News

STARs Lab News and Updates

2025

Spring

May 2025: STARs lab members received multiple honors and awards in the IEM 2025 Award Banquet. Congratulations!
April 2025: Our collaborative research “ADs: Active Data-selection for Data Quality Assurance in Data-sharing over Advanced Manufacturing Systems”, led by Dr. Yinan Wang’s research team in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), has been accepted by the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (TASE).
April 2025: Undergraduate Researcher Ethan O’Connor presented his research in the 2025 Research Day at the Capitol, and his research won the Grand Prize Award, which is the top honor of this prestigious event sponsored by Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, OK EPSCoR, and the National Science Foundation. Congratulations!
March 2025: MS thesis student Jacob O’Hara successfully defended his MS thesis and will graduate in this May. Congratulations!
February 2025: PhD student Emmanuel Yangue successfully passed his Ph.D. dissertation proposal defense. Congratulations!
February 2025: Our paper “A Generative Adversarial Network-based Selective Ensemble Characteristic-to-Expression Synthesis (SE-CTES) Approach and Its Applications in Healthcare” has been accepted by Annals of Operations Research.
January 2025: Our paper “Attention-stacked Generative Adversarial Network (AS-GAN)-empowered Sensor Data Augmentation for Online Monitoring of Manufacturing System” has been accepted by IISE Transactions.

2024

Fall

December 2024: Our paper “Incremental Machine Learning-integrated Blockchain for Real-time Security Protection in Cyber-enabled Manufacturing Systems” has been accepted by the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering (JCISE).
December 2024: Dr. Liu serves as an organizer for the Data Science for Smart Manufacturing and Healthcare (DS2-MH) Workshop at the SIAM SDM25 conference in Alexandria, VA.
November 2024: Our paper “Advancing Additive Manufacturing through Deep Learning: A Comprehensive Review of Current Progress and Future Challenges” has been accepted by IISE Transactions.
October 2024: Our paper “Pseudo Replay-based Class Continual Learning for Online New Category Anomaly Detection in Advanced Manufacturing” has been accepted by IISE Transactions. This work is led by our lab’s recent PhD graduates Dr. Yuxuan Li and Dr. Zhangyue Shi. Congratulations!
October 2024: Our group gave multiple invited talks at INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, 2024.
September 2024: STARs Lab received a grant from National Science Foundation (NSF). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Yu Feng (PI) from the School of Chemical Engineering at OSU for a research project entitled “SCH: AI-Enhanced Risk Assessment for Mitigating Indoor Viral Transmission in Public Schools” sponsored by NSF. Thanks for the generous support from NSF!
September 2024: STARs Lab received a grant from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Yu Feng (Lead PI) from the School of Chemical Engineering at OSU for a research project entitled “ML-CFD-DEM Based Reduced Order Models (ROM) to Quantify Variability in Inhalers, Drugs, and Users for Evaluating Comparability of Generic OIDP Complex Products” sponsored by FDA. Thanks for the generous support from FDA!
August 2024: Dr. Liu received the 2024 Young Engineer Award from the ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Division (CIE). This award is to recognize a promising young investigator who is making outstanding contributions to the progress in the application of computers in engineering.
August 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue won the OSU Foundation Distinguished Graduate Fellowship Distinguished Graduate Fellowship from OSU Graduate College. Congratulations!
August 2024: Graduate student Jacob O’Hara, who was an undergraduate researcher in our lab, continues his journey in our lab as an MS thesis student. Welcome!

Summer

July 2024: Undergraduate Researcher Ethan O’Connor has been nominated by OSU to participate in the undergraduate research competition at the 2025 Research Day at the Capitol. Congratulations!
July 2024: Our paper “Toward Smart Ultrasound Image Augmentation to Advance Tumor Treatment Monitoring: Exploring the Potential of Diffusion Generative Model” has been accepted by the ASME Journal of Medical Devices.
July 2024: Undergraduate researcher Ethan O’Connor, as well as graduate students Emmanuel Yangue and Boris Oskolkov presented their papers in the 46th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC2024), in Orlando, FL. Their papers have also been accepted for publication in the conference proceedings. Congratulations!
July 2024: Our paper “Data Augmentation-empowered Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Based on Collaborative Discrimination-enabled Generative Adversarial Network” has been accepted by Annals of Operations Research.
May 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue is selected for the IEEE EMBC NextGen Scholar Award to support his attendance of EMBC 2025 conference in July. Congratulations!

