Professor Rakesh Nagi
Head of Pillar, Engineering Systems and Design
Director, Aviation Studies Institute
Professor Rakesh Nagi is the Head of the Engineering Systems and Design Pillar and the Director of the Aviation Studies Institute (ASI) at SUTD, having joined in August 2023.
Prof Nagi is also the Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). At UIUC, he previously served as the Department Head of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering from 2013 to 2019 and as the Interim Director of the Illinois Applied Research Institute from 2016 to 2018. He holds affiliate faculty positions in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Coordinated Science Laboratory, Computational Science and Engineering, and Discovery Partners Initiative at UIUC.
Before joining UIUC, he was Chair and Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) from 2006 to 2012. He earned his PhD and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1991 and 1989, respectively, and his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Roorkee (now Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee), India, in 1987. During his studies, he also worked at the Institute for Systems Research and INRIA, France.
Prof Nagi has received numerous accolades, including the IISE David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (2022), the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Koopman Award from the Military Application Society (2021, 2018), and the Defense Agencies Research Program Agency’s (DARPA) Graph Challenge Champion (2020). He has been recognised with the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Fellow Award (2010), and his papers have been published in top journals such as IIE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, and Management Science. His research focuses on applied/military operations research, production and manufacturing systems, with interests in Big Graphs, high-level information fusion, facility design, production management, and agile manufacturing.