Mark H. Karwan, the Praxair Professor in Operations Research and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, retired in August 2022 after 46 years in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He served as Chair of the Department from 1987-1992 and as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo from 1994-2006. He has broad expertise in the area of mathematical programming – modeling and algorithmic development.  He remains active in research.

His 39 PhD students (1 more in progress) and 37 MS students have been guided in a wide area of OR applications and areas of algorithmic development in integer programming, multiple criteria decision making and ‘mixed’ areas such as integer/nonlinear or integer/multi-criteria. Dr. Karwan's 100+ publications show diverse application areas such as logistics, production planning under real time pricing, capacitated lot-sizing, hazardous waste routing and security, military path planning and analytics. 

Techniques to solve these problems come from the fields of linear, nonlinear and integer programming. Funding has come from NSF, ONR, AFRL and industry. His industry consulting experience has largely been in two fields: 

1. the industrial gas industry in all areas of production planning, routing, forecasting, energy use planning, cost/pricing and;
2. supporting defense agencies and contractors in military operations research focused on logistics and dynamic resource allocation.

He has won multiple teaching awards, including the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.   

• Optimization Planning and Tactical Intelligent Management of Aerial Sensors (OPTIMAS), Office of Naval Research, 2008–2011, (PI: M. Karwan, Co-PIs: R.Batta, J. Crassidis, R. Nagi, M. Sudit, T. Jasinski, P. Deignan, C. Barsalou, PM: M.Moskal).
• CO2 Sequestration System Modeling and Optimization, Praxair, Inc., 2008-2011.
• Policy Set Optimization (PSO), Air Force Research Laboratory (Rome, NY)/CUBRC, 2010-2013.
• Control of Anarchical and Ordered Systems (CAOS): Mathematical Programming Approaches for Measuring Decentralized and Centralized Network Operations, Office of Naval Research, 2012-2014, (PI: R. Nagi, Co-PIs: M. Karwan, M. Sudit, R. Batta).
• Realizing Information Gain through Optimization of Reconnaissance and Surveillance (RIGORS), Office of Naval Research/CUBRC, 2012–2017, (PI: M. Karwan, Co-PIs: R. Batta, R. Nagi, M. Sudit).
• Integrated Production and Distribution Planning of Merchant Liquid Customers, Praxair, Inc., 2014-2016.
• Household-Level Use of Autonomous Vehicles: Modeling Framework, Traveler Adaptation, and Infrastructure to Mitigate Negative Effects, National Science Foundation, 2015-2018, (PI: J. Kang, Co-PI M. Karwan).
• Hazmat Transportation Routing Employing the Spectral Risk Measure, University of South Florida, (National Science Foundation Subcontract), 2015-2016.
• Network-Wide Hardgoods Inventory Optimization, “ Praxair, Inc., January 2017 – January 2018.
• Accounts Receivable Analytics,“ Praxair, Inc., December 2017 – June 2018.  
• Providing Alternate Season Schedules (PASS), The National Football League, October 2018 –September 2024, (PI: M. Karwan, co-PI: C. Murray).