Penn State Behrend MBA

Congratulations to Dr. Ivor Knight on being named Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at Penn State Behrend!

Penn State Behrend names associate dean for research and graduate studies A former Great Lakes researcher who later built a 50-member R&D team for Canon U.S. Life Sciences and Canon Biomedical has been named associate dean for research and graduate studies at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

BEHREND MBA FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: Dr. Ozgun C. Demirag

Dr. Demirag is an associate professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management. She completed her undergraduate studies in Turkey, and received her MS and PhD from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Penn State Behrend in 2009, she taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a visiting assistant professor. She has had some industry experience in scheduling and production planning with companies including Norfolk Southern and Bosch.

Dr. Demirag's research interests are in operations and supply chain management, particularly in the application of game theory to supply chains. Her work has been published in a number of prestigious journals and she currently serves on the editorial board of Production and Operations Management and Transportation Research Part E. Recently, she received the Early Career Scholarship Excellence Award by the Black School of Business.

Dr. Demirag teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, she teaches operations planning and control, which is an SAP-intensive course delivered online to Behrend and World campuses, as well as the introductory supply chain management course. At the graduate level, she teaches quantitative methods for business in the MBA program, and previously taught integrated business analysis. She enjoys teaching in the MBA program, and one main reason for this is that the MBA students are highly motivated to learn and therefore put great efforts and attention towards their courses. This motivates her to offer opportunities for providing the best learning experience to her students.

This past weekend, Penn State's Dance Marathon 2016, aka THON, raised $9.7 million for kids with cancer. We'd like to congratulate all the dancers, organizers and supporters involved, especially Behrend dancers Michael Pacacha, Colleen Jamie and Emily Bailey. FTK!

For more information on THON, please visit: http://www.psu.edu/feature/2016/02/21/thon-2016-big-reveal

Earlier this month, the Innovation Commons lab was dedicated at Penn State Behrend. The lab will serve as an idea laboratory to support small businesses and startups and the space will be open to all Penn State Behrend students, faculty members and employees at Knowledge Park. It is configured so that ideas can be simultaneously explored from technical and business perspectives and the meeting space is equipped with AutoCAD modeling programs, scanners and 3D printers for prototyping.

A $50,000 Invent Penn State seed grant supported the lab’s development. Invent Penn State is an initiative launched last year to leverage the University’s research, knowledge and entrepreneurial spirit in order to drive job creation, economic development and student career success. On hand for the dedication were Penn State President Eric Barron, Penn State Behrend Chancellor Ralph Ford and others.

To read more about the Innovation Commons dedication: http://news.psu.edu/story/386668/2016/01/08/impact/invent-penn-state-dedicates-innovation-commons-lab-penn-state-behrend