From Vietnam Boat Refugee to Reliability Engineering Scholar

Hoang Pham has spent his career trying to ensure that some of the world’s most critical systems don’t fail, including commercial aircraft engines, nuclear facilities, and massive data centers that underpin AI and cloud computing.A professor of industrial and systems engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and a longtime volunteer for IEEE, Pham, an IEEE Life Fellow, is internationally recognized for advancing the mathematical foundations of reliability engineering. His work earned him the IEEE Reliability Society’s Engineer of the Year Award in 2009. He was recognized for helping to shape how engineers model risk in complex, data-rich systems.Hoang PhamEmployerRutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.Job titleProfessor of industrial and systems engineeringMember gradeLife FellowAlma maters Northeastern Illinois University, in Chicago; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and SUNY Buffalo.The discipline that defines his career was forged long before equat