SEED Group research is informed by ideas drawn from multiple disciplines. As such, Dr. Francis teaches courses including ideas from statistics, policy analysis, decision making, and environmental engineering. Courses that Dr. Francis has taught at GWU are listed below.
EMSE6020 Decision Making Under Uncertainty
“Decision Making Under Uncertainty” is a core course for both the M.S. and Ph.D degrees in the EMSE department for all focus areas. This course introduces students to the basic mathematical and theoretical topics consisting decision making under uncertainty. The material in this course draws heavily from influences and topics in the fields of policy analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis, statistical decision theory, artificial intelligence, and mathematical philosophy. Clearly, this course cannot comprehensively cover the theory and applications of decision analysis in one semester. Accordingly, this fall the course will especially emphasize the influences of decision analysis and introductory statistical decision theory. This is an exciting topic with wide applications in many leadership, management, industrial, government, political, and academic spheres of endeavor. I hope that this course will open your mind to many creative and interesting applications and decision opportunities in your personal and professional lives.
EMSE4755/6755 Quality Control and Acceptance Sampling
“Quality Control and Acceptance Sampling” (or, as I have indicated, “Quality Control and Experimental Design”) is a core course for the undergraduate B.S. degree in Systems Engineering and is an elective for the M.S. degree in the Operations Research and Systems Engineering focus areas in the EMSE department. This course introduces students to the basic theoretical topics consisting statistical quality control. The material in this course draws heavily from influences and topics in the fields of statistical decision theory, probability, and mathematical philosophy. Clearly, this course cannot comprehensively cover the theory and applications of quality control and experimental design in one semester. Accordingly, this spring the course will especially emphasize the influences of basic statistical concepts in developing quality control plans, while discussing the design of experiments for process improvement. This is an exciting topic with wide applications in many management and industrial spheres of endeavor. I hope that this course will open your mind to many creative and interesting applications of these topics wherever they might surface.
EMSE 3855 W Critical Infrastructure Systems
This new course is being developed in EMSE for students interested broadly in infrastructure system analysis. Students will undertake a survey of major topics in engineered infrastructure systems, including but not limited to: asset management; environmental impact analysis; input-output life cycle analysis and inoperability modeling; infrastructure risk and reliability analysis; resilience and resistance to natural hazards or service disruptions; and development of infrastructure sustainability metrics.
EMSE 6200 Policy Factors in Environmental Management
Policy Factors in Environmental Management is a survey of important topics at the intersection of economics, political science, science and engineering that may be influential in the outcome of environmental management decisions. The course is designed to assist the scientist or engineer who may find themselves in positions of management of technical activities with influence on environmental outcomes; a technological innovator who seeks to better understand potential market opportunities based on policy factors; and the scientist or engineer who seeks to have a deeper understanding of the role of scientific and technological evidence in the environmental policy process.
EMSE 6750 Stochastic Foundations of Operations Research
Topics in probability theory, stochastic processes, and statistical inference. Foundations of probability, conditional probability and expectation, Poisson processes, Markov chains, and Brownian motion.
SUST 2002 The Sustainable City
This course explores the connection between cities and sustainability. It is a team-taught course for the Sustainability Minor overseen by the GW Office of the Provost, under the Direction of Prof. Kathleen Merrigan, GW Executive Director of Sustainability. This exciting course is taught by Profs. Benton-Short [Geography], Leinberger [Business], Klemek [History], Keeley [Geography], Squires [Sociology], Cleary [Public Health], and myself [Systems Engineering]. We consider sustainability from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives and examine some of the most pressing and critical issues that must be addressed in order to create a sustainable city.
SUST 3096 Community Environmental Air Quality Monitoring
This course is an interdisciplinary course taught with Prof. Amanda Northcross of the Milken School of Public Health. The long-term goal of this course is to develop a community-driven low-cost air quality monitoring network with at least one sensor in each DC neighborhood (37). Each semester's group of students will contribute to the development of this DC-wide low-cost air quality monitoring network that is responsive to community questions and concerns. To achieve this objective, students in this course will work in student-driven groups focusing on community engagement, air quality sensor co-location experiments and deployment, air quality sensor LoRaWAN connectivity and antenna design, and air quality data systems design and management. This course is for students who are passionate about air quality, environmental health, systems thinking, and are self-driven, independent learners.