Student Spotlight: Namkyoung Lee

Name

Namkyoung Lee

Year in Program

5th year

Advisor

Dr. Michael Pecht, Dr. Michael H. Azarian

Research Interests

Machine learning, Vibration analysis, Signal Processing

Dissertation Topic

An Interpretable Neural Network-based Prognostics and Health Management System for Rotating Machinery

What drew you to engineering?

I loved science classes back in high school. I liked new technologies and wanted to know how these technologies work. That drew me to engineering, especially electronics. Although not all the engineering classes were amusing, I could learn how electronics work, and I still love to study engineering to contribute to new technologies.

What made you decide to come to UMD and attend the Reliability Engineering (ENRE) Program?

I took a reliability course during my undergraduate studies. Before I took the course, I hadn't thought about the idea of predicting a lifetime of a product. The idea drew my attention because it solves a very practical problem. I also liked the interdisciplinary concept to solve the problem. When I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in reliability, I had to come to the UMD because the UMD was one of the renowned universities for reliability studies. It offers systematic reliability courses, which helped me study my thesis topic at the beginning.

What do you want people to know about Reliability Engineering that they may not know?

I hope people think reliability engineering is a practical study that impacts our daily lives. I believe reliability engineering is embedded in almost every manufacturing. It provides ideas of how to fulfill and extend the expected lifetimes of manufactured products from smartphones to cars.

What is a fun fact about yourself?

I love electronics! I have three computers that run different OSs: Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu.
Each OS gives different UI experiences, and I like to compare them.

Equally, I like cooking. I keep two knives, four frying pans, and all other utensils in my small room. Every weekend, I spend more than two hours cooking. Lastly, I finished full marathons three times!

Published March 20, 2022