Janis Terpenny

Dr. Janis Terpenny was inducted into the ISE Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2016.

Janis Terpenny is the Peter & Angela Dal Pezzo Chair & Department Head of the Harold & Inge Marcus Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State University. She is also the director of the Center for e-Design, an NSF industry/university cooperative research center (I/UCRC) that brings 7 universities and 30+ industrial members together in solving pressing problems associated with the design, manufacture, delivery and sustainment of innovative, high quality, lower cost products. 

Dr. Terpenny’s research interests are focused on engineering design and has included topics such as process and methods of early design; knowledge and information in design; product families and platforms; obsolescence in products and systems; complexity of products and systems; and cloud computing for design and manufacturing integration. She has also investigated topics in design education such as multidisciplinary teams; the impacts of project choice and context on engagement and learning; and the retention and success of underrepresented students. Industry and community partnerships are key to the impact of her research and teaching. 

Prior to joining Penn State, Dr. Terpenny served as the department chair and Joseph Walkup Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University (ISU). She also served as the technology lead for the Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise (AME) area for one of the nation’s first manufacturing institutes (NNMIs), the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII). She has also served as a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and been a professor at Virginia Tech and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has 9 years of industry work experience with the General Electric Company (GE), including the completion of a 2-year corporate management program. 

Throughout her career, she has served as PI or co-PI on over $14 million of sponsored research and is the author of 165 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications. She is a Fellow of IIE, a Fellow of ASME, and a member of ASEE, INFORMS, Alpha Pi Mu, and Tau Beta Pi. She serves as an associate editor for the Engineering Economist. She has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching, in research, and for service.