Office of Corporate and Global Partnerships names Global Faculty Fellows

The Office of Corporate and Global Partnerships, in cooperation with Purdue’s Global Academic Committee, has named two faculty members as 2017-18 Global Faculty Fellows.

The fellows are:

Robert Cox, senior associate dean for globalization and professor of construction management, Purdue Polytechnic Institute

Cox will focus on initiatives in India and Colombia that integrate the vision and efforts of multiple disciplines across campus into scalable models that have the largest possible impact on instruction, research, and human and institutional capacity development. Two priority projects will include further developing an academic-industry-government alliance for the aerospace sector in Colombia as well as a three-way corporate-institutional partnership among India’s Adani Group, the Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management and Purdue.

In addition, Cox will leverage his knowledge and experience in international partnership development to generalize tools for analyzing and assessing strategic alliances that can be applied, across disciplines, by departments and colleges as they consider how to engage internationally in the most effective manner.

Abdelfattah Nour, professor of basic medical sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine

Nour’s focus will be in the Middle East, anchored in Jordan, as Purdue’s liaison for a growing partnership with the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). As a fellow he will primarily drive Purdue engagement in the nascent Regional Institute of Excellence for Infectious Diseases and Microbial Resistance at JUST, in partnership with the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease and faculty in most of Purdue's colleges, and will be involved in the distance learning imperative associated with educating the refugees in camps within a couple dozen miles of campus.

The institute is envisioned as a multidisciplinary and multinational facility for research and disease surveillance, tracking, and early warning of infectious, zoonotic, and emerging diseases at what has for millennia been the crossroads of the region, now exacerbated by instability in two neighboring countries, Syria and Iraq. The institute will provide a unique opportunity for scientists from different disciplines, countries and continents to come together to address urgent issues related to disease-causing agents, disease surveillance, antimicrobial drug resistance, vaccine development, training of future scientists, and digital education. This partnership builds on a decades-old relationship between JUST and Purdue’s colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy, through which dozens of JUST’s current faculty received graduate degrees.

"Purdue’s global strategic vision is embodied in Purdue Moves," says Dan Hirleman, Purdue's chief corporate and global partnerships officer. "Keeping Purdue affordable and accessible, while at the same time leading in STEM, changing the world through research, and providing a transformative educational experience for students requires improving what we do with the resources we already have, and leveraging existing resources into additional investment by external partners.

"The latter requires compelling initiatives and projects that Purdue and its faculty are uniquely qualified and positioned to take on. OCGP’s role is to catalyze these initiatives and projects, with a mission to increase the impact, scale and sustainability of Purdue’s corporate and global partnerships. OCGP faculty fellows are key contributors to this mission."