2015
MS&E Professor Margaret Brandeau has been appointed to an Institute of Medicine committee that will examine logistical and other issues related to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). The SNS is a $5 billion repository of medical and pharmaceutical supplies held by the US government for response to public health emergencies, and is a key part of our nation's preparedness efforts.
Nick Arnosti, a Ph.D. student of Professor Ramesh Johari, has been awarded a Google PhD Fellowship in Market Algorithms. Google created this PhD Fellowship program in 2009 to recognize and support outstanding graduate students doing exceptional work in Computer Science and related disciplines. (link to article)
Forbes published an article that features the research of MS&E's Professor Warren Hausman on “Fast Fashion”. Professor Warren H. Hausman has quantified the financial value of fast fashion to reduce unwanted markdowns and lost sales, or stockouts, enabling firms to increase profits by as much as 28 percent. Zara, says Hausman, achieves four times more profitability than most apparel retailers, by combining higher turn and margins, and lower inventory risk in a highly uncertain business. (link to article)
MS&E Professor Sharad Goel and his work on virality was featured in an article from the International Journal of Science, Nature, titled "The mathematics behind Internet virality". (link to article)
In a recent article in the SLOAN Management Review, psychologists Robin Hogarth and Emre Soyer present the benefits of interactive simulation, one of the cornerstones of the discipline of probability management. In “Using Simulated Experience to Make Sense of Big Data,” Hogarth and Soyar cite ProbabilityManagement.org as “a non-profit organization that aims at improving communication of uncertainty,” and applies “simulation-based communication to improve actual managerial decisions and public policies.”
MS&E Consulting Professor Sam Savage teaches the MS&E courses “The Flaw of Averages” and “Interactive Management Science.” He directs the Probability Management, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to rethinking uncertainty through education, best practices, and their open SIPmath™ standard. The discipline of probability management uses current computer technology to address the Flaw of Averages through improvements in: Communication of Uncertainties, Calculation with Uncertainties, and Credibility of Uncertain Estimates. (link to article)
California's landmark cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions just got bigger. Effective Jan. 1, 2015 it expanded to wrap in gasoline and diesel, a move oil companies have warned would trigger higher pump prices.
MS&E’s Professor James Sweeney, the committee chairman, an economist who directs Stanford University's Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, said the group would examine state and proprietary data on wholesale and retail prices from before and after cap and trade takes effect. He has estimated that retail prices should rise about 9 to 10 cents per gallon. Any price increase related to cap and trade would likely be introduced by the refiners into the price that gas stations pay, Professor Sweeney said.(link)
MS&E’s Professor Sig Hecker provides an interesting historical perspective on North Korea’s nuclear programs in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (link)
2014
Clue into Climate is a four-part iBooks Textbook on climate. The interactive series developed for middle- and high-school students explores the causes of climate change, its impacts on freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, and innovative strategies for curbing and adapting to change. The series can be downloaded through the iBooks Store.
Clue into Climate follows the release last June of the two-part e-book series, Energy, produced by KQED and Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy. Volume 1, Energy: The Basics, investigates the nature of energy and energy resources. Volume 2, Energy: Use and Efficiency, explores how people use energy, from generating electricity to developing energy-efficient technologies.
MS&E Professor James Sweeney directs the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center whose mission is to understand and overcome market, policy, technology and behavioral barriers to economically efficient reductions of energy use, and to inform public and private policymaking.
Ansu Sahoo, recent PhD graduate of MS&E won the student Best Paper Award at the International Association of Energy Economics annual meeting in Rome. Every year there is a strong competition from around the world. Congratulations to Ansu for this wonderful achievement.
Two INFORMS Awards were received
Awards Congratulations to Ruixue Guo, PhD student in MS&E, for receiving the 2014 INFORMS – Judith Liebman Award on behalf of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. In 2004, Anne Robinson, MS&E PhD ’05, received this award the first time it was introduced and now Ruixue has brought it back! The purpose of this award is to recognize volunteers who have made outstanding and sustained contributions to their student chapters.
Also, the INFORMS Student Chapter Annual Award was given to the Stanford Student Chapter at the Magna Cum Laude level this year.
