M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering at Texas A&M University, has appointed Dr. Mark Lawley head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The appointment of Lawley, who has been serving as interim head of the department, is effective June 1.
Lawley is a Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Research Professor and joined the industrial and systems engineering department in 2014 after serving for 17 years on the faculty at Purdue University and two years as a faculty member at the University of Alabama. He has also held engineering positions with Emerson Electric Company and Westinghouse Corporation, and has done extensive consulting. Lawley assumed the position of interim head of the industrial and systems engineering department in July 2016, and holds appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and serves as deputy director of the Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems.
As a researcher in academics, Lawley has published more than 130 technical papers, which have garnered four best paper awards, and has supervised more than 30 graduate students in the completion of their dissertations and theses. For his work in graduate education, Lawley received the 2006 James H. Greene Graduate Educator Award from the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Tennessee Technological University in 1982, his master’s degree manufacturing systems engineering from Auburn University in 1988 and his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1995. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas.