9/19/2013
New Department Head, Rakesh Nagi, was invested as a Donald Biggar Willett Professor on September 10, 2013.
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Rakesh Nagi is a professor and head of the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering Department at Illinois. He received his BE degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Roorkee (now IIT-R), India. He earned his MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, while he worked as a research associate at the National Science Foundation-sponsored Institute for Systems Research, and as a visiting researcher at the Institut National de Recherché en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) in France.
Rakesh served as the chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) from 2006 to 2012, where he had taught since 1993. An expert in using location theory to improve production systems, information-based manufacturing, and military applications of operations research, Rakesh has consulted on numerous government, military, and industry projects over the past 20 years.
His current research interests include sensor networks and level2/level3 data fusion using graph theoretic models. While at Buffalo, he developed courses in agile manufacturing; logistics and supply-chain management; networks, routing and logistics; scheduling theory; and Big Data operations research.
A fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, Rakesh has been recognized with IIE’s Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer Award in Academia, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Milton C. Shaw Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the University at Buffalo’s “Sustained Achievement Award,” the Business First of Buffalo “40 under Forty” award, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has over 170 papers published in prestigious journals and conference proceedings.