The Purdue University Board of Trustees approved multiple named professorships and deanships, including four in economics and business fields.

---

On August 7, 2026, the Purdue University Board of Trustees met to approve several key appointments and recognitions:

• Brian Dineen as the Frederick and Alice Leeds Professor
• David Hummels as the Marshall and Susan Larsen Chair
• Ting Zhu as the Jack A. Hockema Chair in Business
• Martin Dufwenberg as Distinguished Professor of Economics

Further appointments were made in the fields of engineering, health and education, as well as new athletics leadership.

Brian Dineen - Appointed to the Frederick and Alice Leeds Professor
Dineen came to Purdue in 2013 as an associate professor of management, later rising to department head for Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. His research focuses on issues related to recruitment, job search and employee retention. More specifically, he investigates factors that influence the quality of initial applicant pools in organizations, including recruitment message orientation and mass customization, as well as job seeker search strategies. The Frederick and Alice Leeds Professor of Management was established in 1990 by the estate of Alice Cole Leeds. This fund provides for an endowed professorship in the Mitch Daniels School of Business.

David Hummels - Appointed to the Marshall and Susan Larsen Chair
Hummels came to Purdue in 2000 as an assistant professor, advancing to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Economics. He previously served as the Dr. Samuel R. Allen Dean of the Mitch Daniels School of Business. Hummels’ research focuses on a range of issues in international trade, including offshoring and its impact on labor markets; product differentiation; barriers to trade; and the broader impacts of aviation, infrastructure and trade facilitation on trade and economic development. Most recently, his work has centered on labor market issues, including executive compensation, the intersection between worker health and labor markets, and the economics of higher education. Hummels’ honors and awards include an Outstanding Innovation in Graduate Teaching recognition and an Excellence in Executive MBA Teaching honor from Purdue, several grants, and other recognitions. The Marshall and Susan Larsen Chair was established in 2026 for an internationally recognized economist with a preference for research focused on international trade.

Ting Zhu - Appointed to the Jack A. Hockema Chair in Business
Zhu joined the faculty at Purdue in 2016 as an associate professor of marketing. She currently serves as the department head of Marketing in the Mitch Daniels School of Business and the Jack A. Hockema Term Chair in Business. Her teaching experience and interests lie in new product management, marketing analytics, consumer behavior, customer relationship management and pricing. Her publications and research interests focus on entry models, consumer choices, retail competition, pricing, new technology adoption, and health and sustainability in marketing. Zhu serves on the editorial boards of Marketing Science and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.

Martin Dufwenberg - Appointed as Distinguished Professor of Economics
Dufwenberg joined the faculty at Purdue in 2025 as a professor of economics. His research uses game theory and experiments to incorporate insights from psychology into economic analysis. Much of his work develops and applies a formal framework called psychological game theory, which is useful for modeling emotions, reciprocity, social norms and image concerns. His publications have appeared in many scientific outlets, including Econometrica, American Economic Review, Neuron, The Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, and more. Dufwenberg currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Economic Science Association and Experimental Economics. His honors and awards include being named an Economic Theory Fellow as well as receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Gothenburg, the Erik Malmsten Visiting Professorship Award, the Royal Economic Society Prize and more.

Read more about the appointments in the Press Release on the purdue.edu website.