ME Alumnus Appointed Donald W. Feddersen Professor at Purdue

Dr. Karthik Ramani, who received his Master's Degree in mechanical engineering from Ohio State in 1987, has been appointed the Donald W. Feddersen Professorship at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Ramani joined the faculty at Purdue in 1991 after completing his PhD in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. He earned his Bachelor of Technology in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India in 1985. 

Ramani was awarded the professorship for his scholarly leadership and work at the interface of mechanical engineering and information technologies. The Donald W. Feddersen Professorship was given as an endowment to Purdue's School of Mechanical Engineering by Purdue alumnus Donald W. Feddersen in 1998. (Feddersen is renowned as a pioneer and developer of the first generation of CAD/CAM software tools.) 

Ramani heads the Computational Design and Innovation Lab at Purdue where his interests include geometric design of shapes, development of new kernels for shape design and analysis, and higher dimensional geometric methods. His research helped create new areas of discovery including shape-based search and sketch-based analysis. In addition, Ramani is an advisor to VizSeek, a business that serves to connect industrial users through online communities of interest, and a chief scientist at Imaginestics, a knowledge-based software company. 

He has earned many professional honors, including University Faculty Scholar, Purdue University, 2002; Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer, 1999; Ruth and Joel Spira award for outstanding contributions to the Mechanical Engineering curriculum, Purdue University, 1997; Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, Society of Automotive Engineers, 1996; National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 1996; National Science Foundation Research Initiation Award, 1993; and Dupont Young Faculty Award, 1992. Ramani is the author or co-author of 74 papers published in refereed journals and symposia, and holds six patents. 

While attending Ohio State, Ramani served as both a teaching assistant and research assistant.