2015 : Ome : Our People - Mechanical Engineering - Purdue University

DAVID ANDERSON Former Associate Head for Graduate Studies and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Retired BSME ’70, MSME '71, Ph.D., '74 David Anderson is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, retired. He received his BSME with highest distinction from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue in 1970, and continued at Purdue to earn his MSME in 1971 and PhD in 1974. He joined the Purdue faculty as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Sciences (joint appointment) in January 1975, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979 and Full Professor in 1985. He was elected Fellow of the ASME in 1995. Dr. Anderson served as Associate Head for Graduate Studies from 2010 to 2014. After 39.5 years of teaching, research and service at Purdue he retired in August 2014. Professor Anderson conducted research in computer-aided design and computer graphics. His 56 research grants included being co-principal investigator on two NSF Engineering Research Centers from 1985 to 2004. He served as Associate Director and Deputy Director of the ERC’s. He funded and supervised 21 PhD dissertation students and 37 MS thesis students. Eight PhD students joined faculties of universities. In his first 20 years of teaching, Prof. Anderson taught two graduate courses in computer graphics to engineering and computer science students. The courses focused on mathematics, algorithms and programming techniques for interactive three dimensional computer-aided design. In the next nearly 20 years he taught two undergraduate courses, a core sophomore mechanical engineering course in design and a senior elective in computer-aided design and prototyping.