The National Science Foundation sponsors The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Grants to promising junior faculty members. This is to promote them to become leaders in their fields and to accelerate their successes.

Two Purdue Industrial Engineering Alumni, Dr. Ye Chang, University of Akron, for work in Understanding Electroplasticity in Metals for Advanced Manufacturing and Dr. Dong Lin, Kansas State University, for work in Bio-inspired Manufacturing of High Strength, High Toughness Metal-Graphene Composites, both received this honor in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Both alumni trained in Purdue Industrial Engineering Professor Gary Cheng's team. 

"This is quite the honor for our alumni. It speaks well of the training they received under Dr. Cheng and in the Purdue IE classrooms. The school is proud of their exceptional achievements thus far and wish them continued success in their academic careers," states Dr. Abhijit Deshmukh, The James J. Solberg Head and Tompkins Chair of Systems, School of Industrial Engineering.