Jun Zhuang named the SRA’s 2023 Distinguished Educator of the Year

By Elizabeth Egan 

Jun Zhuang, the Morton C. Frank Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE), has received the 2023 Distinguished Educator Award from the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).

The annual award recognizes a teacher, author or mentor who has made extensive and ongoing contributions to educating the next generation of risk scientists. The recipients can be nominated by any SRA member and are then chosen by a committee of past SRA presidents.

“Dr. Zhuang is an exceptional teacher has who has provided educational training to hundreds of students in the area of risk analysis and related topics,” said Victor Paquet, chair of ISE. “The impact of his educational accomplishments can be seen in the many achievements and successful job placements of the students who have benefited from his guidance and mentorship.”

Since joining the University at Buffalo in 2008, Zhuang, who is also the ISE director of graduate studies, said he has graduated 15 PhD students, 30 master’s students and worked with over 100 undergraduate students.

“I find great satisfaction in teaching and mentoring a diverse and talented group of students across all levels,” said Zhuang. “Furthermore, the opportunity to collaborate with other esteemed faculty colleagues who possess a wealth of knowledge and intellect is a significant motivator for me. This collective synergy fosters an environment where innovative ideas can flourish and lead to meaningful academic contributions.”

Zhuang said that his childhood fascination with disaster movies ignited a passion to get into homeland security and disaster management.

“My driving force has always been the profound understanding that these fields hold the potential to save lives and mitigate the losses incurred in the face of disasters and hazards,” said Zhuang.

Now, as a professor he gets to pass that passion along to his students, teaching classes on decision analysis, stochastic process and game theory. He also gets to take students for the occasional helicopter ride.

“My most cherished moment from the past year was when I had the incredible opportunity to embark on a solo journey aboard a US Border Patrol helicopter along the Arizona-Mexico border, spending approximately two hours in the skies with two of my PhD students,” said Zhuang. “During our flight, we observed undocumented immigrants on the ground and strived to gain a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies surrounding this complex issue from the diverse perspectives of various stakeholders.”

The trip was part of a collaborative study on the optimal border patrol problem. 

 At UB, Zhuang is also a member of the UB Strategic Strength on Extreme Events: Mitigation and Response, which he said aligns well with his research interests, including operations research game theory and hazard response.

Zhuang was selected as a fellow of the SRA in 2022 and received the Chauncey Starr Distinguished Young Risk Analyst award in 2019. He was presented with the Distinguished Educator Award at the annual SRA conference in December.