Moving from discovery to innovation is one of the greatest challenges—and opportunities—for researchers and innovators. Too often, promising ideas stall before reaching real-world impact. This session explores how to bridge that gap by reframing discovery as the foundation for innovation. We will distinguish between discovery and innovation, highlight the role of use-inspired research, and introduce practical frameworks for assessing innovation readiness—technology maturity, stakeholder needs, business models, and partnerships. Case examples will illustrate how research can evolve into solutions that address pressing societal challenges. Participants will leave with guiding questions, strategies, and resources to help them navigate the journey from lab to marketplace or community. Above all, this session emphasizes a mindset shift: advancing knowledge is essential but applying that knowledge to create value is what drives lasting impact.

Dr. Rathindra (Babu) DasGupta is a highly accomplished professional with a diverse background spanning academia, industry, and government. Currently an independent consultant and part-time Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) outreach specialist with the University of Michigan, he previously dedicated a decade to the National Science Foundation (NSF). At the NSF, he served as a program director, overseeing key programs such as SBIR, I/UCRC, and I-Corps™, within the division of industrial innovation and partnerships. His industry experience includes leadership roles as chief scientist at the CONTECH division of SPX Corporation and as technical director at Meta Mold, Amcast Industrial Corporation. Before his work in industry, he held various professorships at institutions including the Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Madison, and Western Michigan University. A recipient of numerous accolades, he was named an NAI Fellow in 2013, received the Herman H. Doehler Award, earned the Raymond D. Peters Endowed Professorship, and a Certificate of Commendation from the Minister of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea for outstanding contributions to technology commercialization.  He has five patents and has authored numerous publications, solidifying his reputation as a leader in technology commercialization and innovation.

We study Eratosthenes sieve as a discrete dynamic system. At each stage of the sieve there is a cycle of gaps among the remaining candidate primes or p-rough numbers. These cycles were identified by Polignac in 1849. We have identified a 3-step recursion that produces the next cycle of gaps from the current one. This recursion across the cycles of gaps defines a discrete dynamic system. We are able to produce exact models for the relative populations of gaps and constellations of gaps across all stages of Eratosthenes sieve. These models align with Hardy & Littlewood’s 1923 estimates. The models of the relative populations yield estimates of the populations of gaps among primes. Samples from the gaps among primes agree with these estimates to first order.

Dr. Fred B. Holt studied combinatorics under Vic Klee and Branko Grünbaum at the University of Washington. He has worked in industry and with startup companies, contributing technical innovations, operational efficiencies, and data-driven strategic planning. Dr. Holt continues to pursue a few challenges in pure mathematics, including the distribution of prime numbers. 

The PhD journey is a pivotal experience, marked by significant decisions and challenges that shape both academic and professional futures. In this keynote talk, we first talk about Dr. Silvestri’s path towards interdisciplinary research. Specifically, we discuss challenges and lessons learned while transitioning from pure networking research to cyber-physical systems applied to various multi-disciplinary domains, such as smart energy systems and smart agriculture. Subsequently, we delve into the critical aspects of a successful PhD journey, beginning with practical tips for success in both your PhD and your future career and how to avoid common pitfalls that many PhD students encounter. Among these challenges, we will discuss how to deal with paper rejections as well as with the impostor syndrome, a prevalent issue in academia, often undermining confidence and mental health. We will explore strategies to understand how success is achieved in the world of academia and help overcome the feelings of insecurity at the basis of this syndrome.

Simone Silvestri is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2010 from the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Dr. Silvestri's research is funded by several national and international agencies such as NIFA, NATO and the NSF, and he received the NSF CAREER award in 2020. He published more than 90 papers in international journals and conferences. He served in the organizing committee of several international conferences including as General Co-Chair of IEEE ICNP, Technical Program Co-Chair of IEEE SECON, IEEE SmartComp, ACM ICDCN, and IEEE DCOSS. He serves on the Editorial Board of several journals and received the Excellent Editor Award from IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management and Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing. He also served in the Technical Program Committee of more than 100 conferences. In 2023, Dr. Silvestri launched a YouTube channel, CSMentor, which now has almost 2000 subscribers from all over the world and more than 100,000 views. On CSMentor, Dr. Silvestri provides mentoring advice to computer science and engineering students who are stepping into the world of research and education to guide them in more successfully navigating the world of academia.

