Dr. Amaury Lendasse, professor and department chair of information science technology at the University of Houston, has been named department chair of engineering management and systems engineering (EMSE) and Sarchet Endowed Professor of engineering management at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Bernie Sarchet, for whom the professorship is named, joined S&T in 1967 as founding chair and professor of engineering management. Lendasse will begin his role at Missouri S&T on Aug. 1.

“Dr. Lendasse brings to the role of department chair that rare combination of proven success in both academic leadership and interdisciplinary applied research,” says Dr. Tim Faley, interim vice provost and dean of the Kummer College of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development. “I join my colleagues in looking forward to him leading the department to new heights on both the academic and research fronts.”

Lendasse will replace Dr. David Enke, who has served as interim chair of the department since the summer of 2022.

“On behalf of colleagues across S&T, I thank Dr. Enke for his outstanding service to both the department and the college,” Faley says. “He has been an excellent steward.”  

Lendasse says he was drawn to the opportunity to join Missouri S&T because of the school’s emphasis on teaching and collaborative research, particularly in the area of AI.

“Missouri S&T is a university on the rise,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be chosen to lead a top-ranked engineering management program and a systems engineering program that’s exceptional. I look forward to working with the department’s faculty, who are highly motivated and talented researchers and teachers. I also look forward to collaborating with the Kummer Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems.”

Lendasse’s research focuses on data science, big data analytics, machine learning, information visualization, data mining, time series prediction, explainable AI and incomplete data. Awards and honors he has received include the Pioneer Award at the International Conference on Extreme Learning Machines for his contribution to machine learning, and the Best Paper Award at the NN3 neural network forecasting competition at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks. He has served as a reviewer for more than 35 international journals, co-authored 135 peer-reviewed journal articles and presented research at almost 100 academic conferences worldwide. In February, his published works surpassed 10,000 lifetime citations.

At the University of Houston, Lendasse leads a department with approximately 2,000 students and a team of 30 full-time and 15 adjunct faculty. During his tenure as chair, Lendasse has launched initiatives to foster a research-conducive environment by establishing collaborative research groups, hosting research seminars and engaging junior faculty through active mentorship.

He also led the adoption of an academic framework that recognizes the financial burden borne by many University of Houston students and its impact on their academic experience. For many students, the need to work multiple jobs to support both their education and their families invariably extends their graduation timeline.

Positions Lendasse held prior to joining the University of Houston in 2018 include director of industrial engineering graduate studies at the University of Iowa, research professor at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, professor pro tempore at Aalto University in Finland, research scientist at Helsinki University of Technology in Finland and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.

Lendasse earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, two master’s degrees – in control theory and in mechanical engineering – and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium.

In 2022, EMSE became one of three founding departments of the Kummer College, which was established through the transformational $300 million gift from the late June and Fred Kummer, who graduated from Missouri S&T in 1955.

About Missouri University of Science and Technology

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.