Spring

May 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue presented our research in the 2024 IISE Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada.
May 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue’s MS thesis research won the 2024 IISE Graduate Research Award. Congratulations!
April 2024: Ph.D. student Boris Oskolkov successfully passed his Ph.D. qualifying exam. Congratulations!
April 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue present our research at the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM25) SDM24 and won the Best Poster Award in the Doctoral Forum. Congratulations!
April 2024: Undergraduate researcher Ethan O’Connor received the Wentz Research Award, supporting his research on “Towards Personalized Inhalation Therapy: Furthering Chest CT Image and Pulmonary Function Test * Correlation Using Machine Learning”. Congratulations!
April 2024: Dr. Zhangyue Shi, our lab’s recent Ph.D. graduate, received the OSU Research Excellence Award from OSU Graduate College, for his outstanding PhD. dissertation research. Congratulations!
April 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue received the OSU Research Excellence Award from OSU Graduate College, for his outstanding MS research in our lab. Congratulations!
March 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue was selected to participate in the SIAM SDM’24 Doctoral Forum for poster presentation and receive the NSF student travel award for this trip. Congratulations!
March 2024: Undergraduate Researcher Jacob O’Hara presented his research poster at the 2024 Research Day at Capitol. This event is to highlight the exceptional undergraduate research going on across the state of Oklahoma.
March 2024: Our paper “Diffusion Generative Model-Based Learning for Smart Layer-Wise Monitoring of Additive Manufacturing” has been accepted by the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering (JCISE).
March 2024: Undergraduate researcher Ethan O’Connor’s paper “Towards Personalized Inhalation Therapy by Correlating Chest CT Imaging and Pulmonary Function Test Features Using Machine Learning”, won the second place in the 2024 IISE Southcentral Regional Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition. Congratulations!
February 2024: Our collaborative research “A User-Centered Smart Inhaler Algorithm for Targeted Drug Delivery in Juvenile Onset Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis Treatment Integrating Computational Fluid Particle Dynamics and Machine Learning”, led by Dr. Yu Feng’s lab in the School of Chemical Engineering at OSU, has been published in the Physics of Fluids. This work is also selected as the Editor’s Pick and Featured in this journal’s science highlight.
February 2024: Our paper “Knowledge Distillation-based Information Sharing for Online Process Monitoring in Decentralized Manufacturing System” has been accepted by the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing.
January 2024: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue successfully passed his Ph.D. qualifying exam. Congratulations!

2023

Fall

December 2023: Dr. Liu serves as an organizer for the Data Science for Smart Manufacturing and Healthcare (DS2-MH) Workshop at the SIAM SDM24 conference in Houston, TX.
November 2023: Undergraduate student Sheridan Sherrer joined our group as an undergraduate researcher. Welcome!
November 2023: Our paper “Model-Informed Generative Adversarial Network (MI-GAN) for Learning Optimal Power Flow” has been accepted by IISE Transactions.
November 2023: Undergraduate Researcher Jacob O’Hara is selected as a finalist to present his research in the 2024 Research Day at the Capitol, which highlights the exceptional undergraduate research going on across the state of Oklahoma. Congratulations!
October 2023: Our group gave multiple invited talks at INFORMS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, 2023.
September 2023: Our paper “Sensor Data Protection through Integration of Blockchain and Camouflaged Encryption in Cyber-physical Manufacturing Systems” has been accepted by the ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering (JCISE).
September 2023: Anastasiia Oskolkova joined our lab as a new MS thesis student. Welcome!
September 2023: STARs Lab received a grant from National Institute of Health (NIH). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Tieming Liu (PI) at OSU for a research project entitled “Empowering Cloud Computing for Non-image-based Diabetic Retinopathy Screening by Designing an EHR-oriented Incremental Learning Framework” sponsored by NIH. Thanks for the generous support from NIH!
September 2023: Dr. Liu gave a seminar to the Modeling Optimization and Data Science team at ExxonMobil.
September 2023: Undergraduate researcher Ethan O’Connor received OSU CEAT Undergraduate Research Scholarship. Congratulations!
August 2023: Undergraduate student Ethan O’Connor joined our group as an undergraduate researcher. Welcome!
August 2023: STARs Lab received a grant from National Science Foundation (NSF). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Yu Feng (PI) from the School of Chemical Engineering at OSU for a research project entitled “PFI-RP: Improving Inhaler Design and Efficacy with a Novel AI-assisted Digital Human Testing Platform” sponsored by NSF. Thanks for the generous support from NSF!
August 2023: Dr. Liu serves as an Executive Guest Editor for a Special Issue of the Journal of Manufacturing Systems. The special issue is on Advances in Design and Quality Improvement for Cyber Manufacturing, and the Call for Papers can be found here.
August 2023: Ph.D. student Emmanuel Yangue was selected as Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Scholars. Congratulations!
August 2023: Graduate student Boris was admitted by our OSU IEM PhD program, and he will become a Ph.D. student in our lab. Welcome!

