Davood B. Pourkargar
Associate Professor
Warren and Gisela Kennedy Keystone Research Scholar
Contact information
2017 Durland Hall
dbpourkargar@k-state.edu
Education
- Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, 2015
- M.S., Process Simulation and Control, Sharif University of Technology, 2010
- B.S., Chemical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 2008
Professional experience
Davood B. Pourkargar joined the Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering in 2020. He is also a faculty researcher at the Johnson Cancer Research Center. Before joining K-State, he served as a senior engineer at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering (2019-2020); a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota (2016-2019); and a postdoctoral researcher at the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation – a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of Delaware (2015-2016). He earned his doctoral degree from Pennsylvania State University in 2015 and his M.S. and B.S. degrees from Sharif University of Technology in 2010 and 2008, respectively.
Research
His research interests include computational multiscale modeling for digital twin development, applied artificial intelligence, optimization-based control of complex process networks, cyber-process systems, advanced manufacturing, and smart materials synthesis. At K-State, his research group develops enabling technologies to enhance control and real-time decision-making for integrated processes and intelligent manufacturing systems for chemicals, functional materials, and bio-based products. Although primarily computational, his work also includes designing experiments to test hypotheses, validate model predictions, and generate high-fidelity data for physics-informed machine learning. He has extended his laboratory into robotic additive manufacturing and autonomous biomanufacturing, supported by several research infrastructure grants.
Academic highlights
Pourkargar has (co-)authored more than 60 refereed papers in journals and conference proceedings and has presented his research over 100 times at international conferences, research institutes, and universities. His contributions have received several significant recognitions, including the NSF CAREER Award (2026), Carl R. Ice College of Engineering Outstanding Assistant Professor Award (2024), NSF EPSCoR Research Fellowship (2024-2027), Kansas EPSCoR First Award (2023), AFOSR Faculty Fellowship (2023), Big XII Faculty Fellowship (2023), Robert F. Smith School Distinguished Junior Researcher Award from Cornell University (2017), O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award from the American Automatic Control Council (2014), the Walter R. and Aura Lee Supina Graduate Fellowship in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University (2011), and Best Presentation awards at the American Control Conferences (2013, 2015) and at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meetings (2015, 2017). He is a senior member of AIChE and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).