December 2025
Video Cover Photo - Fall 25 Update with Dr. Son
U.S. News & World Report Rankings 2025-26
 
| TOP NEWS
Center for AI & Robotics Excellence in Medicine (CARE) Launched

The Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering is proud to announce the launch of the Center for AI & Robotic Excellence (CARE) in Medicine, a new research initiative based in Indianapolis, led by Juan Wachs, James H. and Barbara H. Greene Professor, Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering. 

Building on Purdue?s strengths in AI, robotics, and healthcare, CARE will unite researchers, clinicians, and industry partners to advance innovations in embodied AI, surgical robotics, and autonomous labs, by establishing a collaborative hub focused on transforming clinical performance, improving patient outcomes, and shaping the future of technology-enabled medicine.
 
 
Stephan Biller Named to National Academy of Inventors

Stephan Biller, Harold T. Amrine Distinguished Professor in the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, joins the 2025 Class of NAI fellows, a distinguished group of innovators who have demonstrated an abounding spirit of invention. 


?It is a tremendous honor to be elected to the Academy,? said Biller. ?Periods of rapid technological and economic upheaval always pose a great challenge to societies. My work to innovate around the digital transformation of manufacturing is intended to help bring about a renaissance in American companies? competitiveness on the national and global stage. I am humbled by the NAI?s recognition of this effort.?
 
Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering Welcomes Six New Faculty.

During the '25-'26 academic year the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering has added several new faculty members from a wide variety of backgrounds, adding even more talent to our already strong world-class faculty.

Please welcome:

Abheek Chatterjee; Lecturer (PhD, Texas A&M)
Resilience and Sustainability of System of Systems

Danial Davarnia; Associate Professor (PhD, Florida)
Global Optimization; Transportation and Network Interdiction

Jack Feng; Professor of Engineering Practice (PhD, Iowa)
Quality and Lean 6-Sigma; IISE Fellow

Liwei Jiang; Assistant Professor (PhD, Cornell)
Nonlinear Optimization; Nonsmooth Optimization

Ibukun Philips; Lecturer (PhD, Purdue)
AI-Enabled Systems, Model-Based Systems Engineering

Miaolan Xie; Assistant Professor (PhD, Cornell)
Stochastic Optimization; Data Science
 
 
| ALUMNI NEWS & AWARDS
StrmMusic - Cubitt named CEO and Tompkins Chairman of the Board

StrmMusic, a Brazilian-born "Music Career Accelerator," has appointed Geoff Cubitt (BSIE '92) as CEO of StrmMusic North America and announced plans to open its U.S. headquarters in Chicago's 2112 Creative Industries hub. The company leverages data, AI, financial support, distribution, and label services to help artists grow and sustain their careers.

Supporting this momentum at the highest level is Jim Tompkins, (BSIE '69, MSIE '70, PhD '72) a highly respected figure in both business and academia, who serves as Chairman of StrmMusic?s Board. Tompkins is widely recognized as a visionary in supply chain strategy and digital commerce.
 
Marian Obuseh (PhD '24) and Denny Yu Published "Feasibility of AI for Coaching Surgeons"

Led by PhD graduate Dr. Marian Obuseh, and advised by Associate Professor Denny Yu, this study is the first to show that large language models can be used to coach surgeons on non-technical skills. The article was published in npj Health Systems, a prestigious journal within the Nature Portfolio focused on interdisciplinary innovations in healthcare systems. 
 
Industrial Engineering Leads 38x38 Honorees

The Purdue Engineering 38x38 awards, which celebrate the remarkable achievements of Purdue Engineering alumni under the age of 38, were presented earlier this fall, and the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering racked up a total of 8 honorees. 

Harsh Wardhan Aggarwal (BSIE ?10, MSIE ?12, PhD IE ?18)
Senior Product Manager, Technical at Amazon

Ghiya Al-Haj-Hasan (BSIE ?09)
Chief Commercial Officer ? Middle East and Africa at Honeywell 

Stephanie Bonk (BSIE ?12)
Cofounder and President of Overland AI

Juanita Duque (BSIE ?13)
Cofounder and CEO of Seccuri, Inc

Jeremiah Jones (BSIE ?20)
Senior Digital Supply Chain Manager ? Prime Video at Amazon

Tareq Khalifeh (BSIE ?09)
Cofounder and Managing Director of MASE

Timothy Loescher (BSIE ?13, MSIE ?15)
Head of Insurance Solutions ? North America at Quantexa, Inc

Giovanni Malloy (BSIE ?22)
Chief Data Scientist at Aerospace Technical Services		 38 x 38 Honorees
 
| FACULTY RECOGNITION & AWARDS
Vaneet Aggarwal Named Reilly Professor

The Purdue University Board of Trustees has ratified a named professorship for Vaneet Aggarwal, recognizing his outstanding achievements in research, teaching, and leadership within the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering. Aggarwal now holds the prestigious title of Reilly Professor of Industrial Engineering.

