Mehdi Dadfarnia is a research engineer in NIST’s Communications Technology Lab performing research in Smart Connected Manufacturing Systems. He is currently using reliability analysis techniques to demonstrate and assess the benefits and risks of using closed box tools and technology for the condition monitoring of manufacturing systems. This effort follows the broader picture of facilitating the adoption of Industry of Things-enabled (IoT-enabled) operations and maintenance of manufacturing systems. Part of his work has culminated in managing and further developing a discrete-event simulation tool for manufacturing processes (Simantha: https://data.nist.gov/od/id/mds2-2530). Mehdi is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he previously received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Systems Engineering.