During its recent annual meeting, the NAE recognized MS&E’s Sig Hecker with the Arthur M. Bueche Award "for contributions to nuclear science and engineering and for service to the nation through nuclear diplomacy.” The award recognizes an engineer who has shown dedication in science and technology, as well as active involvement in determining U.S. science and technology policy. You can read the full NAE press release about this well-deserved recognition of Sig’s work here: https://www.nae.edu
Michael Leatherbee's PhD research, supervised by Chuck Eesley, on Start-up Chile is featured in a major Chiliean newspaper (link...)
MS&E Professor Margaret Brandeau is featured in Stanford's School of Engineering news article. Margaret Brandeau applies the decision-making principles of management science and engineering to save lives. You can read the full article, Stanford Engineer Help Curb Disease and Guard Against Bioterrorism, here: (link...)
MS&E Professor Margaret Brandeau was a plenary speaker last month at the IFORS Conference in Barcelona. This is a triennial conference held by the International Federation of Operations Research Societies. Her talk was on "Operations Research and Public Health: Models that Can Make a Difference," and a copy of her slides can be found on the conference website: (link...)
Professor Warren Hausman and his research are featured in Stanford's School of Enginering. Professor Warren Hausman and his colleagues show that streamlining rules and regulations can be a more effective way to improve competitiveness than making costly investments in infrastructure to speed the flow of goods. (link...)
Kathy Eisenhardt has been selected as the 2014 Technology and Innovation Management Scholar by the Academy of Management; this is the highest honor given by the Division of Technology and Innovation Management. In connection with this recognition, Kathy gives a plenary talk as part of the annual Academy of Management annual meetings in Philadelphia. The award recognizes Kathy's contributions to development of greater understanding of firm strategies in fast-moving environments, especially for technology-based firms. (link...)
STVP releases video: "The Spirit of Entrepreneurship"
Professor Yinyu Ye is the winner of the 2014 SIAM Optimization Prize. The SIAM (The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Activity Group on Optimization (SIAG/OPT) Prize, established in 1992, is awarded every three years to the author(s) of the most outstanding paper, as determined by the prize committee, on a topic in optimization published in English in a peer-reviewed journal. Yinyu was specifically recognized for his paper "The Simplex and Policy-Iteration Methods are Strongly Polynomial for the Markov Decision Problem with a Fixed Discount Rate", published in Mathematics of Operations Research in November of 2011.
Professor Warren Hausman from MS&E, Hau Lee from Stanford GSB, and Uma Subramanian of the World Bank were awarded the Wickham Skinner Best Paper Award at the recent Production and Operations Management Society Annual Conference in Atlanta. The Wickham Skinner Awards are intended to encourage POM scholarship and publication, to promote significant research in the field, to reward academics who have achieved unusually high accomplishment early in their careers, and to facilitate the sharing of innovative new ideas about teaching POM.
Prof. Bob Sutton is the 2014 Winner of the Sumantra Ghoshal Award, presented by the London Business School to honor "rigour and relevance in the study of management" (link).
MSandE Faculty and CISAC Senior Fellow Siegfried "Sig" Hecker and a delegation of American scientists traveled to Moscow last week to revitalize nuclear cooperation with Russia, despite diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. (link)
Michael May, professor emeritus, honored with Joseph A. Burton Forum Award (link)
New Directions Lecturer, Paul Glasserman scheduled to speak at our New Directions Speakers Series on April 23. (link)
Ken Arrow is a Nobel Prize winning economist who has made fundamental contributions lying at the intersection of economics and operations research over the course of his career, and who for many years was jointly appointed with one of MS&E's predecessor departments. Ken will be speaking as one of 2014 Engineering Heroes..
Stephen Boyd, courtesy faculty member in MS&E and Professor of Electrical Engineering, has been recognized through election to the National Academy of Engineering. NAE cited Boyd for his contributions in applying the methodology of convex optimization to machine learning, signal processing, circuit design and other applications. (link)
MS&E's Sig Hecker has been awarded the prestigious Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his dedication to building bridges through science. In nominating Hecker for the award, Glenn E. Schweitzer, director of the Office for Central Europe and Eurasia at the National Academies, noted that Sig "has been particularly effective in working with government officials and scientific colleagues in Russia, Kazakhstan, and North Korea, and his activities in those countries form the basis for this nomination." He added that Hecker's "global reach has extended far beyond those three countries," with the United States and many other nations benefitting from the international partnerships developed by Hecker. (link).
