The Supply Chain & Operations Management (SC&OM) department at the Mitch Daniels School of Business consistently earns high rankings for both its educational programs and faculty research reputation among leading institutions. Our programs are known for training students in data-driven problem-solving to address challenges in supply chain and operations management, with strong emphasis on global contexts.
2024 U.S. News & World Report Rankings
SC&OM faculty have a diverse research portfolio spanning:
Our faculty apply methodologies such as stochastic modeling, optimization, data-integrated decision modeling, game theory, statistical machine learning, and econometric analysis. They frequently collaborate with partners across private, public, and non-profit sectors on applied research.
Recent Collaborators include Allegion, Applied Materials, AstraZeneca, Avis, Bell Lab, Carle Clinic, Caterpillar, Corteva, Dow Chemical, Evonik, GE Aviation, INDOT, IU Health, Jeco, Juniper, MES Inc., MSI Surfaces, OilDri, Oscar Winski, Pentland, Pepperidge Farm, P&G, PepsiCo, Ports of Indiana, Purdue University Press, TideCleaners, R.D. Gardi Medical College, Red Gold, Rolls Royce, Southwire, St. Vincent DePaul, Standard Industrial, Tippecanoe County, UPS, US Foods, Wabash Group, Whole Earth, WFTDA, and Wyze.
Faculty also hold over 20 major editorial positions (associate editors, senior editors, and area editors) across the top four Operations Management journals.
Richard E. Dauch Distinguished Chair in Manufacturing & Operations Management
Professor J. George Shanthikumar is among the most influential scholars in operations research and management science, widely recognized for his pioneering contributions to stochastic modeling and decision-making under uncertainty. His work has profoundly advanced the theory of stochastic orders, stochastic convexity, and queueing models, and he is acclaimed for bridging rigorous analytical modeling with the complexity of real-world systems. His coauthored books—Stochastic Models of Manufacturing Systems (with John Buzacott) and Stochastic Orders (with Moshe Shaked)—remain foundational references in the field. Over the past several decades, Professor Shanthikumar has developed a unifying theoretical framework for data-driven decision making in operations management, enabling the systematic integration of uncertainty and data into actionable insights. He has supervised a large number of doctoral dissertations, mentoring students in areas such as stochastic optimization, online learning, and empirical modeling—many of whom now hold prominent positions in academia and industry.
Beyond academia, Professor Shanthikumar has made a lasting impact on industry practice. As a long-time consultant and technical advisor to global firms such as Intel, KLA-Tencor, IBM, and Applied Materials, he has led innovations in semiconductor manufacturing, tool matching, and capacity planning. His stochastic inspection models catalyzed a paradigm shift in Intel’s inline process control strategy, and the SK-index—named after him—remains in use today for industrial tool qualification. His research has shaped strategic decisions in advanced manufacturing and inspired new streams of academic inquiry rooted in practical challenges. Through advisory roles and mentorship, Professor Shanthikumar continues to influence engineering and managerial practice, promoting experiential, data-integrated approaches to complex operational problems.
At Purdue University, where he holds the Richard E. Dauch Distinguished Chair in Manufacturing and Operations Management, Professor Shanthikumar has made transformative contributions across research, education, and institutional leadership. Since joining in 2009, he has built a dynamic faculty group in supply chain and operations management, mentored junior faculty, and significantly enhanced Purdue’s international reputation in the field. He fostered interdisciplinary collaboration across the campus, spearheaded the development of the highly ranked MS program in Global Supply Chain Management, and initiated many industry partnerships that integrate experiential learning into student development. Professor Shanthikumar’s enduring legacy at Purdue reflects his unwavering commitment to scholarly excellence, practical relevance, and the advancement of institutional and professional communities.
Professor Chand’s research and teaching interests include analysis and improvement of production processes on dimensions of cost, quality, time and flexibility with applications in manufacturing and healthcare. He has published over 50 papers on topics including: Just in Time Scheduling, Effects of reducing setup times, Process Improvement–Allocating resources to process improvement vs. production, Process Flexibility, Effects of learning and forgetting in processes, Improving Patient Flows and Power Generation Management. He served as Associate Editor for Management Science (1986-2008), Associate Editor for INFOR, Canadian Journal of Operational Research and Information Processing (1985-99), Area Editor for Production and Operations Management (1992-2003), Associate Editor for Production and Operations Management (2009-15), and Senior Editor for Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (1999-2004).
Professor Esenduran received her Ph.D. from Kenan-Flagler Business School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining Purdue, she was an associate professor at The Ohio State University. Gökçe’s current research primarily focuses on sustainable operations. She has published in journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, IISE Transactions, and Naval Research Logistics. She received the Krannert Young Faculty Scholar Award in 2019. She is a senior editor for Production and Operations Management and associate editor for Decision Sciences Journal.
