May 2025

U.S. News & World Report Rankings 2025-26
 
| TOP NEWS

Yih, Tompkins Professor of Industrial Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Yih is the third current Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering faculty member to attain engineering's highest honor, joining Harold T. Amrine Professor in the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering and the Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business Stephan Biller and Distinguished Professor, and John Sutherland, Fehsenfeld Family Head of Environmental and Ecological Engineering (courtesy appointment).

Yih was also honored with election as a senior member to the National Academy of Inventors during the Spring '25 semester. 
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Grid of Tomorrow Consortium Launched

Professors Andrew Liu and Dionysios Aliprantis lead a symposium with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) CEO, Patti Poppe (BSIE '89, MSIE '90) and announced the launch the Grid of Tomorrow Consortium. The consortium will guide and support work to ensure grid resiliency as the nation's utility grid faces major challenges of integrating distributed energy resources, increasing weather threats and demands of AI and transportation.

This major initiative is an academic-industry collaboration with the likes of MISO, PG&E, Tesla, NVIDIA, Amazon, and others to shape a smarter energy future. Liu, Prof. Sivaranjani Seetharaman, and Prof. David Johnson are leaders of the Edwardson school's initiative in Energy and Sustainability and recipients of the Abhi Deshmukh Frontier Teams program.
 

| NEW FACULTY & PROMOTIONS
Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering Welcomes Danial Davarnia, NSF Career Award recipient, this fall.

This fall we are excited to welcome Danial Davarnia as the newest member of our world class faculty!  Davarnia comes to the Edwardson School from Iowa State University as an NSF Career Award recipient.

Davarnia will be joined by Liwei Jiang and Miaolan Xie, both of Cornell University.  The three new professors join our newest Senior Lecturer, Lawrence Crynes, who comes to Purdue with years of industry experience. 
 
 
Faculty Promotions

The Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Behzad Esmaeili has been awarded tenure, and  Associate Professor April Savoy has been promoted, also with tenure. 
 
| ALUMNI NEWS & AWARDS
Outstanding Industrial Engineers

The Edwardson School named five alumni as Outstanding Industrial Engineers. Congratulations to the 2025 Outstanding Industrial Engineer honorees. 

They are:
Venkatesh Alagirisamy; (MSIE '99) Chief Supply Chain Officer; Nike
Jennifer L. Altstadt; (BSIE '89) President & CEO; Sea-Land Chemical Company
Stacey Burr; (BSIE '84) Founder and President; Future Standard Inc
Karen Gibson; (BSIE '86) Former Sergeant at Arms; U.S. Senate
José Alejandro Rojas Pardini; (BSIE '03) Minister of Private Investment; Presidency of Panama
 
Jorge Haddock: Distinguished Engineering Alumni

The College of Engineering honored Jorge Haddock (PhD IE '81) as a Distinguished Engineering Alumni this spring. Haddock has devoted his life to academic education, research, leadership and management, and was honored by the school with an Outstanding Industrial Engineer Award in 2021 for his passion for academic leadership. 

He served as the 12th president of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), which at the time boasted 50,000 students on 11 campuses, 4,000 faculty members and 6,000 employees.

 
Keyvan Esfarjani named Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Keyvan Esfarjani (BSIE '92, MSIE '94), former Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Global Operations Officer, joined Purdue as a Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025 - 2027. Hosted by the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering and the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he brings over 30 years of high-tech leadership to inspire innovation and collaboration across campus.
 
Karen Gibson Honored with 2025 Grace Hopper Award by the National Defense University

The Honorable Karen H. Gibson (BSIE '86) has been a public servant for 37 years, first as an active-duty U.S. Army intelligence officer for 33 years, where she attained the rank of Lieutenant General. She then served as Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate for an additional four years where she worked to rebuild the Capitol's security programs following the January 6th, 2021 attack.

The Grace Hopper Award honors distinguished individuals who are thought leaders in advancing information and cyberspace within the national security community. Gibson was also honored as a 2025 Outstanding Industrial Engineer (see above). 
 
| FACULTY AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Reem Khir Selected for Raymond Corporation's University Research Program

On a typical year, the Raymond Corporation selects a number of projects into their University Research Program. This year, they chose only one. Professor Khir's proposal titled "The Value of Limited Flexibility in Future Logistics Systems" was selected based on its potential to revolutionize the material handling industry. 

The work will provide new insights into the limits and merits of designing scalable, real-time, responsive material handling operations systems that can achieve the perfect balance between operational stability with data-driven, real-time adaptability.
 

The bladder cancer research takes advantage of the striking similarities between invasive bladder cancer in dogs and humans. 

"...The team is using AI tools to analyze images of tumor cells. In the first step, researchers manually label about 50 cells in a tumor image that display recognizable characteristics of cancer, such as abnormal shape or an overly large nucleus. The image, with labeled cells, is fed into an AI program that "learns" to make an accurate prediction about the characteristics of unlabeled cells."
 