Professor Pam Hinds provides an NPR radio interview on "The Takeaway", in which Pam talks about "The Myth of the 8 Hour Work Day": (link)
MS&E's Sig Hecker and Bill Perry are co-authors of one of the Op-Ed pieces in today's NY Times, offering some interesting thoughts regarding Iran's nuclear options. (link)
Graduate student Sabina Alistar '12 presented at TEDX in Autumn 2013 discussing mathematics in public health (link)
Congratulations to Professor David Luenberger on his retirement on September 30, 2013, marking 50 years of service to Stanford University!
2013
MSandE Newletter from the Chair - Fall 2013
Professor Margaret L. Brandeau described a five-step path to a successful application of OR in healthcare that published in OR/MS Tomorrow. She shares thoughts with OR/MS students about how they can be successful applying operations research in health (link)
Sig Hecker is one of three Stanford experts weighing in on the technical and political consequences of the historic agreement reached with Iran to temporarily halt its nuclear weapons program. (link)
A Stanford study headed by Chuck Eesley highlights the critical importance of strong technical skills in launching tech ventures, casting doubt on the conventional wisdom that a founding team with diverse business skills is the best approach. (link)
MS&E's new Center for Financial and Risk Analytics was announced in the School of Engineering's News earlier this week.
This center is led by Professor Kay Giesecke. It is expected that it will play a major role in the Department's research and teaching activities in the finance and analytics areas going forward.
An interview with Professor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell appeared on November 3, 2013 in the Financial Times as the feature of the week. Elisabeth talks about "the need for an analytical approach to life", black swans, and a range of other issues, based on her research in the engineering risk analysis area. (link)
One of our MS&E PhD students, Michael Ohlrogge (working with Kay Giesecke), has recently contributed to the SEC discussion of executive compensation rules by proposing a sampling-based method for reporting the median salary within a company (thereby potentially reducing compliance costs). Michael is also jointly pursuing a law degree, and also was assisted by Joseph Grundfest in his efforts. Below is a link to the NYT article discussing the new rule: (full story)
Siegfried Hecker recalls the closely held story of how nuclear scientists from the United States, Russia and Kazahkstan cooperated for 15 years to secure Kazakhstan's vulnerable Semipalatinsk Test Site. (full story)
Al Roth joins NAS (National Academy of Sciences)
Al Roth has been elected to receive one of the highest honors for an American scientist in recognition of their achievements in original research.
Al Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Roth is acclaimed for his significant work in the fields of game theory, market design and experimental economics. He has emphasized applying economic theory to solutions for real-world problems, most notably improving the matching processes involved in kidney donor matching, the national medical residency program and the New York and Boston public high school system. He shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in market design.
(link)
MS&E Pranav Dandekar Ph.D. '13 and David T. Lee Ph.D. '17 received a grant for media innovation, a "Magic Grant" from the Brown Institute. Pranav and David compose one of eight Stanford or Columbia teams to receive up to $100,000 in funding for transforming the production and use of media content. Their work under MS&E Ashish Goel on WideScope moves social networking beyond chatting and beyond simple collaboration to a crowd-sourced resolution of a complex problem -- in this case, balancing federal and state budgets.
Business Journal Silicon Valley is recommending four online courses that are available from Stanford this Spring: (link) Three of these courses are from MS&E: Kay Giesecke's finance class, Chuck Eesley's entrepreneurship class, and Tina Seelig's creativity class.
Professor Margaret Brandeau has received a five-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse on "Making Better Decisions: Policy Modeling for AIDS and Drug Abuse". This is Margaret's fourth consecutive five-year grant from NIDA and you can download a two page summary of the study.
Professor Michael Saunders has been named a Fellow of SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), the main applied mathematics professional society. SIAM recognizes Fellows "based on their exemplary research as well as outstanding service to the community. Through their contributions, SIAM Fellows help advance the fields of applied mathematics and computational science." Michael Saunders is recognized for his contributions in numerical optimization, linear algebra, and software.
