October 18, 2022 PhD student named ‘Rising Tech Leader to Watch’ Written By: Tom Ziemer Departments: Biomedical Engineering|Industrial & Systems Engineering Categories: Students Rebecca Alcock, a PhD student in industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been named among the “2022 Rising Tech Leaders to Watch” by Milwaukee Business Journal. Alcock, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomedical engineering from UW-Madison before pursuing her PhD, drew recognition for her work helping to develop an online platform matching healthcare organizations with face shield manufacturers during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and leading an Engineers Without Borders effort to mobilize personal protective equipment manufacturing in several developing countries. In her research, Alcock combines optimization and machine learning with biomedical engineering and product design to address global health challenges, such as providing electricity to rural healthcare clinics and improving disaster response.