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Faculty

Karlene Hoo

 

Karlene Hoo

Karlene A. Hoo

Karlene.Hoo@ttu.edu

 

 

Professor
Interim Vice President of Research
Co-director Process Control &
Optimization Consortium 

Department of Chemical Engineering 
Texas Tech University 
Mail Stop 3121 
Lubbock, TX 79410 
ChE 806.742.4079 
OVPR 806.742.3905

Associated website: PCOC: www.depts.ttu.edu/che/research/pcoc/home.php

Personal Information:
Dr. Hoo's programs are focused on the fundamental modeling of chemical and biochemical continuous and batch systems, reduced-order models; model-based and adaptive control; chemometrics and multivariate analysis; and autonomous/embedded control. After receiving her PhD from Notre Dame Dr. Hoo worked for the Exxon Chemical Co. (NJ) and then joined the DuPont Chemical Co (DE) in 1988. At Dupont she worked on modeling and control of wet chemical and fiber processes. For her work she received two Dupont Silver Awards for Engineering Excellence and a Creative Innovation Award for her work on multivariate statistical analysis.

Dr. Hoo joined academia in 1994 in the department of Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina (USC) where she taught senior level and graduate level courses in systems design, dynamic systems, controls, and optimiztion. She joined the faculty at TTU in 1999 as an Associate Professor and promptly introduced two new courses at the grauate level on linear control theory and model-based/predictive control theory with applications. Dr. Hoo is the recipient of a USC Mortar Board award for teaching excellence in 1999, the Dow Outstanding New Faculty award for research excellence in 1998, and a TTU Halliburton award for teaching excellence in 2000. She is the recipient of several NSF awards including: CAREER, Research Equipment Grant, Career Advancement Award, and CCLI. Other funding sources include NASA, TTUHSC, NSF Engineering Center MCEC, and various industries.

Dr. Hoo was also the department's graduate advisor from 1999 - Fall 2004; college of engineering's graduate representative on the Gradute Council 1999- 2004; co-director of TTU Process Control and Optimization Consortium (PCOC) 1999- present; faculty senate, and currently she is the Associate Dean of Research for the college of engineering.

Dr. Hoo's major research programs include: transition and adaptive control, model-order reduction of distributed parameter systems, chemometrics/mutlivariate statistical analysis, autonmous/embedded control, the integration of process design with control, optimization, and biofluidic flow as it affects cardiovascular physiology. Theoretical, experimental and and applied research are done in these areas.

Dr. Hoo currenty has five Ph.D. students (www.depts.ttu.edu/che/research/pcoc/grad_students.php) and her research has been funded by companies such as NASA JSC, Dow, Dupont, Tembec, and ConocoPhillips. She has over 50 refereed publications, 3 book chapters, and over 37 peer reviewed conference proceedings.

She has been elected to the American Automatic Control Council as Workshop Chair and is an Associate Editor of the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation (ISA) Transactions and IEEE Control Systems Magazine (CSM). Dr. Hoo will be the Workshop Chair for the 2007 American Automatic Control Conference in July in New York City, NY and the ACOS organizer for the ISA 2006 EXPO in Houston, TX in October.