Purdue IISE partners with 2 Latin American institutions

Photo of Purdue IISE members meeting with ITCR reps
Purdue IISE members discussed future IISE-ITCR collaboration: (l to r) Prof. Diogenes Alvarez Solorzano, past IISE officers Annika Mabe and Megan Shevelson, current IISE officers Shivane Jetley and Patrick Stuff, and IISE advisor Barrett Caldwell.
Professor Barrett Caldwell and the Purdue Chapter of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE) are planning two initiatives to build Latin American partnerships in the coming year.

On May 18, prior to the start of the IISE Annual Meeting in Orlando, Caldwell and a team of four current and former officers of Purdue IISE met with faculty and students from two Latin American universities.

Discussions with a faculty member from the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (ITCR; Cartago, Costa Rica) outlined opportunities for chapter partnerships and new ITCR initiatives in systems engineering. An opportune meeting with students from the Universidad de los Andes (Bogota, Colombia) identified additional opportunities for IISE and the Purdue Systems Collaboratory to reach out more broadly to Latin American universities and professional IISE chapters.

The team hopes that these collaborative planning meetings will also increase the chapter's visibility and influence in preparation for the IISE Great Lakes Student Chapter conference 2021, to be held at the Purdue West Lafayette campus. The theme will be "Systems are Everywhere".