ISE department honors 11 students, a professor and an alumnus

J. Robert Baum ’64, a much-honored professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, received the 2013 Distinguished Alumni Award for achievements in industry from the department of industrial and systems engineering at its recent annual banquet.
The department also gave awards to 11 students and a professor and sponsored an address by a leading expert in the field of integer programming.
Baum has won five university teaching awards since 2000 at Maryland, where he teaches new venture creation and financing for MBA students in the Smith School of Business. He conducts research in entrepreneurship, quantitative methods and strategic decision-making.
A member of Lehigh’s Healthcare Systems Engineering Industry Leadership Council, Baum has been chairman of the board of Highmark Inc. since 2005 and was the company’s acting CEO in 2012.
Ralph E. Gomory, a New York University research professor and a founding contributor to the field of integer programming, was the department’s 2013 Spencer C. Schantz ’55 Distinguished Lecturer at the banquet. The lecture series is named for the late Spencer C. Schantz, who earned a B.S. in industrial engineering from Lehigh and later founded U.S. Controls Corporation. The series was established by Schantz’s wife, Jerelyn.
Gomory, the former  head of IBM’s research division and former president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, gave a technical talk titled “Problems Create Mathematics” and a public lecture titled “New Goals for American Corporations.”
Robert Storer, professor of industrial and systems engineering, won the faculty member of the year award for the third consecutive time. The honor is voted by the department’s students.
The following awards were given to students in the industrial and systems engineering department:
I&SE (information and systems engineering) Senior of the Year
Emily Koehler ’13
IE (industrial engineering) Senior of the Year
Matt Raborn ’13
IBE (integrated business and engineering) Senior of the Year
Ory Ball ’13
I&SE Junior of the Year
Jin Chen ’14
IE Junior of the Year
Rebecca Swaszek ’14
IBE Junior of the Year
Jason Kravec ’14
IE Sophomore of the Year & Alpha Pi Mu Award
Darby Dustman ’15
I&SE Sophomore of the Year
Anthony Hill ’15
IBE Sophomore of the Year
Stormont Mahoney ’15
Master’s Degree Student of the Year
Lorand Dragu ’12, ’13G
Ph.D. Candidate of the Year
Mohsen Moarefdoost

Photos by Christopher Elston Photography