Trustees ratify faculty positions; approve new degree program, resolutions of appreciation and namings, MOU for new football coach

Mike Berghoff shakes hands with Frank Dooley, who is holding a framed resolution of appreciation

Purdue University board chair Michael Berghoff (left) presents Frank Dooley with a resolution of appreciation at the trustees meeting Friday (Dec. 13). Dooley is stepping down as Purdue Global chancellor at the end of 2024. (Purdue University photo)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (Dec. 13) ratified faculty appointments and approved a new degree program, resolutions of appreciation and various namings.

The newly ratified faculty are:

  • Kam Fung (Kevin) So as the C.B. Smith Endowed Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management
  • Jie Shan as the Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering
  • Ananth Grama as Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
  • Eckhard Groll as the Reilly Distinguished Professor in Mechanical Engineering
Kevin So
Kevin So

So recently joined Purdue’s faculty as a professor in the White Lodging-J.W. Marriott, Jr. School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. He is internationally recognized as a thought leader in hospitality and tourism management. So’s research expertise lies in services marketing with strong emphases on human factors in service innovations, customer engagement, digital marketing, the sharing economy and human-AI interactions. He has over 100 scientific publications and has served on 12 editorial boards, including those for Tourism Management, the Journal of Travel Research, the International Journal of Hospitality Management, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and more. He is also the recipient of 32 research awards, including the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research Article of the Year, the Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing Martin Oppermann Memorial Best Article of the Year, the William Bradford Wiley Memorial Best Research Paper of the Year, the University of South Carolina’s Breakthrough Stars and more. So is one of few scholars in his discipline to have been named on Clarivate’s list of Highly Cited Researchers consecutively from 2021-24, and he has been consistently recognized by Stanford University as among the world’s top 2% of scientists.

Jie Shan
Jie Shan

Shan came to Purdue in 1999 as an assistant professor of civil engineering. He currently serves as a professor of civil and construction engineering with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. Shan founded the Geospatial Sensing and Modeling Lab at Purdue. His research interests focus on methodologic developments for localization, mapping, modeling and recognition using images and lidar data, and their engineering and science applications. Shan has served in many editorial roles and advisory capacities, most recently as a deputy editor in chief for IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing and section editor in chief for Remote Sensing. He has been active in the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), and the International Association for Pattern Recognition and has led various working groups in both chair and co-chair roles. His honors include ASPRS’ Fairchild Photogrammetric Award and the PECORA Project Manager Group Award from the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, as well as being named an ASPRS fellow and an Alexander von Humboldt Research fellow, plus multiple best paper awards.

Ananth Grama
Ananth Grama

Grama joined Purdue in 1996 as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, later being promoted to associate professor and professor. He now serves as the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science. His research interests span broad areas of parallel and distributed computing architectures, algorithms and applications. His work has resulted in software systems and techniques that are used to manage resources and execute complex scientific applications in platforms scaling from tiny, embedded controllers to massive data centers that power the cloud. Grama has co-authored numerous papers and two textbooks on parallel computing, which serve as standard community references. He has served on several editorial boards, including those for Parallel Computing, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Computing, and others. He has also served on program committees of major conferences and chaired several study sections at the National Institutes of Health and review or advisory boards for the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy. Grama is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His honors include a National Science Foundation CAREER Award; from Purdue, the Faculty Scholar Award, College of Science Outstanding Teacher Award and College of Science Distinguished Research Award; selection as a University of Minnesota Distinguished Alumnus; the Amazon Research Award; and more.

Eckhard Groll
Eckhard Groll

Groll came to Purdue in 1994 as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He is the William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of Mechanical Engineering. Groll’s research interests focus on the fundamental thermal sciences as applied to advanced energy conversion systems, components and their working fluids. He is a world-renowned expert in positive displacement compressors and expanders and has served on multiple editorial boards, including those for the International Journal of Refrigeration, Journal of International Engineering Education and more. Groll has also authored or co-authored nearly 500 journal articles and conference papers and holds eight patents. He is a fellow of the American Council on Education; American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE); and American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is also an honorary fellow of the Institution of Engineers in Scotland. Groll’s honors include induction into Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers and the Purdue Innovator Hall of Fame; ASHRAE’s E.K. Campbell Award and F. Paul Anderson Award (the society’s highest technical achievement award); Purdue’s Charles B. Murphy Award, Seed for Success Acord Award, Faculty Scholar Award, and College of Engineering Global Impact Award; the J&E Hall Gold Medal from the Institute of Refrigeration; the IEA Heat Pump Centre’s Peter Ritter von Rittinger International Heat Pump Award.

Trustees also approved a Master of Science degree in applied physics, which will be offered residentially through the Purdue University Fort Wayne campus beginning with the fall 2025 semester. Increased interest has led to a 300% growth in physics majors at PFW over the last two decades, while rapidly growing technology industries in northeast Indiana have led to a regional need for skilled professionals with an advanced degree. The degree program for the MS in applied physics will prepare students to apply materials science and quantum theories in associated fields, such as optoelectronics, materials manufacturing and acoustics. Graduates will gain advanced experimental, computational and analytical skills to address real-world industry challenges while meeting the region’s need for a skilled workforce in these key industrial development sectors.

In other action, trustees approved resolutions of appreciation for friends of the university who recently contributed $1 million or more to Purdue. Those are:

  • Marshall and Susan Larsen, to support the Mitch Daniels School of Business
  • Mary Lee Gambone and Douglas Brooks, to support the School of Materials Engineering
  • Hingst Family, to support the Mitch Daniels School of Business
  • Brooke Patterson, to support the College of Pharmacy
  • Timothy and Wendy Connors, to support Intercollegiate Athletics
  • Douglas and Maria DeVos, to support the Mitch Daniels School of Business
  • Thomas Froeschle, to support the College of Engineering
  • Marc and Carol Gill, to support the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering
  • Stephen Linowiecki, to support the Department of Psychological Sciences
  • Dave and Christina Ricks, to support Intercollegiate Athletics
  • An anonymous gift, to support the School of Mechanical Engineering
  • An anonymous gift, to support the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Additionally, trustees approved the following namings:

Trustees also approved resolutions of appreciation for chairman Michael Berghoff, who will retire from the board effective Jan. 1, 2025, after more than 15 years of service as a trustee, and Purdue Global Chancellor Frank Dooley, who will step down at the end of 2024 from the role he has held since 2020.

In other action, trustees ratified a memorandum of understanding for new head football coach Barry Odom.

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Media contact: Erin Murphy, emurphyv@purdue.edu

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