Professor Feng’s current research mostly focuses on the development of stochastic functions and data-integrated decisions. A significant portion of her work analyzes firms’ procurement, inventory and pricing strategies, and negotiations of sourcing contract. She also works in the areas of subsidy design, resource planning, product development and proliferation management, economic growth models, and information system management. She served as a department editor for Production and Operations Management, and is currently an associate editor for Management Science and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. She was named a POMS Fellow in 2020.
Professor Haskell's research focuses on dynamic Operations Management problems, risk-aware decision-making, and optimization algorithms. In the area of dynamic OM, he has investigated data-driven dynamic programming and its statistical properties, and fairness in resource allocation. In the area of risk-aware decision-making, he has proposed several new preference robust optimization models. In the area of optimization algorithms, he has developed new methods for semi-infinite programming and for performance analysis in online optimization. He currently teaches supply chain analytics to undergraduate and MBA students in the Daniels School of Business.
Professor Lin’s research primarily focuses on developing optimal dynamic control policies in wait-time based queueing systems, with applications to service systems and make-to-order systems. His work aims to capture complex interactions within queues and provide structural managerial insights. His research has been published in a leading journal, Management Science, and he has presented his findings at major conferences in the field, such as the INFORMS Annual Meeting, MSOM Conference, and POMS Annual Conference. Notably, he was honored with the Student Paper Award in 2021 from the POMS College of Sustainable Operations.
Professor Lu’s current research interests include infrastructure network design for supply chains and service systems, supply chain risk management, management of innovative operations, and project management. He applies robust optimization, stochastic optimization, and game theory to study various supply chain and service operations management problems, taking into consideration risks, ambiguity, incentives, and behavioral issues. His research has been funded by research foundations and funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation. His work has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management.
Professor Pang is a Purdue Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellow. His research interests include statistical learning and decision theory, healthcare delivery systems, supply chain risk management, and pricing and revenue management. He is a senior editor for Production and Operations Management and a founding editor of Journal of Blockchain Research.
Professor Shanthikumar’s research interests are in integrated inter-disciplinary decision making, model uncertainty and learning, production systems modeling and analysis, queueing theory, reliability, scheduling, semiconductor yield management, simulation, stochastic processes, and sustainable supply chain management. He has written or written jointly over 300 journal articles on these topics, and is a coauthor of the book “Stochastic Models of Manufacturing Systems” and “Stochastic Orders and Their Applications”. He serves the editorial board for a numerous number of academic journals, and is currently a Department Editor of Production and Operations Management. He has extensively consulted for various companies including AMD, Applied Materials, Bellcore, IBM, Fujitsu, KLA-Tencor, NTT, Intel, Intermolecular, LSI, Motorola, ReelSolar, Safeway, Southern Pacific Railways, TI, Toshiba, TSMC, UMC., Inter Molecular Inc., and Reel Solar Inc. He is a fellow of INFORMS and a fellow of POMS.
Professor Shi received her Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology before joining Purdue in 2014. Her research interests include data-driven modeling and decision-making in healthcare and service operations. She has collaborated with practitioners from different healthcare organizations, including major hospitals in the US, Singapore, and China. Most recently, she is collaborating with community correctional programs to develop data-based evaluation and human-in-the-loop machine learning algorithms. Her research has won the first place of MSOM Responsible Research in OM Award in 2021, the first place of INFORMS Pierskalla Best Paper Award in 2018, and the second place of POMS CHOM Best Paper Award in 2019 and 2020.
Professor Dilip Chhajed is the Associate Dean for Masters and Online Programs at the Daniels School of Business. He also serves as the Executive Director of the newly developed Bachelor of Science in Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) program. Previously, Professor Chhajed was a full-time faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Warsaw (Poland), Sogang University (South Korea), and GISMA Business School (Germany). His current research and teaching interests lie in the areas of product design and healthcare operations. He is the co-editor, with Tim Lowe, of the book Building Intuition: Insights from Basic Operations Management Models and Principles. He serves as a Department Editor for Decision Sciences. Professor Chhajed’s research has appeared in leading academic journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Decision Sciences, Production and Operations Management, PLoS ONE, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Research in Marketing, ORSA Journal on Computing, and Journal of Operations Management, among others.
