Linda Ann Riley

Linda Ann Riley, PhD presently serves as a Part Time Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern Maine and as an Adjunct Professor of Engineering for the University of New Haven’s graduate program in Engineering and Operations Management. She retired in 2015 from full-time teaching at the School of Engineering, Computing and Construction Management at Roger Williams University (RWU) where she worked for twelve years. At RWU, she held the positions of Associate Dean, Engineering Program Coordinator and Professor of Engineering. She has over thirty years of teaching experience in both engineering and business and is the recipient of a number of corporate, university and national excellence in teaching awards. Dr. Riley is the author/co-author of over 100 articles, technical and research reports, and book contributions. Her area of scholarly interest involves the optimization of stochastic systems using discrete-event simulation and evolutionary algorithms.

In addition, Dr. Riley is an active researcher with notable success in grant writing, grant and contract management, creating collaborative research partnerships and research administration. She is responsible for developing and writing over 150 competitive research/consulting proposals and has been awarded or procured contracts for clients in excess of twenty-five million dollars. Prior to her position at Roger Williams University, Dr. Riley spent 17 years at New Mexico State University (NMSU) holding positions as Director of the University’s Center for Economic Development Research and Assistance, Assistant Director for the Center for Business Research and Director of the Advanced Modeling and Simulation Laboratory. She also held faculty positions in both the Colleges of Business and Engineering at NMSU.

In addition to teaching and research, Dr. Riley is active in consulting. She has extensive consulting experience in organizational productivity/process improvement implementing six sigma, lean, system dynamics, simulation and optimization approaches. She has extensive experience in the design, communication and implementation of strategic and economic development plans. Also, she worked for a number of years with the National Laboratories on technology commercialization strategies.

Dr. Riley is actively involved in attracting women and under-represented groups into science, engineering, mathematics and technology fields. She is a national speaker on the challenges of attracting women and under-represented groups into these fields and served as Chair of the American Society for Engineering Education Northeastern Section and National Chairperson of American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Diversity Committee. Dr. Riley is a member of several professional business and engineering societies and has served as reviewer and/or editorial board member for business, healthcare and engineering journals.