Data is one of the most valuable assets for industrial businesses such as electricity generation and delivery industry. It is known today that businesses increasingly prefer data-driven decision-making to intuition-based decision-making, which probably accounts for why the data analytics market is growing at a compound annual rate of nearly 30%. It is challenging to analyze oceans of unstructured data. AI and machine learning (ML) technologies will allow businesses to analyze these unstructured data in a smarter and faster way. These technologies can also discover patterns and trends in structured data that are not easily observable. Furthermore, the volume of this data is so vast it causes a major strain on traditional (including AI/ML) models of computing where everything is controlled and analyzed centrally.

New frameworks and methodologies are needed to turn data into insight, technologies into strategy and opportunities into value and responsibility, and bring micro-analytics closer to the end-customer. In addition, predictive and prescriptive analytics should be adaptive, catering for decision-making based on real-time data with an extremely high degree of accuracy. In short, intelligent data analytics and data-driven approaches is the new oil, but one needs a powerful engine to extract, refine and harness it efficiently. This seminar will present a distributed computational framework (/engine) for intelligent data analytics and data-driven modeling via cellular computational networks (CCNs) and graphs. Several case studies of predictive and/or prescriptive analytics with CCNs in smart grid operations and management will be presented.

Dr. G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy is the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University. He is the Founder and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory. Dr. Venayagamoorthy received his PhD and MScEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, South Africa.  He received his BEng degree with a First-Class Honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Nigeria. Dr. Venayagamoorthy holds an MBA degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Clemson University, USA.

Dr. Venayagamoorthy’s research interests are in the development and innovation of artificial intelligence, power systems and smart grid technologies. He is an inventor of technologies for scalable computational intelligence for complex systems and dynamic stochastic optimal power flow. He has published ~ 600 refereed technical articles which are cited over 23,000 times with a h-index of 70 and i10-index of > 300. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has given over 500 invited technical presentations including several keynotes and plenaries in over 40 countries to date.  Dr. Venayagamoorthy has been ranked by Elsevier/Stanford University among the Top 26,000 scientists worldwide across all fields and in the top 0.1% worldwide in the fields of energy and AI in four consecutive years.

Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Fellow of the IEEE, IET (UK), the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) and Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and a Senior Member of the International Neural Network Society (INNS). He is the Editor of the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), Industry Applications Society (IAS) and Industrial Electronics Society (IES). He is also a Member of the Board of Governors and the Vice-President for Industry Relations of the INNS.

A recent symposium under the joint auspices of the National Science and Technology Council Subcommittees on Advanced Manufacturing and Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence has produced the outline of a strategy for achieving resilient manufacturing ecosystems through artificial intelligence, https://www.nist.gov/publications/towards-resilient-manufacturing-ecosystems-through-artificial-intelligence-symposium .  That strategy emphasizes the potential to harvest network effects by gathering, classifying, and aggregating manufacturing data at national scale.  Similar models have transformed other industries in which the United States now leads the world but runs counter to the prevailing manufacturing culture, which emphasizes implementing proprietary solutions on the factory floor and keeping information close.  That orientation exaggerates the importance of explicit domain knowledge and ignores the potential of AI methods to extract the implicit manufacturing expertise incorporated in the billions of parts that manufacturers are producing and have previously produced.  It can also provide AI entrepreneurs an opportunity to adapt transformational business models successfully applied in other industries to the $2 trillion per year US manufacturing sector.   The talk will illustrate how an AI-driven manufacturing service infrastructure might operate.

Dr. Bruce Kramer is a graduate of MIT (S.B., S.M., Ph.D) and has served on the faculties of Mechanical Engineering of MIT and George Washington University.  He is currently the Senior Advisor in the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation of the National Science Foundation, coordinating NSF’s participation in the National Advanced Manufacturing Program and co-leading the preparation of the 2014, 2018 and 2022 National Strategic Plans for Advanced Manufacturing by the National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Advanced Manufacturing.  Dr. Kramer previously directed NSF’s Divisions of Design, Manufacture and Industrial Innovation and Engineering Education and Centers.  He co-founded Zoom Telephonics of Boston, a producer of communications products marketed under the Zoom and Motorola brands, holds three U.S. patents, and is a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and an International Fellow of the School of Engineering of the University of Tokyo.  He has received the F.W. Taylor Medal of CIRP, the ASME Blackall Award, and the R.F. Bunshah Medal of the ICMC for his contributions to manufacturing research and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest honorary award granted by the NSF.

