people

Juan Chala

Juan is from Bogotá, Colombia, where he completed undergraduate and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering. A Fulbright scholar, he moved to North Carolina to pursue a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research focuses on understanding the resilience of educational systems.

Beyond the lab

Throughout college, everyone called Juan by his last name—to the point that some classmates never learned his first name. Raleigh was also the first place he experienced four distinct seasons.

Caroline Folsom

Caroline is a Ph.D. student in Operations Research at NC State University. She earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Christopher Newport University and a Master of Operations Research from NC State. Her research focuses on access to essential services before and after natural disasters.

Beyond the lab

Caroline enjoys spending time with friends, watching the Carolina Hurricanes, and trying new foods. Her cat has extra toes on every paw, and Caroline will take any opportunity to catapult a beached jellyfish back into the ocean.

Camryn Deames

Camryn is an Air Force officer from Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 2021 and is pursuing graduate study at NC State University.

Beyond the lab

Camryn enjoys tennis and running and is learning to ski. She has completed more than 350 free-fall skydives.

Elizabeth Harris

Elizabeth is a Ph.D. student from Simpsonville, South Carolina. She earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Furman University. She is especially interested in teaching and hopes to become a professor after graduation.

Beyond the lab

Elizabeth loves music, mathematics, science, and learning new things. She also loves to sing and has participated in collegiate a cappella for five years.

Shakhawath Hossain

Shakhawath is a Ph.D. student in Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State University. Originally from Bangladesh, he completed his undergraduate degree in Industrial and Production Engineering at Khulna University of Engineering & Technology.

Beyond the lab

Shakhawath enjoys football, television series, and a good round of cards. He may also spend more time planning how to be productive than actually being productive.

Suyash Sapre

Born in Boston, Suyash moved to India at age two before returning to the United States to study Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State. He is especially interested in operations research, supply chains, and the mathematical systems behind how retail networks make decisions under uncertainty. His work asks how optimization, data, and strategy can make everyday systems more resilient—from getting products to stores efficiently to handling disruptions and returns.

Beyond the lab

Suyash has refereed more than 750 soccer games. He also likes eating raw onions when no one is watching.

Greta Perez

Greta is an undergraduate researcher at NC State University.

Benjamin Lake

Benjamin is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and has Costa Rican roots. He is the first person in his family to pursue a STEM degree and is completing a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State. His research in humanitarian logistics uses natural-language processing, machine learning, and rule-based methods to identify patterns in disaster-response data.

Beyond the lab

Benjamin lived in Costa Rica for two years and attended third and fourth grade there—including during Costa Rica’s historic 2014 World Cup run. He also knows his way around basic car maintenance.

Ben Rachunok, Ph.D.

Ben Rachunok is an assistant professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State University and leads the Sustainable and Resilient Systems Lab. His research studies communities as interconnected infrastructure, social, economic, and governance systems, with the goal of making them more sustainable, resilient, and equitable in the face of climate change and natural hazards.

His group combines optimization, data science, machine learning, and simulation to quantify risk, predict impacts, and improve decisions about adaptation, preparedness, and recovery. A central theme of this work is closing the climate resilience gap by identifying and reducing the disproportionate burdens of extreme events.

Education & experience

• Postdoctoral research, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
• Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, Purdue University
• B.S., Industrial & Systems Engineering, NC State University
• Alumnus, Center for Computing Research, Sandia National Laboratories

Beyond the lab

Ben grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. He races bikes, plays piano, and enjoys finding reasons to explore new buildings around campus.

Robert Smith

Robert is from Durham, North Carolina. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of North Carolina and earned his Ph.D. in Operations Research from NC State University in 2026.

Beyond the lab

Robert enjoys sports.

Yamil Essus

Yamil was born in Chile and studied Industrial Engineering at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels. His interests include software, computer science, and research at the intersection of the two.

Beyond the lab

Yamil is increasingly interested in strategy games—turn-based, real-time, board games, and political thought experiments alike. He designed and built the keyboard he uses every day, so he has no one else to blame for its shortcomings. He also grew up in a coastal city that is not a beach city.