Kimberly P. Ellis and Don Taylor
Virginia Tech College of Engineering
LMI has announced that Virginia Tech is a charter member of LMI’s Academic Partnerships program. LMI will collaborate with Virginia Tech’s Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) through sponsored research this summer at Virginia Tech in the area of logistics engineering.
“Virginia Tech’s national reputation for engineering innovation made them a natural fit for LMI’s Academic Partnerships program,” said LMI Senior Vice President Jeffery P. Bennett. “The faculty in ISE has promoted coursework and research that align well with LMI’s strategic research interests, and we expect this relationship to be mutually beneficial.”
LMI’s Academic Partnerships program provides research funding, mentoring, and real-world work experience to universities and their students, while providing LMI with access to and participation in groundbreaking research to complement its own innovative programs.
With expertise in a wide variety of areas, including logistics, systems engineering, and applied operations research, Virginia Tech’s ISE department is ranked among the top five departments in the United States in both undergraduate and graduate education in industrial and systems engineering. The faculty and students conduct extensive research on logistics and related areas through the Center for Excellence in Logistics and Distribution, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and industry partners.
Research funded through the program will be managed at LMI by Logistics Analysis Program Director Eric Gentsch. At Virginia Tech, the research will be performed by G. Don Taylor and Kimberly P. Ellis, both faculty in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, as well as graduate students Ira Crofford, Kyle Fritz, and Daniel Steeneck within the department.
“Our partnership with LMI will provide our faculty and students with research opportunities, case studies and curriculum support, and real-world experience in logistics engineering,” said Taylor. “The Academic Partnerships program will be a springboard for a sustainable relationship with LMI.”
“LMI is delighted to partner with Virginia Tech. Tech’s ISE department has a national reputation and its faculty have literally ‘written the book’ on logistics and systems engineering,” said Gentsch. “With sustainment consuming the bulk of major systems’ life-cycle costs, combined with severe pressures to reduce public-sector budgets, it is more critical than ever that major systems be designed from the beginning with robust reliability, simplicity in maintenance, and maximum efficiency in all product support elements. Virginia Tech’s expertise, matched with LMI’s functional experience, will form an analytically robust and practical perspective for improving logistics engineering.”
To learn more about LMI’s Academic Partnerships program, visit http://www.lmi.org/academicpartners. Details about LMI’s Logistics programs, including its capabilities in logistics analysis and engineering, can be found at http://www.lmi.org/Services/Logistics/Overview.aspx.
For more information, please contact Matt Daigle at (703) 677-3621 or mdaigle@lmi.org