Professor David serves as the Academic Director of the master's program in Global Supply Chain Management. She brings over a decade of industry experience to her courses in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs at the Daniels School of Business. Dr. David's focus on experiential learning has earned her recognition including the Krannert Summer Innovation Teaching Award in 2018, the Krannert Alumni Teaching Excellence Award in 2020, Poets & Quants Top 50 Undergraduate Professors of 2020, and the Council of Supply Chain Management’s Teaching Innovation Award in 2022. Dr. David’s recent work has been published in journals including Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, INFORMS Transactions on Education, and Humanistic Management.
Dr. Higgins is the Associate Vice Provost and Dean of the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University and Clinical Professor of Supply Chain and Operations Management. Dr. Higgins earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, a MS in Industrial Engineering from Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Florida A&M University. Her professional background includes roles in multinational companies in consumer goods, automotive, and apparel manufacturing industries. Dr. Higgins contributes to the field beyond academia by serving on the Academic Strategies Committee of the Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Higgins was the William A. Donan Professor of Business Administration and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University.
Professor Günay’s research and teaching interests focus on operations management, decision theory and analysis, and supply chain design. Her expertise is in developing mathematical models and algorithms to support decision-making under uncertainty. She has been involved in multiple projects by developing solutions for inventory management, supply chain design, product design, and sustainability. She is also deeply committed to improving the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. Her research in the field was recognized with a best paper award from the American Society of Engineering Education in 2022.
Professor Senicheva’s research and teaching interests focus on service operations, inventory management and project management. She has taught a wide range of courses including Operations Management, Logistics, Project Management, and Supply Chain Technology. She has a solid quantitative background in supply chain modelling and analysis. She has been involved in multiple consulting projects working with service providers, manufacturing companies, and state organizations, including INDOT, P&G, Tide Cleaners, to improve their operations. Currently, she serves as an academic director of the SC&OM Undergraduate Program.
Bingrui is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University, supervised by Prof. William B. Haskell. Before joining Purdue, he received his Bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research focuses on robust optimization, data-driven decision making, and reinforcement learning. He examines settings where the Decision Maker faces ambiguity in both preferences and beliefs, and proposes a distributionally preference-robust optimization approach to address this challenge.
Rajeev Karunanayake is a third-year PhD student in Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University, supervised by Prof. Zhan Pang. Before joining Purdue, he received his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and worked as a Logistics Manager at Unilever Sri Lanka, where he gained hands-on experience in logistics, FMCG manufacturing and supply planning. His research focuses on modeling and optimizing logistics and distribution networks with inventory re-routing - an interest shaped by his industry experience. Rajeev is passionate about bridging academic insights with practical solutions to improve real-world supply chain systems. Outside of research, he enjoys hiking, running, and working out.
Chiran Kodippili is a third-year PhD student in Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University, with a background in Industrial Engineering and Management Accounting. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and worked at John Keells Holdings PLC for two years in roles focused on process improvement, logistics analytics, and project management. His current research focuses on retail returns, specifically modeling the strategic waiting behavior of consumers in the presence of open-box products and endogenous return rates. In his free time, Chiran enjoys watching sports, spending time with friends, and working out.
Terrill Li is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University, supervised by Prof. William B. Haskell and Prof. Chen-An Lin. His research focuses on dynamic programming and optimization, specifically in designing interpretable and computationally efficient approximate algorithms for dynamic programming, with applications in inventory control and queueing systems.
Berke Türkay is a first-year PhD student in Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University and a recipient of the Presidential Excellence Ph.D. Award. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics and an MPA from Brown University. His research interests include optimization, stochastic modeling, and game theory, with applications in cloud computing, data center infrastructure, and digital supply chains. He has also conducted research in public health, mathematical biology, and sustainability, and worked as a data analyst in the SaaS industry, applying machine learning to demand forecasting, incentive design, and resource planning.
Ravindu Rodrigo is a first-year PhD student in Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Peradeniya and a Master’s in Data Analytics from the University of Kelaniya. His research interests include data-driven decision making, stochastic modeling, optimization, and game theory.
Kaibo Zhu is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Management Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a visiting student in Supply Chain and Operations Management at Purdue University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science from Xiamen University. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and operations management, with a focus on disease early predictive modeling and multi-task learning in healthcare applications, data-driven decision-making under small-sample regimes, and human-algorithm collaborative decision-making paradigms.
Dr. Chi-Hua Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the School of Business, Purdue University, and previously a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Statistics & Data Science, UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Purdue University. His research focuses on data-driven decision-making in supply chain and operations management, with an emphasis on dynamic pricing, demand learning, and privacy-aware data sharing. His work examines how generative models can enable collaborative data ecosystems while safeguarding sensitive information, and how sequential decision algorithms can optimize.
Zhan Pang
Lewis B. Cullman Rising Star Professor of Management
403 Mitch Daniels Blvd., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2056
1-765-494-4489 | zpang@purdue.edu