XMO Launches Purdue Resiliency Index for Supply Chain Management (PRISMA)

The Purdue Resiliency Index for Supply Chain Management, or PRISMA, was introduced in Indianapolis during the "Strategies for Resilient and Efficient Manufacturing and Supply Chain Symposium"

Dauch Fellows Tom Brush, Professor of Management at the Daniels School of Business, and Hua Cai, Thomas and Jane Schmidt Rising Star Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Dauch Center Director Stephan Biller, the Amrine Distinguished Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and the Mitch Daniels School of Business, and their students focused their research on assessing the global lithium supply for U.S. automotive electric vehicle battery production.
 
Ramses Martinez Team Awarded Patents for Nanoforming Device, Smart Bandage, and More

"This patent protects a platform technology that can transform how we manufacture nanostructured metals at scale," said Martinez. "It brings the precision of nanofabrication to the accessibility and speed of roll-to-roll processing."

In addition to nanoforming and smart bandages, the team has been awarded patents for epidermal paper-based electronic devices and waterproof electronic decals.
 
Gary Cheng Honored with ASME Blackall Machine Tool & Gage Award

Professor Cheng and his team were honored with the ASME Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award for the paper titled "Nanoengineered Laser Shock Processing via Pulse Shaping for Nanostructuring in Metals: Multiscale simulations and experiments."
 
Denny Yu Invited as Featured Speaker at IISE Applied Ergonomics Conference

Associate Professor Yu was invited as one of two featured speakers for IISE Applied Ergonomics Conference, which took place in March. Yu was previously named the recipient of the 2024 Young Investigator Award in Applied Ergonomics Research for outstanding contributions through applied research.
 
| STUDENT HONORS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
IE431 Senior Capstone Students Win First Place at George Mason University's Sage Memorial Competition

The team of seniors worked with industry partner BraunAbility to update the layout of their facility. The team created a digital twin through the use of NVIDIA Omniverse, that allowed the implementation of a new welding staging area process, and demonstrated that it could lead to an annual reduction in operating costs.

The team's effort was rewarded with the Best Poster in Systems Engineering honor at the national competition hosted by George Mason University. 
 
The Edwardson School was well represented at the College of Engineering Awards this spring, with several graduate students earning prestigious awards for excellence in teaching and research. 
 

José Alfredo Ocegueda Barraza Earns Multiple Honors
In addition to the recent Magoon Award for Teaching Excellence, Oceguada Barraza was honored with the prestigious Outstanding Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching Award from Purdue's Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars (OGSPS), considered the highest honor given to Purdue teaching assistants.
 
Allison Biewenga Honored with Helfert Memorial Award
In recognition of her outstanding academic performance and social concern, Allison Biewenga was awarded the prestigious Helfert Award. This award is given annually to juniors in the College of Engineering or the College of Science who demonstrate academic excellence and a commitment to social responsibility.
 
| EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, had Strong Presence at 50th NSBE Conference in Chicago

With over 100 Purdue Engineering undergraduates and more than 30 graduate students, faculty, and staff in attendance, the Boilermaker presence was impossible to miss. Purdue's NSBE chapter is also known as the "Mother Chapter," as Purdue University is the birthplace of the National Society of Black Engineers. 
 

The two-day event, with the theme of "Emerging Domains," featured panels and keynotes with several Purdue IE alumni. Attendees were also given a tour of the Build @ Scale Lab, where they were able to see the latest updates on the lab, located in Lambertus Hall. 
 
 
Purdue HFES Chapter Hosts Inaugural Midwest Regional Event

Organized with support from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Purdue Chapter and numerous volunteers, the event kicked off with opening remarks from Dr. Young-Jun Son, James J. Solberg Head and Ransburg Professor of Purdue's Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering. 

The full-day conference featured keynote talks, research poster sessions, industry panels, and networking opportunities aimed at advancing human factors research and practice across the Midwest. 
 
| GATEWAY LABS SPOTLIGHT
Piloting NVIDIA Ominiverse Digital Twin of Build@Scale Lab in Classroom and Research

The Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering has continued to increase the number of tools available to students for hands-on learning, ranging from the AI-Enabled Robotics Integration Lab in the Build @ Scale Lab to the Move4D technology in the Geoffrey and Katherine Cubitt Human Integration Lab.

Students have the details of the Build @ Scale Lab as a digital twin through the use of the NVIDIA Omniverse.   
 
| THE SEMESTER IN PICTURES
Spring of '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 Spring '25

Check out additional news stories from the Spring of 2025.

 
Would you like to help the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering continue to lead the way in research and the education of future industrial engineers? Click below to give a gift and receive a bonus gift if you donate before June 30th!
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