A recent celebration at the Naveen Jindal School of Management honored the 80th birthday — and distinguished career — of long-time faculty member Dr. Suresh Sethi, Eugene McDermott Distinguished Chair and a professor in the Operations and Supply Chain Management (OM) Academic Area. The Sept. 26-28 event was held during one of three academic conferences organized this year in his honor. Another is scheduled in Hanoi, Vietnam, for later this year.
Sethi, director of the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks, joined the Jindal School in 1997 at the request of Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and newly appointed dean, to build the OM area and establish the PhD program in Management Science, Operations Management Concentration. The OM area is now considered one of the world’s foremost programs in the field.
The conference began with a Friday night reception. The next day opened with two keynote addresses by Dr. David Simchi-Levi of MIT and Dr. Sridhar Tayur of Carnegie-Mellon. Both are highly distinguished scholars in the operations management field and are members of the National Academy of Engineering. Papers were presented throughout the day before the evening program began. The conference concluded Sunday with paper presentations and the keynote speeches by Dr. Chris Tang of UCLA and Dr. Qi (Annabelle) Feng, UTD PhD’09, of Purdue University, a former doctoral student of Sethi’s.
Two faculty members from the Jindal School’s OM Area served as emcees for the Saturday evening birthday celebration in the Executive Dining Room — Dr. Metin Cakanyildirim, a professor and the area coordinator, and Dr. Anyan Qi, an associate professor. The event was attended by nearly 150 people from around the world.
Pirkul was in attendance and spoke about Sethi’s influence.
“Suresh is an incredibly active, incredible person all around,” he said. “He still has zest for life. He still enjoys research, he still enjoys friendship, makes new friends, and he is somewhat of a role model for me … When I grow up, I would like to be Suresh.”
The evening’s festivities included a traditional Indian dance and several classical Indian songs, including two sung by Sethi. Many of Sethi’s family members, spanning five generations, were in attendance, including his wife, Andrea, and his daughters, Chantal and Anjuli.
Sethi is widely recognized for his impact in operations research, supply chain management, finance, marketing, economics, and optimal control theory. He stands among the most prestigious academic figures in operations management worldwide. He has been elected as a Fellow in multiple leading organizations — IEEE, INFORMS, SIAM, AAAS, and the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). These fellowships indicate a scholar whose contributions have shaped academic theory and practice. He has received high-profile alums honors, including the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Bombay and the Alumni Achievement Award from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.
He has served as editor or on editorial boards for top journals (Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Operations Research, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, Automatica, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Decision Sciences) and was elected President of POMS in 2012. His papers have earned awards, including the Wickham-Skinner Best Paper Award.
According to Google Scholar, Sethi’s research has been cited more than 34,000 times, reflecting the vast influence of his work across disciplines. His h-index is 89, meaning that 89 of his papers have each been cited at least 89 times — a sign of both volume and consistent impact.
The conference organizing committee consisted of Dr. Annabelle Feng (UTD PhD’09, Purdue University), Dr. Subodha Kumar (UTD PhD’01, Temple University), Dr. Meng Li (UTD PhD’12, University of Houston), Dr. Tao Li (UTD PhD’12, Santa Clara University), Dr. Sandun Perera (UTD PhD’15, University of Nevada), Dr. Houmin Yan (City University of Hong Kong and former faculty member at the Jindal School). Dr. Dorothee Honhon, a professor in the Jindal School’s OM Area and associate dean for sustainability and societal impact, was the committee chair.
A memorable speech honoring Sethi was given remotely by Dr. Kalyan Singhal, the Doris E. and Robert V. McCurdy Distinguished Professor of Management at the Robert G. Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore. Singhal is the founder and editor-in-chief of Production and Operations Management, one of the academic peer-reviewed journals tracked in The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™. He and Sethi were classmates at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Singhal recalled a moment from their time in class when the professor talked about Sethi.
“Our mathematics chair told him in class, ‘You are not an ordinary student,’” Singhal said. “That was perhaps the biggest compliment Suresh has received in his life.”
At one point, Singhal described Sethi’s intellectual acuity.
“When he studies a new domain, very quickly he will grasp the essence of it,” Singhal said. “He has great analytical abilities and raises it to a higher level.”
Pirkul summed up the evening’s meaning by emphasizing not only Sethi’s scholarly record but also his role in shaping the culture and foundation of the Jindal School. He noted that Sethi’s vision and persistence helped attract world-class faculty, inspire generations of students, and establish The University of Texas at Dallas as a global leader in operations management research.
“Suresh has had many, many accomplishments throughout his life, written many papers, and is recognized for his contributions,” Pirkul said. “But if you ask me, one of his most significant contributions is what he did here at UTD … First-rate institutions, whether they are business schools or universities — they are not built easily. They are built over long periods of time with the efforts and sacrifices of many individuals.”
After naming several key hires that he and Sethi made to build the foundation that would become the Jindal School’s world-class faculty, he summed up Sethi’s influence in helping shape the Jindal School into what it is today.
“The rest is history,” he said. “He came here, he believed in what we are doing, and he made it happen.”
