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News & Events

The News and Events Page contains links to the latest information from the RIAC.

The RIAC Journal, published quarterly, is a resource for Reliability, Maintainability, Quality, Supportability and Interoperability for scientists, engineers, and managers alike. The Journal contains news features and technical information in every area covered by the RIAC's charter. All previous RIAC and RAC Journals are available for downloading.

START is one of the Reliability Information Analysis Center's current awareness periodicals. As the name, Selected Topics in Assurance Related Technologies, implies, each START edition provides a "jump-start" on a topic of immediate interest to individuals with an interest in the Relaibility, Maintainability, Quality, Supportability, or Interoperability. In addition to a concise description of the topic and its relevance, each edition includes contacts, bibliographic references, and other sources for further information.


The RIAC at RAMS 2008


Heather Dussault, Ph.D., of the Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC), presented the paper "Harvesting Reliability Data from the Internet."

This paper described the initial design, development, and testing of a tool that harvests reliability data from multiple internet resources. An evaluation corpus of 1,544 URLs is used to assess typical reliability data collection content and challenges and to provide a basis for evaluating data harvesting tool performance and capability growth. Early results show that the ability to handle Portable Document Format (PDF) documents, correctly parse web pages, including significant punctuation marks and number formatting, and to extract data from tables are important in reliability data collection. The results to date show that reliability data is available on the internet, and that automated tools can begin to discover and harvest that information. However, there is much work to do to be able to reliably discover, extract, cluster, and present valid component reliability to users.


David Rose of the Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC), presented a paper on corrosion and organized a panel on the topic.

Over the prior nine months, David Rose, Quanterion Solution's Manager of Advanced Programs, has worked with the organizers of RAMS and alerted them to the opportunity for reliability engineers to play an active role in helping reduce corrosion. He suggested that RAMS sponsor a panel discussion to begin the dialog on how the community could evolve current practices in take advantage of this opportunity. He organized the discussion group and participated on the panel, which was moderated by Dr. Heather Dussault, Research Assistant Professor at the SUNY Institute of Technology. RIAC's Dr. Mohammad Modarres from University of Maryland was also a panel member. David Rose also presented a paper on the same subject.

Learn more about RAMS 2008.


RIAC Researcher Receives Award

Dr. Heather M. B. Dussault

Assistant Research Professor, SUNYIT
Category: Professions


2008 Salute to Outstanding Women

The annual Salute to Outstanding Women recognizes those women who have made a tremendous impact on our communities, who live or work in Oneida or Herkimer Counties, and who have made significant contributions to their professions and communities. Through a competitive process, honorees are selected from an assortment of nominations based on each candidate's accomplishments in her field and commitment to the YWCA's mission.

The Salute to Outstanding women gives our community the opportunity to thank these women for the contributions they have made in the areas of Arts & Communications, Business & Industry, Education, Healthcare, Human & Public Service, Professions, and Racial Justice. The eighth award category is the Unsung Heroine award.

Since 1989, more than 150 women in leadership positions have been honored in front of colleagues, friends and families, while their career achievements are highlighted.
Dr. Heather M. B. Dussault is an Assistant Research Professor in Electrical Engineering at SUNY Institute of Technology (SUNYIT). She also serves as the chair for the Technical Advisory Group for the Department of Defense's Reliability Information Analysis Center RIAC located on the SUNYIT campus.

Heather began her engineering career in nuclear reactor design at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, NY, and has worked at SUNYIT since September 2000, where she has conducted research, taught and developed courses in computer science and electrical engineering. Her current research interests include computer forensics, data mining, and radiation effects on computing system. Previously, she served as a researcher/program manager for numerous electronics, reliability and computing projects for defense systems and applications for the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in Nuclear Engineering and Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has published numerous journal and conference articles. Heather is a Senior Member of the IEEE, is listed in Marquis' Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who Among America's Teachers for 2007-08, and was honored with the SUNYIT Utica/Rome Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 2002 and Mohawk Valley Engineers Executive Council Award for Engineering Professionalism in 1994. She resides in Utica with her husband, Jerry, and their dog, Samantha.