HAMMOND — Purdue University’s Board of Trustees recently ratified Purdue University Calumet faculty members Kuan-Chou Chen as the Thomas M. McDermott, Sr. Professor in Economic Development and Cyril Pat Obi as the White Lodging Professor of Finance in Hospitality and Tourism Management.

Chen, a professor and head of the Department of Information Systems, Finance and Business Analytics, as well as interim head of Graduate Studies in Education, joined Purdue Calumet in 2002. He also served as acting head of the Department of Accounting during the 2007-08 academic year. His areas of research include computer simulation modeling, data mining, information security, business intelligence and economic development modeling.

Obi was a keynote speaker at the 2013 Global Business and Technology International Conference in Helsinki, Finland. He has received the Outstanding Professor Award of Purdue Calumet’s MBA for Executives Program eight times. Additionally, he has earned research awards from the Academy of Finance, Institute for Global Business and Finance, Association for Global Business, and Applied Business Research. He has more than 50 scholarly publications and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business and Economic Studies (JBES) and Journal of Global Business and Technology (JGBAT).