Summer

July 2023: STARs Lab received a grant from our College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. STARs Lab will lead a research project entitled “Physics-aware AI empowered rapid medication design with prescribed deposition behavior” sponsored by the Engineering Research and Seed Funding (ERSF) Program. Our team will also collaborate with Dr. Yu Feng’s lab to accomplish this project. Thanks for the generous support from our college!
June 2023: Our group gave multiple presentations at MSEC/NAMRC conference. Ph.D. student Emmanuel’s trip is partially supported by the NSF student travel award.
June 2023: Ph.D. candidate Zhangyue Shi successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. He will join Bayer as a Data Scientist. Congratulations!
June 2023: Ph.D. student Ziyang Zhang successfully passed his PhD qualifying exam. Congratulations!
June 2023: A book chapter “Online Monitoring and Control of Polymer Additive Manufacturing Processes” that Dr. Liu co-authored has been published in the ASM Handbook.
June 2023: Dr. Liu was invited to give a talk in a mini-symposium at 2023 SIAM Optimization Conference.
May 2023: Ph.D. candidate Yuxuan Li successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. He will join the East China University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor. Congratulations!
May 2023: Ph.D. candidate Yuxuan Li presented our research in the 2023 IISE Annual Conference.
May 2023: UG research researchers Jacob O’Hara and Kent Slater presented their papers in the 2023 IISE Annual Conference. Their papers have also been accepted for publication in the conference proceedings. Congratulations!

Spring

May 2023: Graduate student Emmanuel Yangue successfully defended his MS thesis. Congratulations!
April 2023: Ph.D. candidate Yuxuan Li won the prestigious OSU Doctoral Phoenix Award. Congratulations!
April 2023: Ph.D. candidate Yuxuan Li was selected to participate in the SDM’23 Doctoral Forum for poster presentation and receive the NSF student travel award. Congratulations!
April 2023: Dr. Liu was elected as the president-elect of IISE Data Analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) division.
April 2023: UG research researcher Andrew Bunting presented his research poster in the Wentz Research Symposium.
April 2023: UG research researchers Jacob O’Hara and Kent Slater presented their research posters in the OSU Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.
April 2023: Graduate student Emmanuel Yangue won the 2023 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. Congratulations!
March 2023: Our paper “A Utility-Based Machine Learning-Driven Personalized Lifestyle Recommendation for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention” has been accepted by Journal of Biomedical Informatics. This work also won the 2022 IISE Graduate Research Award (for graduate student Ayse Dogan).
March 2023: Our paper “Transformer-enabled Generative Adversarial Imputation Network with Selective Generation (SGT-GAIN) for Missing Region Imputation” has been accepted by IISE Transactions.
February 2023: Undergraduate students Ashton Parkey and Zoe Ward joined our group as undergraduate researchers. Welcome!
February 2023: Undergraduate research Kent Slater’s paper “A Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)-Assisted Data Quality Monitoring Approach for Out-of-Distribution Detection of High Dimensional Data” won the second place in the IISE Southcentral Regional Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition. Congratulations!
February 2023: STARs Lab received a grant from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). STARs Lab will lead a research project entitled “AI-enabled real-time imaging and diagnosis technique for effective drug delivery in solid tumor treatment” sponsored by OCAST. Our team will also collaborate with Dr. Ashish Ranjan’s lab to accomplish this project. Thanks for the generous support from OCAST!
January 2023: MS Thesis student Emmanuel Yangue successfully passed his thesis proposal defense. Congratulations!

