Akcay Named Finalist for Best Paper at IISE Annual Conference
MIE Associate Professor Alp Akcay has been selected as a finalist for the 2026 IISE Modeling & Simulation (M&S) Division Track Paper Contest at the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Annual Conference, to be held in Arlington, Texas.
The paper, titled “Data-Driven Resource Aggregation for Scalable Digital Twin and Simulation Model Generation,” is co-authored with incoming MIE PhD student Yucheng Wu. It addresses a critical challenge in modern smart manufacturing: keeping simulation models up to date as factory systems change rapidly. The research proposes an automated approach that uses historical production data and inverse reinforcement learning to intelligently simplify digital twin simulation models, reducing complexity and computational cost while preserving accuracy.
The winner will be announced at the M&S Town Hall meeting during the IISE Annual Conference, taking place May 16–19, 2026 in Arlington, Texas.