James V. Carnahan

Professor Emeritus

Professor Carnahan joined the Department of General Engineering in 1983 and has taught courses in operations research, automatic control systems, applied statistics, simulation methodology, measurement and data acquisition, and computer-aided drafting. From 1991-2000 he served as Coordinator of Project Design Activity for the senior project course where 27-35 projects are solicited annually from participating industries and are addressed by student teams with faculty advisors.Professor Carnahan was responsible for both project acquisition and course administration for 300 projects with $2.1M in funding over the decade, while winning 53 national awards for individual projects. He has advised 24 undergraduate projects, supervised 12 master's degree students and has served on several PhD committees. He won the departmental Outstanding Professor Award in 1986, 1991 and 2003, the College of Engineering Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence in 1989, the College of Engineering Excellent Advising Award on 7 occasions, and he was a finalist in the competition for the All-Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1990.

Professor Carnahan is an expert in the design of experiments and subsequent data analysis methods and other statistical topics in quality control. His general methodological interests are in probabilistic modeling and applied statistics, and he has published 25 journal articles on a wide variety of problems, including predicting auto occupant injury rates, modeling bulk conveying system capacity, and determining optimum maintenance programs for deteriorating systems such as pavements and underground heat distribution systems. Recently he has collaborated in developing new methodology for incorporating uncertainty into the design process. He has served as a reviewer for a number of journals, including ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research, and Accident Analysis and Prevention,. He has been a member of ASCE, ASQC, and NSPE. Before coming to the University of Illinois he held staff positions at General Motors Research Laboratories and the Naval Avionics Facility in Indianapolis and he has also been self-employed as a consulting engineer.

In 2002, at the World Scientific Congress on Golf held at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland, Professor Carnahan presented the results from his experiment involving 20 golfers attempting over 2, 000 putts. The statistical analysis of the results contradicts some of the widely accepted notions about the likelihood of one-putting from distances within 12 feet.

Contact Information
Office: 20 Transportation Building
Mailing Address:
117 Transportation Building MC-238
104 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana IL 61801
Phone: (217) 333-6456
Fax: (217) 244-5705
e-mail: carnahan@uiuc.edu

Education
Ph.D., Engineering Sciences, Purdue University, 1973
M.S., Engineering Sciences, Purdue University, 1970
B.S., Engineering Sciences, Purdue University, 1968