The Department of Mechanical Engineering is excited to welcome Dr. Todd Easton, joining the department as a Lecturing Professor this fall. Dr Easton will be helping build out the department’s Systems Engineering program.
Dr Easton received a B.S. in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics from Brigham Young University, an M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology until he joined the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering department at Kansas State University. K-State awarded him the title of University Distinguished Teaching Scholar, which is its highest teaching recognition. In 2021, he joined the University of Utah’s Mechanical Engineering Department and focuses his teaching and research efforts in systems engineering.
Dr. Easton believes that the world is composed of systems and that all systems can be improved. One of his favorite systems to improve is the teaching system, and his efforts enabled him to develop a new active learning teaching style called lecture-based tutoring. His research expertise is in operations research with an emphasis in discrete optimization. His research has spanned numerous areas including, healthcare, energy, supply chain, analytics, scheduling, and computational optimization.