Fred Livingston once walked NC State’s campus as an engineering student. Today, he teaches future Wolfpack engineers in those same halls. Moreover, his work now earns national recognition.
Livingston, an associate teaching professor in NC State’s Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, recently received the Manufacturing and Design Division’s Outstanding Teaching Award from the Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineers. The award recognizes educators who make lasting contributions to manufacturing and design education.
However, Livingston’s teaching reaches far beyond traditional lectures.
Instead, he brings the factory of the future directly into the classroom.
In Livingston’s courses, students create virtual versions of factory systems, program automated equipment and train artificial intelligence tools. Meanwhile, they connect machines and sensors to live monitoring systems. As a result, students gain hands-on experience with technologies already transforming global manufacturing.
That approach gives students more than technical knowledge. It also gives them confidence before internships, research projects and full-time careers.
“Students do not merely study manufacturing systems,” wrote Shu-Cherng Fang in Livingston’s nomination letter. “They build digital twins, deploy machine learning models for process monitoring, design flexible automation cells, and develop decision-support dashboards.”
For many students, those experiences feel closer to industry work than a typical classroom assignment.
Livingston’s Smart Manufacturing and Digitalization course combines robotics, smart factory communication systems and artificial intelligence into one learning environment. Additionally, students analyze live production data and build systems that track factory performance in real time.
Consequently, students leave the course with experience using tools already shaping advanced manufacturing careers.
Livingston believes engineering education must evolve alongside technology. Therefore, he continuously updates his courses to reflect changes in smart manufacturing, robotics and AI-driven systems.
His influence also extends beyond the classroom.
Livingston mentors graduate and undergraduate students across engineering disciplines. Meanwhile, many students continue their projects through research, internships and industry opportunities. His work also supports NC State’s Center for Additive Manufacturing and Logistics by preparing students for advanced manufacturing research and workforce needs.
Students consistently praise Livingston’s dedication and accessibility. One student described him as “one of the most invested instructors I’ve had here at NC State.” Another student said the course taught “extremely applicable skills for smart manufacturing.”
Although Livingston now teaches advanced manufacturing systems, his own story started as an NC State student. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the university. Eventually, he returned to help prepare the next generation of Wolfpack engineers.
Today, Livingston continues helping students prepare for a rapidly changing industry. At the same time, he shows how NC State faculty connect classroom learning with real-world innovation.
For alumni, his work reflects NC State’s growing leadership in advanced manufacturing and engineering education. For students, it offers a glimpse into the future careers they may soon enter.
And for Livingston, the future factory is not a distant vision. Instead, it already exists inside his classroom.