Trustees ratify faculty promotions, approve resolutions

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (Oct. 14) confirmed three named professorships and a distinguished professorship. The board also elected Trent Klingerman to the position of assistant legal counsel, serving both the trustees and the university.

The board also passed a resolution of appreciation for friends of the university who have contributed $1 million or more to Purdue.

Trustees ratified Jeffrey Dukes as the inaugural Belcher Chair for Environmental Sustainability, Sangtae Kim as the Jay and Cynthia Ihlenfeld Head of Chemical Engineering, Jan-Anders Månsson as Distinguished Professor of Materials and Chemical Engineering, and George R. Wodicka as the Dane A. Miller Head of Biomedical Engineering.

Trustees appointed Dukes, a professor of forestry and natural resources, professor of biological sciences, and director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, as the inaugural Belcher Chair for Environmental Sustainability.

Dukes came to Purdue in 2008 and was named a professor and director of the center in 2014. He earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University and doctorate from Stanford.

Dukes has received more than $8 million in support of his research over the past six years. More than $4 million of that investment has gone toward his group’s research. He has published 91 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books. His work has been to better understand how human actions affect natural and managed ecosystems in the hope that better understanding the influences will allow society to minimize negative impacts on the environment.

Dick Belcher, and his late wife, Suzanne, established the “endowed ‘green’ chair in the College of Agriculture to support leadership, discovery and/or engagement in the area of environmental sustainability.”

Kim is Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and head of the chemical engineering department. He came to Purdue in 2003 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was a distinguished professor.

His research areas cover computer-aided drug discovery and development and computational microhydrodynamics.

Kim earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California Institute of Technology and his doctorate from Princeton.

Jay Ihlenfeld lives in Minnesota and is retired. He had worked as a senior vice president, Asia Pacific, for 3M. Ihlenfeld’s gift was to be used for the benefit of the School of Chemical Engineering, as determined by the head of the school with approval of the dean of the College of Engineering.

Månsson came to Purdue this fall under the college’s Preeminent Faculty Program and the Leading Faculty Program of the Office of the Provost. He has been a professor and laboratory director at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. In 2008 he became president of the International Academy of Sports Science and Technology, founded by the International Olympic Committee.

His research focus is cost-effective material and manufacturing methods and additional functionalities beyond the traditional characteristics of composite materials. His research has led to $36 million in funding throughout his career, and he has authored 344 archival journal articles and filed 44 patents.

Wodicka is founding head of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. He joined Purdue in 1989 as an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Under his leadership the Weldon School has grown to prominence, including an intellectual property portfolio of more than 100 issued U.S. patents, with more than half licensed to Indiana medical device companies.

He conducts an active translational research program in the area of biomedical acoustics - the application of sonic technologies toward the solution of problems in clinical medicine.

Wodicka earned his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and his master’s and doctoral degrees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Klingerman has served as vice president for human resources since July 2015, having come to Purdue in 2012 as the university's director of employee relations. Previously, Klingerman was an employment lawyer from 2001-2012 at the legal firm Stuart and Branigin LLP. He earned his undergraduate degree from Purdue in 1994 and his law degree from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in 2001.

Resolutions also were approved by trustees for donors David Moeller (College of Science and College of Engineering), Melvin Guthrie Jr. (School of Industrial Engineering), Dr. Irving J. Pflug (College of Agriculture), and two anonymous donors (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and College of Veterinary Medicine). 

Writer: Howard Hewitt, 765-494-9541, hhewitt@purdue.edu

Sources: Debasish Dutta, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, dutta@purdue.edu

Jeffrey Dukes, jsdukes@purdue.edu

Sangtae Kim, Kim55@purdue.edu

Jan-Anders Månsson, jmansson@purdue.edu

George Wodicka, wodicka@purdue.edu