Emeriti Faculty

Mikell P. Groover | mpg0@lehigh.edu

Dr. Groover taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the above topic areas and is the recipient of several Lehigh University and national teaching awards. His book, Fundamentals of Modern Manufacturing: Materials, Processes, and Systems (Prentice Hall, 1996) won the 1996 IIE Joint Publishers Book of the Year Award. The sixth edition of this book will be released in Fall 2015. The 4th edition of his book Automation, Production Systems, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, was published in June 2014. Dr. Groover served as the Director of the George E. Kane Manufacturing Technology Laboratory. He has been the principal investigator and contract administrator for research contracts sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Ben Franklin Partnership Program in Pennsylvania, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and several industrial companies. Dr. Groover taught courses and did research in the areas of manufacturing processes, metal cutting theory, automation, production systems, robotics, material handling, operations management, and agile manufacturing. He joined the faculty in 1966 after several years in industry and retired in December 2010.

Louis J. Plebani | ljp2@lehigh.edu

Dr. Plebani was a faculty member of the Department of Industrial and System Engineering (ISE) of Lehigh University until 2024 as an Associate Professor. His research interests were in the areas of modeling of manufacturing processes, computational operations research, and automation and process control. Sample projects include high speed data acquisition and spectrum analysis of metal removal processes for purposes of predicting catastrophic tool wear; the design and implementation of specialized parallel processing algorithms using workstation networks and also for implementation using heterogeneous embedded processors; and the design and implementation of a high-speed electronic part sorting system. Dr. Plebani has been the principal investigator on a number of research contracts for both federal and local governments and for numerous industrial firms.

Robert H. Storer | rhs2@lehigh.edu

Professor Storer retired from Lehigh after 39 years in the Industrial and Systems Engineering
Dept. He also served as a Visiting scholar at the University of South Australia, Frontera
University (Chile), and CSIRO (Australia). Professor Storer had an active research career
publishing roughly 100 referred publications, advising 20 PhD dissertations and completing 20
research grants from NSF, the U.S. Army and other organizations. Professor Storer won many
awards for his teaching and mentoring of students including The RC Rossin College Faculty
Citizenship Award (2024), the PC Rossin College of Engineering Major Teaching Excellence
Award (2013), the Deming Lewis Award, recognizing the Lehigh faculty member who has
significantly influenced the educational experience of the 10th year alumni class (2011), Lehigh
University Founder’s Day Keynote Address (2009), Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award,
Lehigh's highest award for distinguished teaching (2009), and the Outstanding Teaching Award,
Dept. of Industrial Engineering on 12 different occasions. Professor Storer served on numerous
committees but is most proud of the many search committees he chaired that resulted in many of
our best faculty. He is also grateful for his time on the Faculty Athletics council, the College
DEI committee, and his time as advisor to NSBE. Professor Storer also served as a Founding
Director of two interdisciplinary programs at Lehigh, the Analytical Finance Master’s Program
(with Vladimir Dobric, Mathematics), and the Integrated Business and Engineering Honors
Program (with Steve Buell, Finance).

Gregory L. Tonkay | glt0@lehigh.edu

Dr. Tonkay was a member of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Lehigh University from 1986 to 2025. He served as ISE Associate Chair from 1999-2010, P.C. Rossin College Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies from 2010-2020, and interim ISE Chair from 2007-2008. He was the recipient of multiple ISE department and Rossin College teaching awards, the Lehigh University Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for distinguished teaching, and the Lehigh University Hillman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising. Dr. Tonkay served as the principal investigator for research contracts from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Ben Franklin Partnership, the US Army, and several industrial companies. He taught courses in manufacturing processes, automation, production systems, robotics, material handling, operations management, programming, and databases.

George R. Wilson | grw3@lehigh.edu

Dr. Wilson was a faculty member of the Department of Industrial and System Engineering (ISE) of Lehigh University from 1978 to 2019 and served as ISE Associate Chair from 2011 to 2019. Dr. Wilson served multiple times on university and college committees, such as the Graduate and Research Committee, Tenure & Promotion Committee, and Academic Policy Committee. In 2017 he was co-awarded the INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice for his joint work on “The Inmate Assignment and Scheduling Problem and its Application in the PA Department of Corrections”. He kept a 20-year long consulting activity with IBM.