Trustees approve 2 named professorships, statistics co-op program

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University's Board of Trustees on Friday (June 17) approved two named professorships and a certificate-granting cooperative education program in the Department of Statistics.

Trustees ratified Frederick R. Davis as the R. Mark Lubbers Chair in the History of Science and Peide Ye as the Richard J. and Mary Jo Schwartz Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Davis comes to Purdue from Florida State University, where he has been a professor of history and played a key role in developing the university's history and philosophy of science program as associate director since 2004. He started at Florida State in 2002 as an assistant professor of history, becoming an associate professor in 2008. He became a full professor in 2015. He previously was visiting assistant professor of science, technology and society at Rochester Institute of Technology from 2001-02. Davis will join the Purdue faculty in August and will spend the academic year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He has authored two books, "Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology" (Yale University Press) and "The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles: Archie Carr and the Origins of Conservation Biology" (Oxford University Press). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He has lectured in Munich, Paris and Beijing, and has been invited to serve on a number of editorial boards.

Davis received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University. He earned three master's degrees: two from Yale University and one from the University of Florida. He received his doctorate in the history of science and medicine at Yale.

Ye has been at Purdue since 2005. Before coming to Purdue, he worked for NTT, NHMFL/Princeton University and Bell Labs/Agere Systems.

His research includes semiconductor and physics devices, nano-structures and nano-fabrications among other areas. Ye's work in semiconductor technologies is recognized nationally and internationally, and he has been credited with a series of research breakthroughs. Each one was significant enough to be deemed "field-defining."

He received his Ph.D. in condense matter physics from Max-Planck-Institute in Germany.

The three-semester cooperative education program approved is intended to attract statistics students who until now could not easily participate in the work co-op. Previously, the cooperative was a five-session course but failed to attract many students under pressure to earn their degrees in four years. The Office of Professional Practice and the Committee on Undergraduate Majors in Statistics will qualify cooperative work session programs for interested employers that pay students during their sessions. The program would accept those students with a minimum 3.0 GPA in all statistics courses and a minimum 2.8 cumulative GPA. 

Contact: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu 

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

Frederick R. Davis, fdavis@fsu.edu

Peide Ye, 765-494-7611, yep@purdue.edu