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Society of Manufacturing Engineering inducts Soundar Kumara as fellow
The honor recognizes Kumara's decades of leadership, innovation and lasting contributions to manufacturing engineering, education and smart manufacturing research.
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Bhavana P - Mon, 13, Jul 2026
- 14:16 EDT
- 75
Soundar Kumara / Penn State University
The Society of Manufacturing Engineering (SME) has inducted Indian-American academic and engineer Soundar Kumara into its 2026 College of Fellows.
Kumar, one of eight manufacturing professionals selected for this year's class, was recognized for his decades-long contributions to manufacturing research, education and technological innovation.
The Allen E. and Allen M. Pearce Professor of Industrial Engineering at Penn State University and director of the Center for the Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning to Industry within the university's Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Kumar’s research focuses on real-time sensor analysis, machine learning for manufacturing process diagnosis and complex network systems.
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“I am truly honored to be recognized as a fellow of SME, an achievement I value greatly," Kumara said. "It is especially rewarding to see the work my group began in the early 1980s — in sensing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), applications to manufacturing, and networked edge-computing in manufacturing — help shape today’s smart manufacturing research, education and practice. As an academic, engineer and researcher, having the opportunity to make such an impact is a privilege beyond measure.”
Kumara's best-known achievements include the co-development of the Label Propagation Algorithm, a machine learning technique widely used in modern software platforms. The work was recognized by Physical Review E as one of its 25 landmark papers selected from more than 50,000 publications commemorating the journal's 25th anniversary.
Ling Rothrock, interim head of Penn State's Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, said the honor was well deserved, citing Kumara's pioneering work in manufacturing process monitoring and diagnosis, as well as his more recent contributions to artificial intelligence and machine learning in manufacturing.
Throughout his career, Kumara has supervised 70 doctoral students and 81 master's students. He is also a fellow of several professional organizations, including the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, the International Academy for Production Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Kumara also serves on the Pennsylvania Governor's Advisory Commission on Artificial Intelligence, helping guide the responsible development and application of AI technologies. He holds a bachelor of engineering degree from S.V.U College of Engineering, Tirupati, an M.Tech. from IIT Madras, followed by a Ph.D. from Purdue University.
Established in 1986, the SME College of Fellows honors members with at least 20 years of experience who have demonstrated sustained leadership and made significant contributions to the manufacturing engineering profession.
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