Ravindran appointed interim department head
Effective June 1, 2009, Dr. Ravi Ravindran, professor of industrial engineering, will be the interim head of the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering.
Ravindran will take over for Dr. Richard Koubek, who is leaving at the end of May to be dean of the College of Engineering at Louisiana State University. Ravindran previously served as department head and has extensive knowledge of the department, its faculty, staff, students, and alumni. He will lead the department until a new department head is named by David Wormley, Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering.
Ravindran has taught courses at Penn State for twelve years, including operations research at the undergraduate level and courses in multicriteria decision making and supply chain engineering at graduate level. His research interests include supply chain modeling, portfolio optimization/financial engineering, goal programming, interactive methods for multiple criteria optimization, applications of mathematical programming to health planning, quality control, transportation networks, hazardous waste disposal, and system reliability.
Throughout his career Ravindran has received numerous honors and awards, including the Fulbright Scholar Award, the Albert G. Holzman Distinguished Educator Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), the Franz Edelman Finalist Award for Management Science Achievement from the Institute of Management Sciences (INFORMS), and an IIE Fellows Award. Additionally, Ravindran is a member of IIE, INFORMS, and the American Society for Engineering Education.
Ravindran received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California-Berkeley.