Sig Hecker (writing a book while on sabbatical in Vienna) discusses the North Korea nuclear announcement (re-starting nuclear facilities and threatening pre-emptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and the US) in this CISAC/FSI interview, "Hecker responds to NKorea's intent to expand nuclear arsenal." Sig Hecker's research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapon policy and international security, nuclear security, and cooperative nuclear threat reduction..
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published research on polarization in society by Professor Ashish Goel and doctoral candidates Pranav Dandekar and David T. Lee. De-Groot's well known model of opinion formation does not explain polarization, which is perceived to be an increase in the divergence of opinions on an issue. "Biased assimilation, homophily, and the dynamics of polarization" (link) proposes a mathematical model for a behavioral phenomenon that we commonly know as confirmation bias (or cherry-picking evidence), and shows how opinions in a social network diverge when people are biased. Stanford Engineering published an article which you can read here about this research: The world through rose-colored blinders: A new mathematical model for how society becomes polarized. (link)
Five MS&E MS students competed in the MEMPC business simulation competition. This was a 4 week long business simulation competition involving five cross-school teams, with one student from each of the following MEMPC schools: MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Dartmouth. The students ran a simulated company, making decisions as a team, and competing against the other teams. The web-based simulation was run over multiple iterations, simulating a multi year span of time. The MS&E MS student on the winning team was Chi Hung Chong, who was presented with his award by Professor Glynn, Professor Hausman, Lori Cottle, and Juanita Winkleman.
On Thursday, April 11, 2013, at 12 noon, in Packard 1010, Jon Kleinberg is the featured speaker. The Tisch University Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Information Science at Cornell University, he researches issues at the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-line media. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of research fellowships from the MacArthur, Packard, Simons, and Sloan Foundations, as well as awards including the Nevanlinna Prize, the Lanchester Prize, and the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences. New Directions Lecture Series
MS&E Professor Seigfried Hecker, former CISAC co-director and now a senior fellow at CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute, as well as one of the world’s leading experts on plutonium science, digs deep into the technical and political aspects of North Korea's recent nuclear test. (link)
The Stanford Report featured Professor Tina Seelig’s massive online course in which teams unleashed diverse approaches to creativity. link Innovative ‘Crash Course in Creativity’ taught fall semester, inspired teams of students around the world to think in new ways. Seelig saw that teamwork helped to create novel solutions to challenging problems. Each person brought a different point of view and unique experiences. By connecting and combining their ideas, teamwork dramatically expanded the solution set.
Eva Enns, MS&E doctoral students of Professor Margaret Brandeau just won the Elwood S. Buffa Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Decision Sciences Institute. (Eva Enns is currently an Assistant Professor in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.) The purpose of the Doctoral Dissertation Award Competition is to encourage and publicize outstanding dissertation research by selecting and recognizing the best dissertations written in the past year in the decision sciences. (link)
2012
It is with sadness that we report that our friend and colleague Arthur "Pete" F. Veinott, Jr. passed away on Wednesday, December 12, 2012. He joined Stanford in 1962, helped found the Department of Operations Research, and was a valued member of the later EESOR and MS&E departments. He was widely known for his research contributions to dynamic programming, lattice programming, supply-chain optimization and network optimization, and graduated 27 PhD students prior to going emeritus in 2009. He was a member of the NAE, a Fellow of INFORMS and the IMS, and was awarded the John von Neumann Prize, the highest recognition of INFORMS for lifetime research contributions.
A memorial event and reception for Pete Veinott was held on January 26th, 2013 in the Mackenzie Room of the Huang Engineering Center. For more information about "Pete" see our history page.
Tina Seelig was appointed Professor of the Practice in the Department of MS&E in the School of Engineering for a five-year term. This Stanford professorship is bestowed on an exceptional practitioner who devotes a substantial part of their professional life to their respective discipline, Department, and School. This distinguished title reflects a close tie and a long-term commitment. Appointments to this position are relatively rare. Professor Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) and Founding Director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (EPIC), is one of six such Professors of the Practice at Stanford. She is the first in the School of Engineering to receive this distinction.
