Pradeep Bapusaheb Deshpande

Pradeep Bapusaheb Deshpande (born December 12, 1942) is an India-born naturalized American citizen. He is Professor Emeritus in and a former Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Louisville and President and CEO of Louisville-based Six Sigma and Advanced Controls, Inc., a Subchapter S Kentucky Corporation that he founded in 1993 to offer software and consulting services in six sigma and advanced control. He is also a Visiting Professor of Management, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky in Lexington for over a decade. He is a recognized expert in advanced process control, six sigma, and science and practices of internal and external excellence for a better and a more peaceful world.
Early life
Pradeep was born in Hyderabad, India to the late Mrs. Subhadrabai Deshpande. She was an intensely devotional individual and would spend hours and hours daily in japa meditation. Pradeep's father, the late Mr. Bapusaheb Deshpande, is a Government of India-designated freedom fighter. Having left college in his teens, he joined the nonviolent freedom struggle under the auspices of the Congress Party that Mahatma Gandhi had founded, and continued in the freedom movement for more than three decades, including a year in jail, until India gained independence in 1947. Pradeep's sister tells him that their father and former Prime Minister the late Mr. PV Narasimha Rao, a friend and associate in the freedom struggle, would debate and argue about strategies on how to gain independence late into the night until a mutual friend would urge them to go to bed.
Pradeep grew up in Bidar in the state of Karnataka in India finishing high school there. He then went to pursue a BSc in Chemistry with a minor in Physics at the Government Arts and Science College in Gulbarga also in Karnataka. In 1962 he came to the United States to pursue a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering at the University of Alabama. Pradeep finished his B. S. and M. S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Alabama. Subsequently, he enrolled in doctoral studies in Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas and did his dissertation on the thermal conductivity of two-phase systems under the supervision of Dr. James R. Couper. To this day, Pradeep considers Dr. Robert E. Babcock Professor of Chemical Engineering there also as his mentor. He finished his PhD at the University of Arkansas in a little less than two years.
Professional career
Academic experience
Upon completing his doctorate, Pradeep worked as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas. There, he received the Best Teacher Award in the Mechanical Engineering Department in his first year of teaching. Pradeep then moved to Washington, DC where he taught as an Assistant Professor in the newly formed Chemical Engineering Department at Howard University, a predominantly African-American school, under the leadership of Dr. Herbert M. Katz for two years. The following year he went to India and worked as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India for one year. He returned to the US the following year to work as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Drexel University for a year to fill in for process control teacher, Prof. Donald R. Coughanowr who was going on sabbatical to Swiss Federal Institute (ETH, Zurich). In 1975, he joined the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Louisville as an Associate Professor. Pradeep continued his academic career at the University of Louisville until his retirement in 2008. He served as the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering during 1985-1990. During his thirty-three year career at the University of Louisville, he spent brief periods at IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, UDCT, Mumbai, and NCL, Pune.
Industrial experience
Between his Master's and Doctoral studies, Pradeep worked for a year at Northrop Space Labs in Huntsville, Alabama, developing mathematical models and computer programs for the prediction of the thermal environment of Moon and Mars. Prior to joining the University of Louisville, he spent a year at Bechtel, Inc., in San Francisco, California working in the Simulation and Advanced Control Section. During his tenure at the University of Louisville, he spent several summers working in DuPont, Mobil Research & Development Corporation, and Exxon Chemical Company. With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Pradeep spent a year on sabbatical at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, India.
Research contributions
At the University of Louisville, Pradeep and his students developed numerous approaches to achieving perfection (Minimum Variance) in dynamic processes commonly found in process industries such refineries and petrochemical plants. The papers describing the specific advanced control approaches were published in such journals as Chemical Engineering Progress, Hydrocarbon Processing, Proceedings of the Royal Society-UK, and Chemical Engineering Science. He also developed several new courses in process control. The papers outlining these courses were published in Chemical Engineering Education, a publication of the American Society for Engineering Education.
During his tenure at the University of Louisville, Pradeep developed strong collaborative research programs with DuPont and Exxon Chemical Company. Several of his PhD graduates joined these companies while several others joined AspenTech, a major Advanced Control Company in Houston, Texas. During the mid-nineties, Pradeep received a major grant from The Foundation for Water Science and Technology, UAE. Under the auspices of the grant, advances in the control and optimization of MSF and RO desalination plants were made. The papers describing these advancements were published in the Journal of Desalination and Journal of Process Control. A doctoral student working on these topics received the best paper award at the International Conference on Water Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi.
