Professor Max Morris has been appointed interim chair of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE), effective January 3, 2011. Morris succeeds Gary Mirka, who was named the College of Engineering’s associate dean for undergraduate and graduate education.
Morris holds a joint appointment in the Department of Statistics and IMSE. Prior to joining Iowa State, he served 17 years as a research staff member at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and also held faculty appointments in the Department of Statistics at Mississippi State University and Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Health Center.
Morris is a thought leader in the area of statistical experimental design for complex engineered systems, particularly for the design and analysis of computer experiments. His research blends fundamental statistical analysis and engineering technologies in a collaborative and interdisciplinary style, and he has built long-standing research relationships with the Los Alamos, Livermore, and Ames National Laboratories.
He has served as editor of Technometrics, the world’s leading journal for statistical methodology in the physical and engineering sciences, and he was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Morris has been lauded by Technometrics with the Youde, Wilcoxon, and Frank best paper awards, and by the National Institute of Statistical Sciences with the Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research.
His appointment will continue while an international search is underway for the next permanent chair of the department.