This talk goes through some of the experiences that Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi gained while serving at NSF as a program director.  It will also cover some of the inner workings of the NSF ERC (Engineering Research Center) program.

Mehdi Ferdowsi joined Missouri S&T in 2004.  He is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, interim associate dean of research for the college of engineering and computing, and an ISC investigator.  From 2020 to 2022, he served at NSF as a program director at the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC).  His research interests are in the areas of power electronics, energy storage, smart grid, vehicular technology, and wide bandgap devices.  He was a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in 2007. 

This talk will address two projects funded by the Department of Energy.  One was focused on education and workforce development.  The other is currently active, "Enabling Extreme Fast Charging with Energy Storage."  DOE projects pose unique challenges, both in obtaining the funding and in executing the project.  These challenges will be discussed along with some strategies that have been successful.

Dr. Jonathan Kimball is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, an ISC investigator, and the director of the Center for Research on Energy and the Environment.  He has roughly ten years of industry experience at Motorola, Baldor, and a start-up company (SmartSpark Energy Systems).  He joined Missouri S&T in 2008 after completing his doctoral students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Kummer Institute Center for Advanced Manufacturing has been founded for the express purpose of carrying out two distinct missions:

1. to promote economic development for Rolla and Southern Missouri through the location of Missouri manufacturing companies and their employees within the Missouri Protoplex (the future home of KICAM) to carry out advanced manufacturing research and development; and
2. to increase S&T research across the university by co-locating faculty with manufacturers within the Protoplex to carry out research in manufacturing and new product development in cooperation with these companies.

KICAM will carry out its mission with industrial-sized equipment and will conduct research in the TRL 4–6 range. The focus of KICAM will be to promote research in support of existing S&T research centers. The Missouri Protoplex building is a 217,000 square foot building with 80,000 square feet of manufacturing high bay space. Early thinking for programming for KICAM and the Missouri Protoplex building is currently under discussion, but will be decided by June 2022.

Dr. Richard Billo has recently accepted the position as founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Advanced Manufacturing and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Missouri S&T. In this role, Billo’s intention is to co-locate S&T faculty with Missouri manufacturers for the purpose of advancing economic development and manufacturing research for the region. Previously, he served as associate vice president for research, associate dean for engineering research, and department head of industrial and manufacturing engineering at the University of Notre Dame, University of Texas at Arlington, and Oregon State University, respectively. Billo has also held the position as head of the editorial board for the Journal of Manufacturing Processes and the Journal of Manufacturing Systems. He has been recognized by his peers through awarding of the Outstanding Faculty Award and Whiteford Faculty Fellowship. He has five issued patents from which were issued four licenses to industry for his research in manufacturing and information systems, and has published over 100 research articles.

Established in 1984, the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) program was created to build complex research centers that emphasize system aspects of engineering with strong industrial collaboration and contain a strong education component. Successive generations of ERCs have kept these fundamental principles while increasing diversity and inclusion, an innovation ecosystem, and stressing convergent research.

This talk will present the speaker's experience on the leadership team of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management system (FREEDM) from its inception to its graduation. Key aspects of what makes a successful proposal and what some of the pitfalls are will be discussed.

Dr. Bruce McMillin is professor of computer science, director of the Center for Information Assurance and co-director of the Center for Smart Living at Missouri S&T. He leads and participates in interdisciplinary teams in formal methods for fault tolerance and security in distributed embedded systems with and eye towards critical infrastructure protection. His current work focuses on protection for advanced power grid control. His research has been supported by the U.S NSF, AFOSR, DOE, NIST and several Missouri industries. McMillin has authored over 120 refereed papers in international conferences and journals. He is a senior member of the IEEE and member of the IFIPWG 11.0 on Critical Infrastructure Protection. He is a commissioner of the ABET Computing Accreditation Commission, serves as a director of the CSAB accreditation board, and is an IEEE Computer Society distinguished visitor.