“For over 30 years, CSCR has relied on its stakeholders—the sponsors, faculty, and students—for everything we do. LMI, who’s been with us literally through two-thirds of our existence, is critical to the foundation of our success. We’re incredibly grateful to LMI for contributing to our ongoing achievements,” stated Professor Steve Tracey, CSCR director.

For LMI, the CSCR partnership offers access to student and professor-led research, networking and learning opportunities with leading supply chain executives, training for LMI staff through online sprints focusing on various supply chain topics, and priority access to Penn State’s supply chain-focused job fairs.

“Our LMI partnership with Penn State CSCR provides exceptional value to LMI and the U.S. government,” noted Sharon Hays, PhD, LMI’s chief technology officer. Over the past 20 years, LMI and Penn State supply chain faculty and students have worked together on over 40 research projects. These projects furnish academic rigor for LMI prototype and offering development in support of its defense, national security, health, and civilian agency clients.

Project highlights include uncovering contributing causes to increased counterfeits, researching emerging applications of artificial intelligence to improve supply chain resilience, capturing how COVID-19 affected industry and the applicability of the Defense Production Act, and classifying the individual factors of the solar supply chain to reveal environmental sustainability effects.

LMI staff oversee and leverage these academic projects to benefit their government clients. LMI senior consultant Nate Wurst, who supports supply chain risk efforts for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and supervises the Penn State COVID-19 project, said, “these students conduct domain research and bring fresh ideas, enhancing service delivery to our clients. Our most recent project, which focused on the Defense Production Act, directly strengthened our client support.”