November 14, 2001

NC State Engineering Professor Receives R.J. Reynolds Award

Dr. Shu-Cherng Fang (holding certificate) receives congratulations from family and friends for the R.J. Reynolds award.  (Photography: Shunmin Wang)

Dr. Shu-Cherng Fang, Walter Clark Professor of Industrial Engineering and director of graduate programs in the Department of Industrial Engineering, is the seventeenth recipient of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension.  Fang received the award in a ceremony held at 3 p.m. Wednesday, November 14, 2001, in 216 Mann Hall at NC State.  The award presentation was followed by Fang’s lecture “On Habitual Domains, Fuzzy Sets, Variational Inequalities, and Optimization.”

The award was established in 1981 within the College of Engineering to honor a member of the Engineering faculty who has demonstrated superiority in several areas of activity that relate to the University's three-fold mission of teaching, research and extension.  The annual award is supported by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through the North Carolina Engineering Foundation Inc. to bring recognition to scientific and educational achievements in fields of engineering.  The recipient is given a $25,000 prize distributed over five years.

An internationally renowned scholar in industrial engineering and operations research, Fang is a dedicated engineering researcher and educator.  His many contributions to industrial engineering, operations research, engineering education, international relations and public service reflect a significant breadth of knowledge and experience.  He is acknowledged by his peers as an authority on optimization and decision making. 

Fang, who joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1988, holds a joint appointment in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at NC State.  His research interests include variational inequalities, large-scale linear and nonlinear programming, entropy optimization, neurocomputing and fuzzy systems theory, with applications to building intelligent human-machine decision support systems for manufacturing and telecommunications.

He received the NC State Alumni Outstanding Research Award in 1998, the Advocacy Award from the Association for the Concerns of African-American Graduate Students at NC State in April 2001 and the Jackson Rigney International Service Award from the NC State International Studies Honor Society in May 2001.  Fang is the international liaison for the College of Engineering at NC State and served as chair of the University Committee on International Programs during the 1995-96 academic year.  Governor James B. Hunt of North Carolina appointed Fang the state representative for Information Infrastructure in 1995 and member of the North Carolina–Shanghai Task Force in 1999.  In 1998 Fang received the IBM Global Partnership Award for his contribution in establishing international collaborative programs with IBM in China.

Fang received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 from The National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; his master's degree in mathematics in 1977 from The Johns Hopkins University; and his doctoral degree in industrial engineering and management sciences from Northwestern University in 1979.

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