ISSIP Names 3 New Fellows – Prof. Roland Rust, Prof. Birgit Mager, and Prof. Dundar Kocaoglu

Prof. Roland Rust, Prof. Birgit Mager, and Prof. Dundar Kocaoglu are being honored as role models for lifetime achievements in advancing understanding and practice of significance to the service innovation community. Professor Roland Rust (University of Maryland) is honored for his significant leadership role in establishing the “Big Tent” field of service research, including establishing the premiere “Frontiers in Service Research” conference and “Sage Journal of Service Research,” as well as ongoing scholarship advancing understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the service research field. Professor Birgit Mager (Cologne University of Applied Sciences) is honored for her significant leadership role in establishing the human-centered field of Service Design, founding Touchpoint, The International Journal of Service Design, as well as ongoing leadership as co-founder and President growing the global Service Design Network community linking students, scholars, and practitioners. Professor Dundar Kocaoglu (Portland State University) is honored for his significant leadership role in establishing the multidisciplinary field of Engineering and Technology Management (ETM), including establishing the premiere PICMET (Portland International Conference for Management of Engineering and Technology) conference and chief-editorship of “IEEE Transactions of Engineering Management,” as well as ongoing research advancing understanding of sustainable energy systems in the ETM field.

More about the 2025 ISSIP Fellows

Roland T. Rust is Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where he is founder and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service. He is VP of Publications for the American Marketing Association, in charge of policy and editor selections for AMA’s five journals. A recent research.com study named him one of the top 100 “Best Scientists in Business and Management,” worldwide across all business disciplines, based on research impact. His lifetime achievement honors include the AMA Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award, the EMAC Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award, Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, the Paul D. Converse Award, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, as well as the top career honors in service marketing, marketing research, marketing strategy, and advertising, and honorary doctorates in economics from the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) and the Norwegian School of Economics. He was one of the inaugural honorees in the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Legends video series, and one of the inaugural AMA Fellows. Awards for his publications include four best article awards from the Journal of Marketing, as well as the Berry/AMA Book Award for the best book in marketing. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing, founded the annual Frontiers in Service Conference, was founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Service Research, and served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM). He has consulted with many leading companies worldwide, including such companies as American Airlines, AT&T, Comcast, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, FedEx, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, NASA, NCR, Nortel, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Sony, Starwood, Tata, Unilever, and USAA. A national class distance runner in his collegiate days, he has been inducted into the DePauw University Athletic Hall of Fame. He has coached Olympic Trials qualifiers, and national and world age group champions in track and triathlon. Read more here: University of Maryland, Wikipedia, Google Scholar, CV, and Linkedin.

After spending several years as an in-house organizational developer and systemic consultant for companies such as Hewlett Packard and Mülhens, Prof. Birgit Mager became interested in the paradigm shift from products and technologies to services, and in helping companies transition to this new model. In 1995, she started teaching “Service Design” at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne (KISD) in Germany. As the first professor in this field, she felt it was her responsibility to create awareness and interest among graduates and ensure they found jobs. Therefore, she was interested not only in developing the theory and methodology of service design and building a curriculum around it, but also in collaborating with real partners in the private and public sectors to publish and speak at conferences to spread the word about service design. In 2004, she co-founded the Global Service Design Network. Since 2008, she has served as president of the nonprofit organization, publishing Touchpoint, the international journal of service design, in various roles.  She organizes the Service Design Global Conference (SDGC) around the world.  Today, the Service Design Network has 30,000 followers worldwide and is open to interlinking with the service innovation community. Since 2014, Birgit has been a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Design (IJD). Since 2024, she has served on the advisory board of the Ph.D. in Service Design for the Public Sector at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Rome, Italy, and has served as a visiting professor. Additional honors include the 2023 Sir Misha Black Medal for exceptional contributions to design education and the Jury Prize for Good Administration. Read more here: TH Köln, Service Design Network, and LinkedIn.

Dr. Dundar Kocaoglu is Professor Emeritus and the founding Chairman of the Department of Engineering and Technology Management (1987-2014), as well as President and CEO of PICMET (Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology), and HDM Systems for Strategic Decisions. He is also the founding Director of RISE (Research Institute for Sustainable Energy). Still active in research, he continues to supervise PhD students in his research areas. Dr. Kocaoglu has been instrumental in establishing the field of Engineering and Technology Management. After developing and directing the Engineering Management Program at the University of Pittsburgh for 11 years, he joined Portland State University to start the Engineering Management Program (now the ETM Department) in 1987. He has graduated more than 30 PhD students, and been an advisor to well over 1,000 Masters students. Dr. Kocaoglu served as the Editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Series Editor of McGraw-Hill Book Series in Engineering Management, and the Series Editor of John Wiley Book Series in Engineering & Technology Management. Additionally, he is listed in over a dozen reference publications. PSU honored Dr. Kocaoglu with the George C. Hoffmann Award for his exceptional career and service to the university. Read more here: Portland State University, PICMET, Google Scholar, and LinkedIn.