Professor Shanthikumar joined the Krannert faculty in 2009. Prior to coming to Purdue, he was a Chancellor's Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in integrated interdisciplinary decision making, model uncertainty and learning, production systems modeling and analysis, queueing theory, reliability, scheduling, semiconductor yield management, simulation stochastic processes, and sustainable supply chain management. He has written or co-written more than 250 papers on these topics. He is a co-author (with John A. Buzacott) of the book Stochastic Models of Manufacturing Systems and a co-author (with Moshe Shaked) of the books Stochastic Orders and Their Applications and Stochastic Orders.

He was a co-editor of Flexible Services & Manufacturing Journal and is (or was) a member of the editorial boards of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Operations Research, IEEE Transactions on Automation Sciences and Engineering, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Flexible Management Systems, Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems, Journal of the Production and Operations Management Society, Operations Research, Operations Research Letters, OPSEARCH, Probability in the Engineering and Information Sciences, and Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications.

Professor Shanthikumar has extensively consulted for various companies, including Applied Materials (AMAT), Bellcore, IBM, KLA-Tencor, NTT (Japan), Intel, Intermolecular, ReelSolar, Safeway, and Southern Pacific. Through KLA-Tencor, he has worked on joint development projects for Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, Intel, LSI, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and UMC.