His work focuses on supervised learning, reinforcement learning, large language models, quantum machine learning and their applications in networking, transportation, robotics, healthcare, and biomedical.

The Reilly Professor of Industrial Engineering professorship honors Vincent P. Reilly, a 1922 Purdue alumnus and founder of Illinois Gear and Machine Co. The endowment was created in 1969.
 

Highlighting advances at the intersection of computing and intelligence, the 2025 Purdue Quantum AI (PQAI) Symposium hosted by Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering brought together leading researchers, students, and industry professionals for two days (October 23?24) of discussions on the fast-emerging convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
 
Hua Cai Works with Envision Center to Help Students Visualize Climate Change
 
It's one thing to hear statistics about how climate change and resulting sea level rise will impact our world, and it's another thing entirely to step into an immersive virtual reality environment that lets you visualize those effects.

That's the principle behind a collaboration between Hua Cai, the Thomas and Jane Schmidt Rising Star Associate Professor in the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering and the School of Sustainability Engineering and Environmental Engineering, and the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC)?s Envision Center.
 
Bob Kenley Awarded with INCOSE's Highest Honor

For nearly 30 years, Charles ?Bob? Kenley, Professor of Practice at the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, has been building bridges, connecting disciplines, fostering communities, and shaping how the world approaches complex engineering challenges through systems thinking. His decades of dedication to advancing the field have now earned him the International Council on Systems Engineering's (INCOSE) highest honor: the Founder's Award.
 
RAMMP: Purdue joins $41.5 million ARPA-H project to advance robotic assistive mobility for people with disabilities

Bradley Duerstock, Professor of Practice in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, and Brandon Pitts, Elliott Sigal Rising Star Associate Professor of the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, will serve as co-principal investigators. The two will focus on integrating an assistive robotic platform that combines innovative hardware and software technologies into transportation systems, enabling people with disabilities to participate more fully in activities of daily living.
 
Wenzhuo Wu PI of NSF Project Aimed at Personalizing Nutrition Through Digital Health
Wenzhuo Wu, Professor of Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, and Guang Lin, Moses Cobb Stevens Professor of Mathematical Sciences, are principal investigators on NOURISH, an NSF-funded grant to develop real-time digital twin technology for personalized nutrition.
 
| STUDENT HONORS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Cora White Named DeRocco Fellow

Cora White, a rising senior in Purdue University's Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, has been selected as one of eight inaugural 2025 DeRocco Fellows. This prestigious advanced manufacturing fellowship empowers future women leaders through mentorship, professional development, and hands-on experience in the industry.
 
 
IE's Celebrate at Scholarship Awards Banquet

The Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering took part in another one of our annual traditions, our scholarship awards banquet.  The evening is an opportunity to celebrate the students and their hard work, while also honoring those who give generously to make these scholarships possible. This year, the school awarded 115 undergraduate scholarships and 23 graduate fellowships and scholarships, recognizing outstanding academic performance, leadership, research, and service.
 

George Youssef Awarded Purdue Student Union Board Pillars of Excellency Award
Industrial Engineering senior George Youssef has been honored with the Purdue Student Union Board (PSUB) Pillars of Excellency Award in the Research and Innovation category, recognizing his outstanding achievements in human factors and healthcare research as well as his wide-ranging involvement across campus.
 
| EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering Well Represented at HFES Aspire in Chicago
Highlighted by Myeongkyu Lee earning a nomination as an iFHE Scholar, the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering was honored with a variety of awards at the 2025 HFES Aspire Conference.  The event also brought together a gathering of many alumni.  
 
Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering Shines at INFORMS 2025 with Multiple Honors

Ana Maria Estrada Gomez earned multiple honors for teaching excellence, and Mario Ventresca's team earned top honors for their paper "Optimal resource allocation to minimize errors when detecting human trafficking" in the Minority Issues Forum Paper Competition.
 
| THE SEMESTER IN PICTURES
Fall '25

Check out the photos from all of the great events that took place this past school year. Students, alumni, faculty, and family are all here in our online photo galleries.
 
Additional News From Fall '25

Check out additional news stories from the Fall of 2025.
 
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