Following a national search, Dr. Jane Chumley Ammons has been named the Chair of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech, effective July 1, 2011. Dr.  Ammons received her Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 1982 and joined the ISyE faculty that year as an assistant professor. She currently holds the rank of Professor in ISyE and also has served as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the College of Engineering since 2004. Dr. Ammons will also hold the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart Chair in ISyE.  Dr. Ammons will be the first woman school chair in the College of Engineering.

“Dr. Ammons brings with her a superb track record as a researcher, advisor, and recognized leader in the field of industrial engineering. She brings with her a vision to lead the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial Engineering to higher levels of excellence within a multi-disciplinary and high-technology environment,” said Don P. Giddens, Dean of the College of Engineering. “Dr. Ammons is a well-rounded educator and administrator, and we look forward to the development of new curriculum, service, and research endeavors.”

Dr. Ammons is the author or co-author of more than 100 refereed and technical publications in the area of manufacturing systems and supply chain engineering with a special interest in developing closed loop, environmentally sustainable systems. She has served in numerous School, College and Institute capacities, including as the NSF ADVANCE Professor of Engineering from 2002-2005. She has been principal or co-principal investigator on a variety of sponsored research programs, having enjoyed support from both industry and federal funding agencies.

In addition to her research and institutional service activities, Professor Ammons has been highly active in professional service external to Georgia Tech. Dr. Ammons is a Past-President of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) and has chaired the National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Committee.  She is a member of the Technical Committee for the Uganda: Millennium Science Initiative (MSI) Project co-financed by the World Bank and serves as a Program Evaluator for ABET, the engineering education accreditation organization.

At Georgia Tech, Dr. Ammons has been honored with eight teaching/faculty awards at the school and university levels. In addition to her academic experience, Dr. Ammons has worked as a plant engineer for an industrial manufacturer and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Georgia.

"Georgia Tech's ISyE has been such an important part of my academic life, and it is an honor to be named ISyE's new School Chair," said Ammons.  "I look forward to continuing my work, in this new capacity, with ISyE's renowned faculty, students, peers, and community as we continue to strengthen and influence what industrial engineers do today and will do in the future.  There are many global opportunities for industrial and systems engineers, and the grand challenges in the field are strategic imperatives for our efforts and impact."

The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) is the largest academic program of its kind in the nation with a strong foundation in optimization, stochastics, simulation, and statistics.  Students and the internationally renowned faculty understand, design, and optimize complex systems in order to improve their performance in many operational settings including supply chain logistics, transportation, finance, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, humanitarian relief, security, sustainability, and others.  ISyE’s strengths in education, emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration, and strong discovery-to-application philosophy have enabled ISyE to achieve a premier position in the field.  With the recent release of the 2012 U. S. News & World Report, ISyE again was ranked as the number one graduate program of its kind, making this the 21st consecutive number one ranking.  The School grants around 275 B.S. degrees, 215 M.S. degrees, and 30 Ph.D. degrees a year.