Lin Named Distinguished Professor

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (January 28, 2004)—Dennis K.J. Lin, professor of supply chain management and statistics at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, has been named a University Distinguished Professor in honor of his impressive record of research, teaching, and service.

Since joining Penn State in 1995 from the University of Tennessee, where he was a tenured associate professor, Lin has published more than 100 journal articles and has served on the editorial boards of some of the top journals in his field. The major focus of his research has been in a special class of experiments known as supersaturated designs, which have significantly improved experimental efficiency.

Additional research includes testing dispersion effects using fractional-factorial designs, creation of new uniform designs, efficient designs for response surface optimization, and data-mining methods for large datasets, for which Penn State is pursuing a patent on one of Lin’s methods. Lin has received funding for his work from a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, the National Security Agency, the National Science Council of Taiwan, the Census Bureau of Taiwan, and Penn State’s Schreyer Institute.

In the classroom, Lin has taught more than 4,000 students at Penn State including 10 sections of the undergraduate course Introduction to Business Statistics. His service record includes recent appointments as the departmental chair of the Research Excellence Task Force at Smeal, Tenure Committee member, and chair of the Statistical Consulting Center in the Department of Statistics. Externally, he has served in more than 25 advisory roles to institutes, associations, universities, and government.

Lin is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a senior member of the American Society of Quality, a lifetime member of the International Chinese Statistical Association, and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He received the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for outstanding research work in 2004.