Liu honored for predicting the future of industrial systems

On March 13, 2025, Dean Ian Robertson held an event to recognize engineering faculty and staff for outstanding contributions. Kaibo Liu, Grainger STAR Professor in industrial and systems engineering, received the Ragnar E. Onstad Service to Society Award.

Given the rapid explosion of Internet of Things technology and cyber-physical infrastructure, Liu’s contributions fall into the category, “perfect storm of systems health.”

Simply, he has developed pioneering, creative methods to selectively measure and monitor massive amounts of data from multiple sensors—then extracts the information he needs to determine a system’s status and predict its future behavior, in real time. These methods have utility in government and industry, where—for example—they’ve predicted the degradation evolution of nuclear equipment, improved the quality of a 3M production line, analyzed the status of aircraft gas turbine engines—and spurred additional worldwide contributions to the new field of quality improvement and industrial data science. As associate director of our Internet of Things Systems Research Center, he shares knowledge and research with industry partners such as AO Smith, Toyota Materials Handling Systems, Mercury Marine, and GM.

Liu is equally committed to inspiring the next generation of engineers. He’s developed two new data analytics courses, as well as an online data analytics course, offered to working engineers through the college’s Interdisciplinary Professional Programs. He involves students in industry projects, and is an inclusive mentor, a leader in UW-Madison’s RISE-AI initiative, and a significant contributor in service to his field.