Purdue Alumnus :: January/February 2008

Professor honored for commercialization of technology

The United States can provide more effective responses to natural disasters, health crises, and terrorist threats, thanks in part to a Purdue professor who won Purdue's 2007 Outstanding Commercialization Award, which is sponsored by the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership.

Alok Chaturvedi is a professor of management in the Krannert School of Management, the founder and former director of the Purdue Homeland Security Institute at Discovery Park, and founder, president, and CEO of Simulex Inc. at Purdue Research Park.

"As part of our research for this technology, we focus on the political, social, and economic aspects of other cultures to better understand each other and work together to make the world a more peaceful place," Chaturvedi says. "That is our ultimate goal. I am honored to be recognized for this research."

Recently awarded the 2007 Outstanding Commercialization Award, Alok Chaturvedi is a professor of management in the Krannert School of Management, the founder and former director of the Purdue Homeland Security Institute at Discovery Park, and founder, president, and CEO of Simulex Inc. at Purdue Research Park.

The commercialization award came due to Chaturvedi's role in the development of the Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation (SEAS) technology, which seeks to explain how governments, companies, organizations, and the public respond to certain situations, including terrorism. The technology's commercialization led to the formation of Simulex Inc., which has 40 employees.

SEAS resulted from more than a decade of research conducted at Purdue in association with the U.S. Department of Defense and various Fortune 500 companies. Funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, Indiana State 21st Century Research and Technology Fund, Office of Naval Research, and other agencies, SEAS combines research from diverse disciplines such as physics, biology, artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, economics, psychology, sociology, international relations, and management science. The technology can run on any platform, including handheld devices or high-performance computers.

Clients using the technology include Fortune 500 firms and government agencies. Exercises and programs conducted by the U.S. Armed Forces and Department of Homeland Security also are based on SEAS data.

Besides national and homeland security, companies use the SEAS data to make market segments more profitable and determine the best time to introduce a new product or technology.