Researcher

Dr. Richard Malak currently serves as Program Director for the Engineering Design and Systems Engineering (EDSE) program in the division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) of the National Science Foundation. The EDSE program supports fundamental research to advance the disciplines of engineering design and systems engineering. Dr. Malak holds an academic appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University where he is Associate Professor and holder of the Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Career Development Professorship I. His research interests include decision making in systems engineering and computational methods for supporting engineering and systems design. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from SUNY Stony Brook, an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Research Interests: Computational methods (including optimization, machine learning, AI) for supporting engineering systems design; decision making in systems engineering; design and systems engineering theory; applications to materials design, smart structures, and complex engineered systems.