Director, Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics
Interim Department Head,
John and Mary Lib White Systems Integration Chair
and Distinguished Professor
Department of Industrial Engineering
4207 Bell Engineering Center
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
office: 4169 Bell Engineering Center, 479-575-6033
fax: 479-575-8431
email: rrardin@uark.edu
RONALD L. (RON) RARDIN is John and Mary Lib White Systems Integration Chair and Distinguished Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville. He also heads the University’s new Center on Innovation in Healthcare Logistics (CIHL pronounced "kyle") targeting innovations in supply chain and material flow aspects of healthcare operations in collaboration with Wal-Mart, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the VHA hospital network, and other partners. Professor Rardin recently retired as Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University after directing the Purdue Energy Modeling Research Groups and playing a leading role in Purdue's Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. He also served a rotation from 2000-2003 as Program Director for Operations Research and Service Enterprise Engineering at the National Science Foundation including founding the program to foster research in service industries, especially healthcare. Dr. Rardin obtained his B.A. and M.P.A. degrees from the University of Kansas, and after working in city government, consulting and distribution for five years, a Ph.D. at Georgia Institute of Technology. His current teaching and research interests center on large-scale optimization modeling and algorithms, especially their applications in healthcare delivery. He is an award winning teacher of those topics, and co-author of numerous research papers and two comprehensive textbooks: a graduate text Discrete Optimization, published in 1988,and a comprehensive undergraduate textbook on mathematical programming, Optimization in Operations Research, which was published in 1998 and received the Institute of Industrial Engineers Book of the Year award. Rardin has been married to Bolivia-born Blanca Q. Rardin since 1969. They have one son Rob, who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1997 (BA) and Indiana University in 2003 (MBA), and now works and lives with wife Jessica in the Washington DC area, and also a niece Anni, who graduated from Purdue University in 2000 (BS), and lives with husband Lenny and daughter Sara in Mountain View, California.