systems; and computational thinking applied to design processes.