Professor Paul Kvam has been appointed associate chair for graduate studies in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) effective December 1, 2011. Kvam succeeds R. Gary Parker, who will retire November 30 after forty years of dedicated service to Georgia Tech.

"Paul is a strong advocate for ISyE. His experience and capabilities make him the ideal candidate to serve in this important role for the ISyE graduate program," said Jane Ammons, H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair.

As associate chair of graduate studies for the number one ranked program of its kind in the nation, Kvam will oversee the graduate experience focusing on policy matters relative to all graduate academic programs, activities, and curricula, including graduate admissions, class scheduling, and performance assessment.

“In recruiting the best students around the world to join our PhD program, Gary Parker has helped keep ISyE at the top of our field for fifteen years,” said Kvam.  “Our biggest challenge is to sustain that high quality in our graduate student body so we can continue to be the number one program in industrial engineering for the next decade.”

Kvam joined the ISyE faculty in 1995 as an assistant professor.  He was promoted to associate professor in 2001 and full professor in 2006.  Prior to coming to Tech, he worked for four years as a scientific staff researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research interests focus on statistical reliability with applications to engineering, nonparametric estimation, and analysis of complex and dependent systems. He has published over sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals in statistics and engineering, and is co-author of two textbooks: Nonparametric Statistics for Science and Engineering (with Dr. Brani Vidakovic) and Basic Statistical Tools for Improving Quality (with Dr. Chang Wook Kang).

Kvam is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a member of the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics and Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Iowa State University in 1984, a master’s in statistics from the University of Florida in 1986, and his doctorate in statistics from the University of California, Davis in 1990.