Dr. Adedeji Badiru, Professor and Department Head of Systems and Engineering Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management, has won the Outstanding Engineer and Scientist Award from the Affiliate Societies Council of Dayton.
The award is given for overall professional accomplishment over the past several years. The Council considered not just what Dr. Badiru accomplished here at the base, but also what he accomplished while at his previous institutions, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tennessee.
Says Dr. Badiru, “My particular award is in the education category. This typically goes to somebody who has contributed tremendously to education, not just within his or her own institution, but generally. I’ve been fortunate to have had opportunities to work with colleagues all over the world, and in that process I’ve mentored many faculty members. I’ve helped institutions to establish new programs. At the University of Lagos, Nigeria, for example, I was a consulting partner for them to establish a Systems Engineering department several years ago. And the faculty members from that department continue to work with me closely even up to today in terms of research and publications and mentoring students. While I was the University of Tennessee, I did bring some of those students to the US to do their research in my laboratory and then they went back to Nigeria. Some of them actually got their PhD and now teach in that university. So the Council considers contributions like that that have far reaching impacts on the professional development and future lives of students.”
“This is particularly gratifying for me, recognizing that I’ve only been on the base two and a half years,” Badiru continues. “Typically, for someone to get recognition locally takes many, many years of people discovering you. And as I understand it, in this particular competition, several individuals were nominated for that particular category and I was the only one awarded this year. So that feels very gratifying.”
Before coming to AFIT in October 2006, Dr. Badiru was Head of Industrial Engineering at the University of Tennessee and Director of IE Center for Industrial Development Research. Before that, he was Dean of University College and Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He was also an Industrial Development Consultant to the United Nations in 1994.
