Mark Ferguson
Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Mark Ferguson never planned on pursuing sustainability, but when IBM asked him to lead efforts to eliminate chlorofluorocarbon and water-based solvents used in the cleaning of printed circuit boards, he became interested in the relationship between industry and the environment.
Encouraged by IBM to pursue a master's degree, he decided to attend Georgia Tech, although it meant relocating from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Atlanta. "I chose Tech because of their strong reputation, especially in manufacturing engineering," says Ferguson, who served as IBM's technical representative for Tech's Manufacturing Research Center while earning an industrial engineering degree.
His experience at Tech showed him the importance of academic research. Although he helped IBM's Charlotte plant save over two million gallons of water usage a year, he believed a doctoral degree would allow him to create more sustainable solutions to industry problems, so he returned to school to earn a PhD at Duke University, this time focusing on operations management. "I wanted to have the time to solve some major problems instead of constantly working on the symptoms," explains Ferguson of his research shift to management. "I wanted to fix the root cause of the problems."
In 2001, Ferguson found the perfect fit between his professional background and his academic focus when he was offered a position in Tech's College of Management. "I liked the synergies with the engineering school," he says. The College of Management's focus on sustainability and Tech's history of industry collaboration also made Tech attractive.
The winner of two Wickham Skinner Best Paper Awards from the Production and Operations Management Society, he currently focuses on performing sustainability research for two National Science Foundation grants totaling $600,000. "Our main goal is to debunk the myth that remanufacturing reduces profit because it cuts into the sales of a new product," explains Ferguson, who researches whether or not companies should remanufacture and the environmental effects of product leasing. "I work a lot with industry, talking about their major problems and trying to structure them in terms of good research questions."
The process is not always easy. "When we talk to companies, their problems are interdisciplinary," explains Ferguson, who says there is often a need for multiple experts to be involved with the projects.
That is why interdisciplinary collaborations like those fostered by Georgia Tech's Expanding Closed Loops in Production Systems (ECLIPS) group and the Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development are so important. "Together, we can bring an integrated solution to them through all the areas of expertise," says Ferguson. "I think we at Georgia Tech do a better job at that than any other university."