ISSIP Names Penn State’s Vittal Prabhu to Board of Directors

Penn State University service systems engineering leader begins two-year term on October 1, 2026

SANTA CLARA, CA, UNITED STATES, October 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP) today announced that Dr. Vittal Prabhu, Professor and Charles and Enid Schneider Faculty Chair in Service Enterprise Engineering (SEE) at Penn State University’s College of Engineering, has been named to the ISSIP Board of Directors. His two-year term begins October 1, 2026.

Prabhu brings to the board years of hands-on involvement in ISSIP’s programs, along with decades of experience building bridges between service systems research, engineering education, and industry. ISSIP previously recognized his contributions with its Distinguished Recognition Award for Service Innovation in 2022.

“We are honored to have Vittal Prabhu join our board of directors. He has been actively engaged in ISSIP for many years, as a sponsor and advisor in our AI Collab program, and as a judge of our annual service innovation awards. Vittal brings a great deal of expertise, and engineering discipline to our board for scaling operations,” said Haluk Demirkan, President of ISSIP, tenured Professor and founder of the Business Analytics Center at the University of Washington Tacoma.

Jim Spohrer, retired IBM executive and an ISSIP Board Member and co-founder said, “Vittal Prabhu is an outstanding addition to the ISSIP Board of Directors, not only for his wide range of contributions to the ISSIP service innovation community of practice, but for his leadership in the much larger service systems engineering community globally. His 2018 co-authored book “Service Systems Engineering and Management” is always within arms reach for me, and a well-thumbed reference of both fundamental concepts and modeling insights.”

In 2024, Prabhu co-chaired the PSU/ISSIP Industry Transformation Series: Engineering the 21st Century Service Economy with ISSIP’s co-founder and board director Jim Spohrer. Launched in collaboration with the Penn State College of Engineering, the series convened six virtual expert panels drawing on industry, government, nonprofit and academic voices to examine how AI and other technologies are reshaping entire sectors — and how progress in the emerging service economy should be measured. Namely, from May through December, the panel discussions explored Healthcare, Finance, Education, Retail & Hospitality, Supply Chain & Logistics and finally, Energy & IT. The series ranked among ISSIP’s top three community engagement draws of 2024, attracting new audiences to ISSIP’s content. Recordings and presentations remain available at issip.org.

Prabhu has also been a supporter and sponsor of ISSIP AI Collab since the program’s pilot in 2023, including serving as a faculty advisor to a Penn State Learning Factory student team that developed an AI-powered course to onboard new ISSIP participants in spring 2025. In addition, he serves as a judge for ISSIP’s highly regarded annual Excellence in Service Innovation Awards.

About Vittal Prabhu

Prabhu has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1996 in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, home of the world’s first industrial engineering program. He has led the department’s Service Systems Engineering Initiative, and in 2020 was named the Charles and Enid Schneider Faculty Chair in Service Enterprise Engineering, a position established to grow service systems engineering at Penn State.

His research focuses on distributed control systems for manufacturing and service enterprises, spanning operations, services and analytics — from supply chain cash-flow dynamics and smart maintenance to AI-enabled methods for service systems education. He is co-author of the textbook Service Systems Engineering and Management (2018) and has published extensively in leading industrial engineering and operations journals.

Recent honors include the 2026 Wellington Award from the Engineering Economy Division of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), recognizing long-term contributions to the field of engineering economy, and a 2026 Best Conference Paper Award at the 9th Eurasian Conference on Educational Innovation for research on AI-enabled engineering education. He is on the Fulbright Specialist Roster in Service Systems Engineering (2024–2027). Prabhu earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

About ISSIP

The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP) is a global nonprofit community that advances service innovation to benefit people, business and society. Individual membership is free, and ISSIP’s programs — including AI Collab, Ambassadors, Events, Publishing and MyT-Me — are supported by donor companies and institutions across industry, government, NGOs and academia. Learn more at issip.org.