Junfeng Ma is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at UCF. He joined UCF in August 2026. Prior to joining UCF, he spent 10 years at Mississippi State University, where he advanced from assistant professor to full professor and received early promotion to full professor in 2026. He earned his dual-title doctorate in industrial engineering and operations research from Pennsylvania State University in 2016.

Ma’s research focuses on the design and optimization of complex systems, with applications in logistics and transportation, advanced design and manufacturing, and human–AI/robot teaming. To date, he has secured more than $12 million in competitive research funding from federal agencies, including NSF, NIH, DOE, USDA, DOD, EPA and DOT. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles with his students and collaborators in leading journals. Ma has received numerous research and teaching honors, including being named a 2025 Mid-Career Scholar Award Finalist, 2023 Academy of Distinguished Teachers Award at Mississippi State University and receiving more than 10 Best Paper Awards from IISE and ASME. He is an active member of IISE, ASME, INFORMS, IEEE and ASEE.

• Abdolazimi, O.* and Ma, J. (2026). Enhancing Supply Chain Resilience Under Disaster by Integrating Mobile Additive Manufacturing and Truck-Drone Delivery. Omega-The International Journal of Management Science, 142, 103532, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2026.103532.


• Gunay, E.E., Ramadani, R., Mundiwala, M., Kashef, M.*, Ma, J., Hu, C., Kremer, P., and Kremer, G.O. (2026). TRIZ-Based Design Improvement for Facilitating Transmission Control Unit Remanufacturing. ASME-Journal of Mechanical Design, https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4071592.


• Abdolazimi, O*, Duan, G., Ma, J., and Wang, J. (2025). Integrated Shipborne Drone System for Floating Marine Debris Detection and Management under Oceanic Environmental Constraints. Computers & Industrial Engineering, http:// doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2025.111264.


• Wang, Y., Ma, J., Pan, Z., and Wang, J. (2025). Develop and Evaluate Intelligent Immersive Virtual Reality Educational Tool in Gerontological Nurse Workforce. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, http://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2025.2502967.


• Kashef, A.*, Wang, Y., Assafi, M.N., Ma, J., Wang, J., Jones, J.A., and Thiamwong, L. (2025). Developing A Novel AI Enabled Extended Reality System for Real-Time Automatic Facial Expression Recognition and System Performance Evaluation, Advanced Engineering Informatics, 65, 103207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2025.103207.


• Abdolazimi, O*, and Ma, J. (2024). An Integrative Production-Delivery System with Mobile Additive Manufacturing and Truck-Drone Delivery Considering Optimal Printing Sequence and Preferred Delivery Time Window, International Journal of Production Research, https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2024.2354827.