Faculty & Research

Operations Mgmt. Faculty

Far from being limited to academic theory, a blue-chip roster of global companies have tapped Owen’s faculty to put their ideas into practice, from managing supply chains to developing project management skills. The business press and peers in the field regularly cite work coming out of Vanderbilt. That combination of groundbreaking research and real-world results offers students a one-of-a-kind classroom experience that has been recognized with numerous teaching awards.

	Yasin Alan Assistant Professor of Operations Management MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Professor Yasin Alan joined the Operations Management group at Owen in 2012 after completing his Ph.D. at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management. His research interests lie in the interface of operations management and corporate finance.

	Joseph Blackburn James A. Speyer Professor of Production Management Emeritus MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Joseph Blackburn's research and teaching in operations management focuses on time-based competition and how organizations can develop processes that provide faster response to customers, using speed as a competitive advantage. He is an authority on accelerating new-product development and streamlining manufacturing operations, and is the author of Time-Based Competition: The Next Battleground in American Manufacturing.

	Nancy Hyer Associate Professor of Operations Management; Associate Dean of Academic Programs MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Nancy Hyer is an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management. Nancy earned her MBA and Ph.D. from Indiana University and holds a BS from the University of Richmond. At Owen, Nancy teaches executive and MBA classes focused on project management and process improvement. Nancy has also taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has won executive program, Executive MBA, and MBA teaching awards, and both school and university-wide awards for excellence in undergraduate education. She won the 2009 best paper award from the Journal of Operations Management for a study co-authored with a faculty member from Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Video: Cellular Manufacturing

	Mumin Kurtulus Assistant Professor of Operations Management MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Mumin Kurtulus has presented at conferences worldwide, received the Wickham Skinner Best Paper Award in 2006, the gold medal in the 2004 ECR Student Paper Competition and was a finalist for the EURO 2003 Management Science Strategic Innovation Prize. His current research interests include supplier-retailer collaboration practices in the consumer goods industry with a focus on investigating recent supply chain collaboration practices such as collaborative forecasting and category captainship.

	Michael Lapré E. Bronson Ingram Associate Professor in Operations Management MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Michael Lapré is an internationally known expert on organizational learning curves. He is primarily interested in empirical research on improving organizational performance. Michael has been awarded the Shingo Research Prize, the Stan Hardy Award, Wickham Skinner Awards for Best Paper presented at the annual conference of the Production and Operations Management Society, and the Dean's Award for Excellence in Research at Owen.

	Larry LeBlanc Professor of Operations Management MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Larry LeBlanc is an author and lecturer to professional organizations, an active consultant to industry, and an award-winning educator in the field of operations management and information technology. His research on spreadsheet risk was the topic of a 2009 Financial Times.com article. He has approximately 65 publications in refereed journals and 60 presentations at universities and organizations overseas. Larry has served as a scientific advisor to France Telecom and received a Japanese Government award for travel to Tokyo to study manufacturing efficiencies of Japanese factories. Video: Advanced Excel for Financial and Operational Analysis

	Gary Scudder Justin Potter Professor of Operations Management; Faculty Director, International Programs MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Gary Scudder earned the Dean's Teaching Award in 1994 and the James E. Webb Teaching Award in 1999. Through the course of his career, he has consulted with a number of large corporations including United Airlines, 3M, IDS, Minnesota Department of Transportation, Teledyne Brown Engineering, Philips Corporation, Motorola, Novartis, RR Donnelly, Air Products, the Methodist General Board of Discipleship, and Bridgestone/Firestone primarily in the areas of managing new product development and strategic planning.

Affiliated Faculty

	Alfredo Behrens Professor of Leadership and Cross-Cultural Management (FIA) MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Professor Behren’s recent book, Culture and Management in the Americas, was voted the best Época Negócios. Behrens also wrote the chapter on Brazil for the London Business School’s The Software Industry in Emerging Markets: Origins and Dynamics (Elgar, 2005). Behrens is a member of the Editorial Board of Thunderbird International Business Review, writes regularly for America Economia and was awarded the McNamara Fellowship by the World Bank, the Hewlett Fellowship by Princeton University, The Boa Vista Bank award and the Jean Monet Fellowship by the European University, Fiesole, Italy.