Professor and University Faculty Scholar
School of Chemical Engineering
Director, e-Enterprise Center
Joseph F. Pekny joined the Purdue University faculty in 1990 and is a Professor of Chemical Engineering with research interests in supply chain management, planning and scheduling systems, pharmaceutical pipeline management, model-based and data driven management, and real-time decision systems. His research group is active in risk management, decision support systems, algorithm engineering, combinatorial optimization, large-scale software systems, sensitivity analysis, and simulation based optimization architectures. He has received the Purdue University Shreve Teaching Award and Kimberly Clark Student Mentoring Award. In 1999 he was appointed a Purdue University Faculty Scholar. He received his Ph. D. from Carnegie Mellon University, B. S. from Princeton University, and was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1990 for his work on algorithm engineering for decision support systems. He chaired an international conference entitled "The Foundations of Computer Aided Process Operations" that addressed the future of the technology underlying the use of optimization methods in business and process applications.
In the Fall of 2001, Dr. Pekny was named the Director of the e-Enterprise Center at Purdue University’s Discovery Park. The e-Enterprise Center leads interdisciplinary research in the use of computers in the design, management, interaction, and operation of organizations; the goal oriented use of computational science and engineering; and research promoting rapid concept convergence and implementation. Dr. Pekny is a founder of Advanced Process Combinatorics, Inc., a company that was spun-off from research at Purdue University in 1994 (see http://www.combination.com). He serves as a consultant and receives research funding from several companies including Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly and Company, Equistar, Proctor & Gamble, and Unilever.
