Ken Goldberg to serve as the next Chair of the IEOR department

The Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley is proud to announce that Professor Ken Goldberg will serve as its next chair.  Ken will come to the role after a distinguished career of service marked by achievement in research and leadership at Cal. 

Ken will succeed Professor Phil Kaminsky, who during his five and a half year tenure as the department’s leader helped IEOR make significant improvements by helping to build the master of engineering program, successfully leading a large renovation effort for Etcheverry Hall, incorporating the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology into the department, and much more.  Besides continuing his duties as an IEOR Professor, Phil will also be taking on a new role as the new Associate Dean for Academic Planning and Development for the College of Engineering.

Please find the full announcement below from Dean Shankar S. Sastry:

Dear Berkeley Engineering Colleagues,

I am delighted to welcome Ken Goldberg and Phil Kaminsky to new leadership roles here in the College. Effective January 1, 2017, Ken will serve as Chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (IEOR), while Phil, who has served as IEOR Department Chair for more than five years, will serve as Associate Dean for Academic Planning and Development. Phil succeeds EECS Professor Tsu-Jae King Liu in this capacity, as Tsu-Jae began her appointment as the campus’s Vice Provost for Academic and Space Planning on October 1, 2016.

Please join me in saluting Tsu-Jae as she takes on this critical leadership position for the Berkeley campus, and in welcoming Phil and Ken to their new roles.

Ken Goldberg joined the Berkeley faculty in 1995. He is Professor of IEOR, with secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information and Radiation Oncology at UCSF’s Medical School. Ken is Director of CITRIS’s People and Robots Initiative and UC Berkeley’s AUTOLAB, where he and his students pursue research in geometric algorithms and machine learning for robotics and automation in surgery, manufacturing and service applications.

Ken has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and was awarded eight U.S. patents. He co-founded and served as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering. His artwork has appeared in 70 exhibits including the Whitney Biennial, and he developed the first provably complete algorithm for part feeding and the first robot on the Internet. Ken was awarded the NSF PECASE (Presidential Faculty Fellowship) from President Bill Clinton in 1995, elected IEEE Fellow in 2005 and selected by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for the George Saridis Leadership Award in 2016.

Phil Kaminsky joined the IEOR Department in 1997 and was appointed Chair in 2012. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. His research focuses on the development of robust and efficient techniques for the design and operation of logistics systems and supply chains, with a recent focus on biopharmaceutical and healthcare operations and logistics collaboration.

Phil is a co-author of the leading textbook in supply chain management, Designing and Managing the Supply Chain: Concepts, Strategies and Case Studies, which won the Book-of- the-Year Award and Outstanding IIE Publication Award given in 2000. He founded the UC Berkeley Initiative for Research in Biopharmaceutical Operations and the UC Berkeley site of the NSF-sponsored Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Excellence in Logistics and Distribution.

Under Phil’s leadership, the IEOR Department has risen to new levels of prominence. The graduate program is now tied for second in the nation in U.S. News rankings; strong connections have been forged with IEOR alumni through a variety of outreach efforts; and department spaces in Etcheverry Hall have been completely renovated, with new student lounges and breakout areas.

Phil led the growth of the IEOR Department’s Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) program, which is now one of the College’s largest M.Eng. programs. Under his direction, the department revised its undergraduate program and completely changed the way it handles doctoral admissions by introducing first-year student support not tied to any individual faculty member. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of acceptances by top graduate students. Phil has also been successful in recruiting several distinguished young faculty. As a testament to his skillful leadership, he was given multiple accolades by the recent department external review committee last year.

We thank Phil very much for his service. We are fortunate to keep Phil and add Ken to the College leadership team, and we look forward to their contributions and strategic counsel as we advance the College’s chief priorities.

Sincerely,

S. Shankar Sastry

Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering

College of Engineering, UC Berkeley