Rakesh Nagi

Rakesh Nagi is the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, affiliated with the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. He previously served as Department Head (2013-2019) and Interim Director of the Illinois Applied Research Institute (2016-2018). His academic journey includes roles at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) from 1993-2013, including Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering (2006-2012). He earned his Ph.D. (1991) and M.S. (1989) from the University of Maryland, and B.E. (1987) from IIT Roorkee (formerly University of Roorkee).

His research focuses on production systems, applied and military operations research, GPU-accelerated algorithms, facility layout optimization, and social network analysis. Notable contributions include location-theoretic approaches to facilities design, agile manufacturing systems, and influence maximization in social networks. He has published extensively in journals like Operations Research, Management Science, and IEEE Transactions series.

Dr. Nagi's honors include the IISE David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (2022), INFORMS MAS Koopman Prize (2021), and NSF CAREER Award (1996). His work bridges theoretical advancements with real-world applications in logistics, UAV routing, and illicit network detection. Current projects involve GPU-accelerated combinatorial optimization, risk-averse equilibrium models, and parallel computing frameworks for large-scale problems.

• Education:
  • Ph.D. & M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland (1991, 1989)
  • B.E. in Mechanical Engineering, IIT Roorkee (1987)
• Awards:
  • Recipient of 15+ prestigious awards including fellowships and national recognitions
  • Lead on $6.25M ARO MURI grant for Hard-Soft Information Fusion
• Labs & Teams:
  • Director of High-Performance Computing Research Lab
  • Principal Investigator for IARPA-funded Knowledge Discovery projects