MAYAGUEZ, PUERTO RICO: The first graduate of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering’s doctoral program, Dr. Mario Padron, passed away on February 23, 2013. He is survived by his wife and three daughters, shown in the picture which was taken in 2009.
Padron defended his thesis, advised by Professor Dick Patterson, “An Axiomatic Basis and Computational Methods for Optimal Clustering,” in the spring of 1969 and officially graduated in June of 1969. He was the first Ph.D. hired to work in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (UPR). Although his career took him back and forth between Puerto Rico and the states, he returned to UPR in 2000, teaching the capstone design course and organizational behavior.
Padro