Given that perhaps as many as 9 out 10 processes are static operations, Pradeep shifted his focus to six sigma, the strategy for achieving minimum variance in static processes. He showed that advanced process control strategies for dynamic processes for were a subset of six sigma. He developed a unifying framework for six sigma and process control and published a paper on the subject in Hydrocarbon Processing.
In 2005 Pradeep was given an opportunity to introduce his company's Six Sigma Green Belt training program in the newly reconfigured MBA program of the Gatton College of Business & Economics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. After teaching this program for two years, he was offered an opportunity to teach the program in the University of Kentucky's MBA program in TEI/Piraeus, a suburb of Athens, Greece. He has been conducting this program in Athens annually for over ten years.
Pradeep has conducted six sigma programs for major organizations such as Oil and Gas Corp., India, Kuwait Ministry for Higher Education (Private Universities Council), an Agency for US Department of Defense, Frito-Lay, Inc., International Carbon Company and others. He kept noticing that six sigma programs were not delivering uniform performance. In what he terms as an Aha moment, Pradeep came to realize that in the absence of an adequate level of internal excellence, quality initiatives including six sigma, cannot deliver good performance. Introduce internal excellence and the performance will zoom. This realization has now morphed into an auditable scientific framework for a better and a more peaceful world. The scientific framework is a must for emerging nations who wish to accelerate their rise so that they can emerge as developed nations, developing nations who wish to change direction so that they can begin to rise, and developed nations who aspire to keep their inevitable eventual decline at bay longer. As a subset, the framework will permit companies to improve their business performance and individuals to emerge as their best. The benefits of the framework are: improvements in health and wellness, exemplary performance including business performance, creativity and innovativeness, better leadership, and less discord and violence. Many papers on the several aspects of the framework and two books have been published.
Selected publications
* Deshpande, P B. and Kowall, James P., The Nature of Ultimate Reality and How It Can Transform Our World: Evidence from Modern Physics: Wisdom of YODA, Six Sigma and Advanced Controls, Inc., 2015. (Available on amazon).
* Deshpande, P. B., Six Sigma for Karma Capitalism, Six Sigma and Advanced Controls, Inc., January 2015 (Available on amazon).
* Deshpande, P. B., Tantalean, R. Z., Unifying Framework for Six Sigma and Process Control, Hydrocarbon Processing, June 2009.
* Burden, A. C., Tantalean, R. Z., and Deshpande, P. B., Control and Optimize Nonlinear Processes, Chemical Engineering Progress, 99, 2, February 2003. pp. 63-73.
* Deshpande, P. B., Makker, S. L., and Goldstein, M., Boost Competitiveness via Six Sigma, Chemical Engineering Progress, 95, 9, September 1999. pp. 65-70.
* Ramasamy, S., Deshpande, P.B., Tambe, S.S., and Kulkarni, B.D., Robust Nonlinear Control with Neural Networks, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A, London, 449, June 1995. pp. 655-667.
* Deshpande, P. B., Bhalodia, M. A., Caldwell, J. A., and Srinivas, Y. S., Should You Use Constrained Model Predictive Control?, Chemical Engineering Progress, 91, 3, 1995. pp. 65-72.
* Deshpande, P. B., Hannula R. E., Bhalodia, M., and Hansen, C. W., Achieve Total Quality Control of Continuous Processes, Chem. Eng. Progress, 89, 7, 1993.
* Shukla, N.V., Deshpande, P.B., Ravi Kumar, V., Kulkarni, B.D., Enhancing the Robustness of Internal Model Based Nonlinear pH pH Controller, Chemical Engineering Science, 48, 5, (1993), 913-920.
* Ravi Kumar, V., Kulkarni, and Deshpande, P.B., On Robust Nonlinear Control, Proceedings of the Royal Society, London; Series A, 433, June 1991. pp. 711-722.
* Prasad, P.R., Chawla, V.K., Deshpande, P.B., “A New Algorithm for SISO and MIMO Systems: Applications to Multiloop Control Systems”, Ind & Eng Chem Research, 29, 1, 1990.
Awards and recognition
In his first year in teaching, Pradeep received the Best Teacher Award in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Arkansas in 1971. He is a recipient of Donald P. Eckman Award in Process Control Education given by International Society of Automation (ISA). He was recognized as the Alumni Research Scholar by the Speed Scientific School, University of Louisville. He was recognized as a 150th Anniversary Distinguished Engineering Fellow by the University of Alabama. Several years ago, University of Chemical Technology, Mumbai recognized him with G. M. "Dadasaheb" Abhyankar Distinguished Fellowship and later offered him the Golden Jubilee Visiting Fellowship. Pradeep is a Fellow and life Member of ISA.
Personal life
Pradeep is married to Meena for fifty years and they have sons and six grandchildren. He and his wife live in Louisville, Kentucky.

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