Dr. Scott J. Mason joined the Clemson IE faculty in July 2010 as the inaugural Fluor Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Optimization and Logistics. After working full time in the semiconductor industry, Dr. Mason began his academic career in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas. At Arkansas, Dr. Mason served as Chair of Graduate Studies for nine years and as Associate Department Head for six years. He advised numerous undergraduate Honors and Master’s theses, as well as doctoral dissertations in the areas of applied operations research and large-scale systems modeling, optimization, and algorithms. Many student research projects evolved directly from Dr. Mason’s practical experience in industry or from local organizations who contacted Dr. Mason with a specific need.
Frequently drawing upon both his industry experience and current consulting projects, Dr. Mason has been able to educate students in both the theoretical and practical aspects of being an industrial engineer, as evidenced by his numerous teaching, research, and service award, including Faculty Member of the Year, in both 2004 and 2008, at Arkansas. A consummate student advocate, Dr. Mason has continued his tradition of working with students to find employment at leading companies and helping companies to identify top engineering talent in Clemson’s IE department for internships, class projects, and full-time employment. In fact, Dr. Mason was selected the Outstanding Advisor in the College of Engineering at Arkansas and was awarded a Faculty Gold Medal at the university level for his commitment to student-focused research.
Dr. Mason is active in industrial engineering professional societies and brings excellent visibility to Clemson through his experience as a Technical Vice President of Networking, Annual Conference General Co-Chair, and Senior Vice President of Continuing Education for the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. Dr. Mason’s extensive network of colleagues and industry personnel have served him well as he leads SmartState program’s Fluor Center of Economic Excellence in Supply Chain and Logistics. These initiatives focus on both multi-disciplinary research projects and the administration and delivery of a distance-based, online Master of Science in Industrial Engineering degree program with special emphasis on capital project supply chains.
After moving from video poker-based gaming to an education-focused lottery, the state of South Carolina’s General Assembly had the foresight to establish the South Carolina Centers of Economic Excellence (now SmartState) Program in 2002. SmartState, which was funded in part with proceeds from the South Carolina Education Lottery, created 85 endowed chairs at the state's three public research institutions—Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina. Corporate or individual donors were required to match the state’s contributions, dollar-for-dollar, in establishing each endowed chair. The chairs were established in research areas that have/will advance South Carolina's economy, such as Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology; Automotive and Transportation; and Energy and Alternative Fuels.
Clemson’s Department of Industrial Engineering successfully engaged the Fluor Corporation, one of the world's largest publicly-traded engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction (EPFC) and maintenance companies, to match the state of South Carolina’s $2 million contribution. This partnership led to the realization of the $4 million Fluor Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Optimization and Logistics at Clemson. Without the vision and support of Fluor, the state of South Carolina, and some key Clemson industrial engineering faculty colleagues, I would not be at Clemson today—to them, I owe an eternal debt of gratitude.
Eghbal Rashidi is a faculty member of the Operations Management and Information Systems department at the Leavy School of Business, Santa Clara University (SCU). Previous to joining SCU, Eghbal was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Industrial Engineering department in Clemson University, working with Dr. Scott Mason on Supply Chain Risk Analysis. Eghbal holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Mississippi State University. His research interests involve developing models and algorithms for large scale optimization problems with applications in supply chain and logistics, transportation, and homeland security.
Harsha Gangammanavar is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Management, Information, and Systems in Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University. Prior to joining the department, Dr. Gangammanavar was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Clemson University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Ohio State University, and B.E. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University in India. His research interests are in stochastic programming, large-scale optimization, and their applications.
Here you'll find a list of the courses I teach. Please click the course you're interested in below to view its respective syllabus or webpage.