Ferguson named CAREER Award winner

Dr. Scott M. Ferguson, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award, known as the NSF CAREER Award, is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young faculty in science and engineering.

NSF will provide $400,000 in funding over a five-year period to support Ferguson’s research project entitled, “Giving You ‘Almost’ What You Want – Customizing Products Through the Integration of Market Modeling and Engineering Design.”

Ferguson’s project will try to determine whether improving the integration of preference modeling and engineering design can lead to customized products better suited to respond to different markets and changing needs. The idea is to help American manufacturing enterprises identify markets where giving a customer “almost” what they want – through manufacturer personalization and consumer customization  – can deliver value to both customer and firm.

The project will also involve working with high school, undergraduate and graduate students by focusing on the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and systems-level education of current and future engineers.

Ferguson is the founder and head of the System Design Optimization Laboratory (SDO) at NC State. Created in 2008, the SDO Lab advances engineering design theory by interpreting and analyzing system interactions that cause inherent tradeoffs in complex systems.

He received his PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2008 and joined the faculty at NC State the same year.  Ferguson also received his MS and BS degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2004 and 2002, respectively.