Professor Charles Malmborg Photo credit: RPI/Jill Evans

Troy, N.Y. — Professor Charles Malmborg, a 22-year veteran of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Engineering, was recently named the new head of the university’s Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems (DSES).

A prolific author known for his industrial engineering expertise, Malmborg accepted the position on Aug. 31. The appointment is retroactive to July 1. He was appointed acting department head on July 1, 2006.

“Professor Malmborg is an outstanding researcher and gifted teacher who is respected by faculty, staff, and students for his experience, dedication, and enthusiasm,” said Alan Cramb, dean of Rensselaer’s School of Engineering. “Clearly, Charlie is exceptionally well-qualified to take on the leadership and administrative responsibilities of the position head of the Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems.”

Malmborg received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, and earned his master’s degree and doctorate from the Georgia Institute of Technology in industrial and systems engineering. Malmborg joined Rensselaer in 1985, following faculty posts at Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech.

At Rensselaer, Malmborg served as DSES doctoral program director from 1987-1994, and acting chair from 1996-97, 1998-2000, and 2001-2002. Along with his new post as department head, he also currently serves as the DSES undergraduate program director.

“The opportunity to serve as DSES department head is a great honor and responsibility,” he said. “Our department has outstanding academic programs, excellent students, and a truly first-rate faculty and staff. Our greatest challenge moving forward will be to successfully implement an ambitious five-year plan that our faculty has developed during the past year. We need to make the most of the timely opportunities in our discipline as we grow our faculty, research, and academic programs over this period.”

The author of more than 100 peer-reviewed technical articles in leading international journals, Malmborg has served as principal investigator and co-principal investigator on several major educational and research projects with the National Science Foundation and other sponsoring agencies. He has also served as Decision Sciences editor for Applied Mathematical Modeling, and associate editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

As well as a prolific researcher, writer, and editor, Malmborg is widely decorated as an industrial engineer and involved with several professional organizations. He is the vice president of the Alpha Pi Mu Industrial Engineering Honor Society, a National Executive Council Member, and a senior member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

At Rensselaer, Malmborg received the 1999 DSES Faculty Award of Excellence, the 2003 Karger Award for Outstanding Master’s Thesis Adviser, the 2004 School of Engineering Award for Excellence in Education, and the 2004 Del and Ruth Karger Award as Adviser to the Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation in DSES. He also won the 2005 Trustee’s Outstanding Teacher Award.

Malmborg’s core research interests are in the application of analytical and simulation models to problems in material flow logistics, warehouse automation, facilities planning and design, and decision analysis.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for our discipline,” Malmborg said. “Our department’s core intellectual strengths in information engineering, operations engineering, and enterprise engineering position DSES to respond to some of the greatest challenges facing our society today.”

In addition to the primary DSES research themes in adaptive supply chains and services engineering, DSES faculty at Rensselaer are involved in a broad spectrum of research, from areas related to homeland security, including threat detection, disaster response, text mining, and social network modeling, to self- reconfigurable power grids, fuel cell manufacturing, and other energy systems. Other department endeavors include biotechnology research into drug discovery and pandemic modeling, as well as global logistics, warehouse automation, supply chains, and intelligent transportation.