2022

Fall

December 2022: Our papers “Solving Non-linear Optimization Problem in Engineering by Model-Informed Generative Adversarial Network (MI-GAN)” and “Knowledge Distillation-enabled Multi-stage Incremental Learning for Online Process Monitoring in Advanced Manufacturing” have been accepted by the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) Workshops.
December 2022: Dr. Liu serves as an organizer for the Data Science for Smart Manufacturing and Healthcare (DS2-MH) Workshop at the SDM23 conference.
November 2022: Dr. Liu serves as a Guest Editor for a Special Issue of ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering (JCISE). The special issue is on Digitalization and Reverse Engineering for Additive Manufacturing, and the Call for Papers can be found here.
November 2022: Dr. Liu gave a seminar in the Department of Industrial Engineering at University of Louisville.
October 2022: Dr. Liu serves as a co-chair of Data Analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) track at 2023 IISE Annual Conference & Expo.
October 2022: Our group gave multiple invited talks at INFORMS Annual Meeting, Indianapolis, 2022.
September 2022: Undergraduate researcher Jacob O’Hara received OSU CEAT Undergraduate Research Scholarship. Congratulations!
September 2022: Boris Oskolkov joined our lab as a new MS thesis student. Welcome!
August 2022: Undergraduate student Kent Slater joined our lab as an undergraduate researcher. He will be supported by the NSF REU Supplement Grant. Welcome!

Summer

August 2022: PhD student Ziyang Zhang presented his research paper in the IEEE CASE 2022 conference.
August 2022: PhD candidate Yuxuan Li presented his research paper in the IEEE CASE 2022 conference.
June 2022: PhD candidate Zhangyue Shi received the Robberson Summer Research and Creative Activity Fellowship. Congratulations!
June 2022: Our paper “Hybrid Data-Driven Feature Extraction-Enabled Surface Modeling for Metal Additive Manufacturing” has been accepted by the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology.
May 2022: STARs Lab participated in an equipment grant from Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research (OCASCR) for a project “Establishment of nanoString spatial biology system at OSU”, which is led by the PI Dr. Ashish Ranjan from the College of Veterinary Medicine at OSU. Thanks for the support from OCASCR!

Spring

May 2022: Undergraduate student Andrew Bunting joined our lab as an undergraduate researcher. He will be supported by the Wentz Research Award. Welcome!
April 2022: PhD student Zhangyue Shi won the 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. Congratulations!
April 2022: MS student Ayse Dogan’s thesis work won the 2022 IISE Graduate Research Award. Congratulations!
April 2022: STARs Lab received the REU supplement for the ongoing PFI-TT project. Thanks for the generous support from NSF! Our lab is also looking for qualified undergraduate student to participate in this project. Feel free to contact Dr. Liu at chenang.liu@okstate.edu if you are interested in this project!
April 2022: Our paper “When AI Meets Additive Manufacturing: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities for Human-Centered Products Development” has been accepted by Journal of Manufacturing Systems. Dr. Liu will present this work at the 50th SME North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC).
April 2022: Undergraduate student Jacob O’Hara joined our group as an undergraduate researcher. Welcome!
March 2022: Dr. Liu has been appointed to serve as an Associate Editor of Journal of Intelligence Manufacturing.
March 2022: Our paper “Toward Online Layer-wise Surface Morphology Measurement in Additive Manufacturing Using a Deep Learning-based Approach” has been accepted by Journal of Intelligence Manufacturing.
March 2022: PhD student Yuxuan Li successfully passed his dissertation proposal defense. Congratulations!
February 2022: Undergraduate student Sam Koscelny’s paper, mentored by Dr. Liu, won the third place in the IISE Southcentral Regional Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition. Congratulations!
January 2022: STARs Lab received a grant from National Science Foundation (NSF). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Yongwei Shan (PI) from the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at OSU for a research project entitled “PFI-TT: Intelligent quality assurance and integration tool for sewer inspection data” sponsored by NSF. Thanks for the generous support from NSF!
January 2022: PhD Student Yuxuan Li received the Roy & Virgina Dorrough Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. Congratulations!
January 2022: Emmanuel Yangue joined our group as a new MS thesis student. Welcome!
January 2022: Ziyang Zhang joined our group as a new Ph.D. student. Welcome!

