About
Erick C. Jones Jr. is an assistant professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering department and an affiliate of the Resource and Energy Engineering program at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he founded the Sustainable and Efficient Allocation of Resources (SEAR) Lab and directs the RFID and Auto-ID Deployment (RAID) Laboratory.
His work focuses on energy and critical mineral systems — studied end to end and back, from extraction through manufacturing, deployment, and monitoring to end-of-life recovery and back to materials. He is currently applying that toolkit to problems as varied as systems engineering for Navy electrical power systems, smart-trap technology to help the USDA combat screwworms, and RFID-powered naloxone tracking networks addressing the opioid epidemic.
He believes societies thrive or struggle on the infrastructure they build, and that infrastructure is never only physical — it spans three inseparable layers: the physical systems that move energy and materials, the digital systems that make those flows visible and optimizable, and the institutional systems of policy, incentives, and allocation that decide who benefits. Energy and resources are the foundation, because how a society allocates them determines what everything else can be built upon.
He is a licensed Professional Engineer. He spent several years in the oil and gas, engineering design and manufacturing, and HVAC industries. During that time he traveled the world and saw how the absence of basic infrastructure — clean water, electricity, climate control, internet, banking — constrains quality of life for most of the world’s population. That motivated research to improve access to sustainable resources and economic opportunity where physical infrastructure is the obstacle, which became the SEAR Lab.
Community and service
Jones has published on racial disparities in energy access and the lived experiences of Winter Storm Uri in partnership with the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, contributes to the IEEE Task Force on Equity and Energy Justice, and served on the City of Austin’s Sustainable Buildings Taskforce. He led the Green Warriors pilot — a partnership with the City of Dallas and Southern Dallas Progress CDC — that weatherized low-income homes while training community members as a certified clean energy workforce. He supports non-profits like Green Careers Texas and Powerhouse Texas, advises student organizations, and participates in K–12 outreach like the Fort Worth Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
Education
- Ph.D., Operations Research and Industrial Engineering — The University of Texas at Austin
- M.S., Operations Research and Industrial Engineering — The University of Texas at Austin
- B.S., Chemical Engineering (Petroleum Engineering minor) — Texas A&M University
NSF NRT, DOE FACES, GEM, and Mickey Leland Energy Fellow. He currently serves as a director of IISE’s Energy Systems Division.
He is a native Texan who has traveled all habitable continents with only a backpack.