Carolyn Heising

Professor

Office: 3017 Black Engineering

Email: cheisingiastate.edu

Tel: 515.294.0124

Fax: 515.294.3524

Research Description

Professor Heising's research areas include: reliability and quality engineering, probabilistic risk analysis (PRA), statistical quality control (SQC), total quality management (TQM), and technology safety assessment. In particular, she is a well-known expert in nuclear power plant safety, condition monitoring, and predictive maintenance.

Dr. Carolyn Heising was invited to visit Qatar University in Doha, Qatar as a member of a three person advisory team to the QU Industrial Engineering department in March 2007.  Subsequently, she was invited to develop a joint research proposal with QU to be submitted to the Qatar National Research Foundation (QNRF).  Dr. Heising also was invited to participate as a co-principal investigator on a nuclear engineering consortium proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on the topic of diamond storage of hydrogen spearheaded by the University of Missouri, Columbia nuclear science and engineering institute, Dr. Mark Prelas, principal investigator.  This proposal was submitted to DOE in late May 2007.  This summer, Dr. Heising has also been invited to begin research discussions with Gulf General Atomic Technologies (GGAT) in San Diego, California on gas cooled reactor safety and economic analyses for the advanced fuels program by Dr. Madeline Feltus, Office of Nuclear Energy, who directs the gas reactor fuels program in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Heising attended the NSF ADVANCE principal investigator meeting at NSF headquarters in Arlington, VA in June 2007.  She also attended in June 2007 the American Nuclear Society (ANS) summer meeting in Boston as outgoing chair of the ANS national planning committee for which she served three years as chair.  Dr. Heising also retired from the ISU faculty senate in April 2007 after six years of service as the IMSE department faculty senator, the college of engineering caucus chair and member of the faculty senate executive board.

Carolyn Heising is co-principal investigator on the ISU NSF ADVANCE grant, a 3.5 million dollar grant for five years that will focus on institutional transformation for the express purpose of advancing the careers of women faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The grant will begin this fall 2006.  The principal investigator is Dr. Susan Carlson,  Interim Provost. Other team members include Dr. Sharon Bird, Sociology/Women’s Studies, Dr. Carla Fehr, Philosophy/Women’s Studies, Dr. Dianne Debinski, EEOB, Dr. Bonnie Bowen, EEOB,  and Dr. Frankie Laanan, Education/Leadership Studies.

Carolyn Heising was recently appointed the chair of the national Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Women in Academia (WIA) committee on July 1, 2006 for a two year term.  She chaired a panel at the October 2006 national SWE conference in Kansas City, Missouri entitled: “Secrets of Success in Academia” with ISU engineering dean Dr. Mark Kushner.  Dr. Heising is also co- chairing a panel on diversity in the nuclear power industry at the national American Nuclear Society (ANS) meeting in November, 2006 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Professor Heising offered a workshop at the winter national meeting in New Orleans of the American Nuclear Society in November 2003 on "Nuclear Security Analysis" based on her recent research in the homeland security area. Over the past 10 years, she offered a workshop at the Amelia Island, Florida ANS Utility Working conference entitled "Preventive Maintenance and Condition Monitoring."

Most recently, she was appointed the chair of the national planning committee of the ANS for the 2004-2007 academic years. She has also been named an affiliated faculty member of the Ames Laboratory working with Dr. David Baldwin on homeland security research as of October, 2004. She has attended several homeland security conferences during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 academic years, including the 4th Global Homeland Security Conference "Protecting the Nation's Critical Infrastructure and Key Assets" which was held November 22-23, 2004 in Arlington, Virginia. She presented a paper at the 14th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC '04) in Honolulu, Hawaii in March, 2004 on nuclear power plant and research reactor security as part of her recent homeland security research initiative.

Professor Heising's Vita (pdf)

Since August, 1993, Carolyn DeLane Heising is Professor of Industrial, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Iowa State University of Science and Technology. Prior to this appointment, she was Professor of Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston(1984-93), and Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)(1980-84). She also served as Visiting Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Florida(1990-1991) on her sabbatical leave. She served a second term as an elected member of the national Board of Directors (BoD) of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) during 1992-1998.

Professor Heising received her PhD degree from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering in June 1978. She received an MS degree in Nuclear Engineering, also from Stanford University, in June 1975. She received a BA degree in Applied Physics in June 1974 from the University of California, San Diego. Prof. Heising grew up in San Diego, but travelled extensively in her childhood as a result of her father being a career naval officer. She spent three years in Naples, Italy, for example, attending grades 1-3, and has lived in Newport News, Virginia, Poughkeepsie, New York, while visiting Minneapolis, Minnesota and Bismarck, North Dakota the homes of her grandparents.

Professor Heising received graduate research support from the ISU Electric Power Research Center (EPRC) for the past several years. More than twenty IMSE graduate students have completed their master work under her supervision.  The central thrust of the EPRC work has been to assist nuclear and coal-fired power plants to implement statistical process control (SPC) for improved operations and maintenance. The power plants include the Ft. Calhoun nuclear power plant operated by Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), the Neal South coal-fired plant operated by MidAmerican Energy Company near Sioux City, Iowa, and the Rock River and Columbia coal-fired plants operated by Alliant Corp in Wisconsin.

Professor Heising was involved in the Africa-USA Manufacturing Conferences sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) serving on the international program committee with Prof. Pius J. Egbelu, former chair of the ISU IMSE department. She chaired a session and her doctoral student, Ms. Kim Mertz, presented a paper jointly co-authored with Dr. Heising, in August, 1996 in Accra, Ghana at the third Africa-USA conference. Dr. Heising chaired a session at the fourth Africa-USA conference at the University of Pittsburgh in August, 1997. She also assisted in the meeting arrangements for the fifth Africa-USA manufacturing conference held in 1999.

Professor Heising took a sabbatical leave during 1999-2000 at the Department of Energy (DOE) in Washington DC in the Office of Nuclear Energy.  She held the position of Acting Team Leader for Nuclear Power Analysis (NE-20).

Professor Heising has been awarded the 1987 Young Scholar Award from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), an NSF Special Seminar Award in 1981, and the best paper award for her doctoral research from the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) in 1978.

Her most recent publications in engineering journals and international conferences include the following (see vita).

Related Papers

Heising, C. D. and Steinfelds, E.V.,“Secure Reactor Infrastructures:  Power Plants and Research Reactors”, Proceedings of the IIE Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, May 20-24, 2006.

Heising, C. D. and Steinfelds, E.V.,  “Secure Energy Infrastructures:  Nuclear Power Plant Security”,Proceedings of the 14th Biennial Topical Meeting of the American Nuclear Society Radiation Protection and Shielding Division,
Carlsbad, New Mexico, April 2-6, 2006.

Heising, C. D. and Steinfelds, E., "Secure Energy Infrastructures: Nuclear Power Plant Security", Proceedings of the 14th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference, March 21-25, 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii.