The Purdue IISE Student Chapter, advised by Barrett Caldwell, received first place in the inaugural ISE Department and IISE Student Chapter Performance Excellence Award, highlighting the chapter’s continued leadership and engagement within the profession.

 

 

Several Purdue IE faculty members also served in prominent conference leadership positions. Denny Yu served as Program Co-Chair of the conference, while Sivaranjani Seetharaman served as Track Co-Chair for Energy Systems and Reem Khir served as Track Co-Chair for the Facilities Design & Planning Track. Nan Kong held multiple leadership roles, including co-chair of the Data Analytics Competition, co-chair of the Mobile/Web Application Design Competition, and President-Elect of the IISE Operations Research Division.

 

Doctoral student Kamelia Sepanloo, advised by Young-Jun Son, won the 2026 IISE Doctoral Colloquium Three-Minute Thesis Pitch Competition for her research presentation. Donghyun Kim, a PhD student advised by Seokcheon Lee, earned the Operations Research Track Best Paper award for the paper titled "Enhancing Food Delivery Efficiency: Drone Resupply with Conventional Courier Services."

 

 

 

Purdue student Abigail Titus earned second place in the prestigious Jim Barany Student Excellence Award competition, recognizing outstanding achievement and leadership among industrial engineering students.

 

The IE431 capstone design team that took home first place in the Spring IE431 poster session, made up of Grace Moore, Abigail Titus, Li Bahler, Emma Horning, and Henry Gebke, followed up on their previous success and earned fourth place for Outstanding Capstone Senior Design Project. Their project, “Improving Customer Promise Precision Process,” was sponsored by Shutterfly.  In a LinkedIn post by Barrett Caldwell it was noted that team Shutterfly was the only single-semester capstone team in the final four. 

 

 

 

Purdue IE alumni were also recognized for their professional contributions. Sang Won Yoon, currently at Binghamton University, received the Outstanding Global Faculty Advisor Award.

 

In industry recognition, Senthilkumar Thiyagarajan, currently with Medline Industries, received the SEMS Outstanding Management Achievement in Industrial and Systems Engineering Award.

 

The conference also featured another highly attended Purdue IE reception on Sunday evening, bringing together faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends of the program during the 2026 IISE Annual Conference. Special thanks were extended to Leza Dellinger for organizing the event and selecting the venue.