SAS honors Krannert’s Matthew Lanham with 2019 Distinguished Professor Award

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Global Forum celebrates analytics talent and those who shape it

A persistent analytics talent gap creates big opportunities for people who can wield analytics to help organizations make better decisions. Innovative analytics users and students who are rushing to fill that gap — and those who teach them — were honored this week at the SAS Global Forum, including Matthew Lanham of the Purdue University Krannert School of Management.

Lanham, who was recognized with the 2019 SAS Distinguished Professor Award, is a member of the quantitative methods area faculty and serves as academic director for the MS in Business Analytics & Information Management (MS BAIM) program. In addition to coordinating and teaching Data Mining, Predictive Analytics, and Industry Practicum courses, Lanham serves as assistant director of student engagement for Krannert’s Business Information and Analytics Center (BIAC).

This year’s SAS Global Forum Student Symposium also featured eight teams of students and a faculty adviser who presented research using SAS Analytics. Two of Lanham’s MS BAIM students, Meera Govindan and Rohit Kaul, were recognized as finalists.

In his quest to create analytics talent, Lanham emphasizes experiential learning, building relationships with local companies to provide his students experiences with real-world data, solving real business problems. He encourages them to participate in analytics competitions. These opportunities provide students tangible items for their portfolio to demonstrate their knowledge, skills and abilities.

In her final project, one of Lanham’s students analyzed grocery data to improve efficiencies and the freshness of produce. The company hired her and implemented the work. She is now mentoring Purdue students during their projects.

Boasting a graduate employment rate of 97% within six months of graduation, Lanham emphasizes the importance of SAS Certifications, and even rewards a student with financial support to pay for a certification exam.

“Prof. Lanham’s commitment to his students is inspiring,” said Sean O’Brien, senior vice president of SAS Education.?“He goes above and beyond to cultivate skills and relationships that have employers standing in line to hire his graduates.”

To learn more about the SAS Global Forum, visit https://www.sas.com/en_us/events/announcements/sas-global-forum.html.