BLACKSBURG, Va., July 1, 2004 – G. Don Taylor, Jr., director of the Center for Engineering Logistics and Distribution at the University of Louisville, will become head of the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech this fall.
"I am pleased to announce that we were able to recruit Dr. Taylor to Blacksburg," said Hassan Aref, dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineering. "He held an endowed chair at the University of Louisville where he founded the research center he currently directs."
"At Louisville, Dr. Taylor held the Mary Lee and George F. Duthie Chair in Engineering Logistics. The department's honorifics committee and I have nominated Dr. Taylor to hold our Charles O. Gordon Professorship," Aref said.
The Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering is highly respected among its peers across the country. In the latest rankings by U.S. News and World Report, the department ranks seventh in the quality of its graduate education and fifth for its undergraduate program.
Taylor, who joined the University of Louisville in the spring of 2000, is an expert on the logistical intricacies and potential economies of supply chain management, from materials flow inside a factory to transportation dispatching and routing. In 1991, he founded his own company, G. Don Taylor Consulting Services.
Prior to his tenure at Louisville, Taylor directed the University of Arkansas' Logistics Institute, a research center that worked with carriers, shippers and government entities on materials handling and logistics problems. He continues to work with logistics professionals at Oklahoma State and the universities of Oklahoma and Arkansas as they form a new National Science Foundation-funded center that is focusing on applied research in support of local industry.
Taylor was a visiting professor in 1996-97 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and taught at the University of Massachusetts. He has worked for Texas Instruments in Lewisville, Texas, and Digital Equipment Corp. in Enfield, Conn.
Taylor received his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of Massachusetts in 1990. His earned his bachelor's degree and master's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1983 and in 1985, respectively.
Taylor will replace Michael Deisenroth who has served as the interim department head and who will remain on the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty.
The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college's 5,600 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.