Rate My Professor Rakesh Kawatra

Rakesh Kawatra is a Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at the College of Business, Minnesota State University, Mankato. He holds a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (1978), an MBA (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (1982), and a Ph.D. from The University of Iowa (1991). Kawatra began his tenure at Minnesota State University, Mankato with an original hire date of September 5, 1989, and a current hire date of September 11, 1990. He achieved tenure on September 6, 1994, and was promoted to the rank of Professor effective July 1, 2008. His primary appointment is in instruction within the Management department, with an additional summer assignment in instruction. Over his more than three decades of service, Kawatra has contributed significantly to the academic mission of the university through teaching and research.

Kawatra's research specializes in optimization, heuristics, networks, and integer programming, with a focus on complex network design problems. His publications address challenges such as capacitated degree-constrained structures and reliability considerations in communication networks. Key works include 'Design of capacitated degree constrained min-sum arborescence' (2022, Operations Research Spectrum); 'A hop constrained min-sum arborescence with outage costs' (2007, Computers & Operations Research); 'A multiperiod degree constrained minimal spanning tree problem' (2002, European Journal of Operational Research); 'A Lagrangean Heuristic for the Degree Constrained Minimal Spanning Tree Problem' (Review of Business Information Systems); 'Lower Bounds for the Multiperiod Capacitated Minimal Spanning Tree with Node Outage Cost Design Problem' (2000); 'Two-Phase Heuristic for Capacitated Degree Constrained Min-Sum Arborescence' (2012 conference proceedings); and 'A Lagrangian Based Heuristic for the Design of Multipoint Linkages in a Communication Network with Unreliable Links and Node Outage Costs' (1999, OPSEARCH). He served as principal investigator on a project at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for 'Design of a Degree Constrained Minimal Spanning Tree with Unreliable Links' (2002). Additionally, Kawatra has mentored undergraduate research, including the project 'Health Risks Caused by Wireless Technologies' published in the Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato (2003).