2021

Fall

December 2021: Our Paper “An LSTM-autoencoder based online side channel monitoring approach for cyber-physical attack detection in additive manufacturing” has been accepted by Journal of Intelligence Manufacturing.
December 2021: PhD student Zhangyue Shi successfully passed his dissertation proposal defense. Congratulations!
November 2021: Our paper “A Multilayer Network-Enabled Ultrasonic Image Series Analysis Approach for Online Cancer Drug Delivery Monitoring” has been accepted by Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine.
October 2021: STARs Lab received a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH). STARs Lab is collaborating with Dr. Tieming Liu (PI), Dr. Bing Yao, and Dr. Liang Ye for a research project entitled “SCH: Harnessing Tensor Information to Improve EHR Data Quality for Accurate Data-driven Screening of Diabetic Retinopathy with Routine Lab Results” sponsored by NIH. Thanks for the generous support from NIH!
October 2021: Our group gave multiple invited talks at INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2021.
October 2021: Our paper “Augmented Time Regularized Generative Adversarial Network (ATR-GAN) for Data Augmentation in Online Process Anomaly Detection” has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.
October 2021: Dr. Liu’s paper is featured in the Industrial and Systems Engineer magazine (ISE) Magazine.
October 2021: PhD student Zhangyue Shi gave a seminar in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at North Dakota State University.
October 2021: Dr. Liu gave a seminar in the Department of Industrial, Systems and Manufacturing Engineering at Wichita State University.
August 2021: Dr. Liu gave a seminar in the Department of Statistics at Auburn University.

Summer

August 2021: PhD student Zhangyue Shi presented his research works in the IDETC/CIE 2021 conference. He is partially supported by the student stipends from the ASME CIE division.
June 2021: PhD student Zhangyue Shi presented his research works in the NAMRC49/MSEC2021 conference. He is supported by the NSF-Sponsored Student Support Award.
May 2021: PhD student Yuxuan Li and Zhangyue successfully passed their PhD qualifying exam. Congratulations!

Spring

April 2021: Master student Ayse Dogan successfully defended her MS thesis. Congratulations!
April 2021: Dr. Liu was elected as a board director in data analytics and information systems (DAIS) division of IISE.
March 2021: Dr. Liu gave a seminar in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at North Dakota State University.
January 2021: PhD student Yuxuan Li won the Best Poster Award in the 5th International Workshop on Biomedical Informatics with Optimization and Machine Learning (BOOM) in Conjunction with 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). Congratulations!

2020

Fall

November 2020: Our group gave multiple invited talks at 2020 Virtual INFORMS Annual Meeting.
October 2020: Our paper “A Blockchain-based G-code Protection Approach for Cyber-Physical Security in Additive Manufacturing” has been accepted by ASME Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering.
October 2020: Our paper “An Integrated Manifold Learning Approach for High Dimensional Data Feature Extractions and its Applications to Online Process Monitoring of Additive Manufacturing” has been accepted by IISE Transactions.

Spring

March 2020: Undergraduate student Jackson Baker’s paper, mentored by Dr. Liu, won the second place in the 2020 IISE Southcentral Regional Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition. Congratulations!
March 2020: Dr. Liu gave a seminar in the Department of Statistics at Oklahoma State University.

2019

Fall

December 2019: The senior design team mentored by Dr. Liu won the IEM senior design poster competition. Congratulations!
October 2019: Our group gave multiple invited talks at INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, 2019.
October 2019: Yuxuan and Zhangyue were selected as a finalist of 2019 INFORMS QSR Data Challenge Competition. Congratulations!
September 2019: Ayse Dogan joined our group as a new M.S. student. Welcome!
August 2019: Dr. Liu gave an invited talk at the 2019 Annual SFF Symposium.
August 2019: Yuxuan Li and Zhangyue Shi joined our group as new Ph.D. students. Welcome!