Jennifer Pazour, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been named an inaugural recipient of the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D (WiSTEM2D) Scholars Award.

The Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Program aims to fuel the development of female STEM2D leaders and feed the STEM2D talent pipeline by awarding and sponsoring women at critical points in their research careers, in each of the STEM2D disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing, and Design.

Each recipient will receive $150,000 in funding and three years of mentorship from Johnson & Johnson leaders as well as members of the award program’s advisory board. The WiSTEM2D Scholars Program is part of Johnson & Johnson’s ongoing commitment to harness the power of diversity to improve the health and well-being of people around the world.

“The six women honored as recipients of the 2018 Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Award represent the caliber of talent that we believe is essential to global innovation today and in the future,” said Kathy Wengel, worldwide vice president and chief supply chain officer, Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain, and WiSTEM2D program executive sponsor. “The award program, and its distinguished advisory board, is part of our company’s commitment to help increase the participation of women in STEM2D fields worldwide.”

Pazour was selected as the inaugural WiSTEM2D Scholar in the manufacturing discipline. The grant will support her project, “Evaluation of New Distribution Technologies via Novel Data-Driven Models.”

In her research Pazour takes a data-driven approach to solve supply chain and logistics challenges. She creates new mathematical models to guide decision-making, with applications for transportation, distribution, health care, military, and service industries.

“I am excited to be a WiSTEM2D scholar because I believe the world needs more industrial and systems engineers who can think analytically and systematically about complex problems, and this program will help me reach a wider and more diverse audience,” said Pazour. “The mentorship will provide valuable opportunities for me to learn about innovative solutions and open research challenges facing the health-care supply chain.”

The inaugural recipients were selected from more than 500 applicants by an external advisory board comprised of Mary Beckerle, CEO and director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, chair; Mary C. Boyce, dean of engineering, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University; Lei Lei, professor and dean of the Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University; Dusa McDuff, Kimmel Professor of Mathematics at Barnard College, Columbia University; and Juliana Rotich, co-founder and director of BRCK Inc.

The WiSTEM2D Scholars Award is the latest accolade Pazour has garnered in her young career. Earlier this year she won a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award. She is the recipient of a National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program Early-Career Research Fellowship, a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, and a Research Start-up Grant from the Material Handling Institute. In 2017, she was awarded the Dr. Hamed K. Eldin Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia Award.

Pazour earned her bachelor’s degree from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arkansas, all in industrial engineering. She is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, and serves on the board of directors of the Warehousing Education and Research Council.