MS&E Professor Emeritus William "Bill" Perry was selected as one of seven 2012 Stanford Engineering Heroes. This honor recognizes those who have advanced the course of human, social and economic progress through engineering. The seven, chosen from among former faculty and alumni, have worldwide reputations as technology innovators and industry leaders. link Besides being a Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) and a senior fellow at FSI, (link) he has made significant contributions in the public sector including being the Secretary of Defense between 1994-1997 and an expert in US foreign policy, national security, and arms control. link
Risk Analysis published the MS&E Professor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell research article, On “Black Swans” and “Perfect Storms”: Risk Analysis and Management When Statistics Are Not Enough. link Based on that article, Stanford Reports published "'Black swans' and 'perfect storms' become lame excuses for bad risk management", about how engineering risk analysis can help anticipate and manage extremely unusual situations. link
MS&E Ph.D. '04 Jose Blanchet "Distinguished Alumni Speaker" and Associate Professor of Engineering, IEOR, Columbia University spoke onThursday, Nov. 8 (12 - 1:15 pm) "On Stochastic Insurance and Reinsurance Risk Networks" (link) in Packard 101. In the last few years, substantial interest has been given to the study of systemic risk. In this talk he described a class of models for systemic risk analysis in the setting of insurance and reinsurance participants. The models are constructed with the aim of capturing features such as cascading effects at the time of default due to counter-party risk and contagion. A probabilistic structure allows one to rigorously study risk analysis questions using the theory of combinatorial optimization. He described answering questions such as:
- What group of companies are the most relevant from a systemic risk standpoint?
- How do we quantify the role of reinsurance companies in systemic risk?
- How do we to understand and quantify the role of a regulator and associated capital requirements for systemic risk mitigation?
MS&E Professor Bob Sutton was ranked one of the top 50 business professors in the world according to a recent article by Lauren Hepler of the Silicon Valley Business Journal. The article reports results from the social networking site Poets & Quants. Although titled "3 Stanford business professors among top 50 worldwide", the article went on to say that "science and engineering professor Robert Sutton - technically a professor in the university's school of engineering - was also on the list." link
MS&E Professor Sam Chiu and a group of students posted a 2012 presidential electoral college prediction site which projects the distribution of electoral votes for the presidential candidates. Applying a simple probability model to state-by-state polling data, this model calculates the win/loss probability of each state. The website background includes a description of the team and the quantitative methodology that the team took.
MS&E Professor Chuck Eesley, co-authored with William F. Miller of the GSB, a study that quantifies the economic impact of Stanford entrepreneurship and innovation. The numbers are startling and impressive: global revenues of $2.7 trillion annually and 5.4 million jobs created since the 1930s. (link)
Society for Medical Decision Making awarded 3 of the 4 student awards to MS&E doctoral students of Margaret Brandeau. First-year doctoral student Sze Suen won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Health Services and Policy Research. Fourth-year doctoral student Lauren Cipriano won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Applied Health Economics. Eva Enns, who finished her PhD in June, won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Quantitative Methods and Theoretical Developments. These awards were announced at the Society’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix the week of October 15, 2012.
MS&E Professors Ashish Goel, Ramesh Johari, and Amin Saberi are principal investigators on a new $5.6M DARPA grant entitled MEGA: Modern Graph Analysis for Dynamic Networks.
Consider a network of 200 million nodes with 100,000 nodes marked as potentially suspicious; an average of 5,000 interactions per second involve these nodes either directly or indirectly. Communication includes phone records, email, financial transactions, and social-media messages. Can an anomalous pattern of communication be detected within minutes of this pattern being formed? This grant funds research on the theoretical, algorithmic, and statistical foundations needed to address these challenges.
Alvin "Al" Roth was awarded the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Roth received his MS and PhD degrees in 1973 and 1974, respectively, from Stanford's Department of Operations Research, one of the predecessor department's to today's Department of Management Science and Engineering. link
The "Stanford Inventor Hall of Fame" inducted Professors Michael Saunders and Walter Murray with other members of the MS&E Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL). The engineering optimization software has been used to design everything from an America’s Cup yacht to power grids. This project is one of only 17 in the last 42 years of the Hall of Fame's operation to have qualified by bringing the university $5 million or more in royalties (link: http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=19621).
MS&E Professor Tom Byers was appointed as the first holder of the Entrepreneurship Professorship in the School of Engineering. In 1994, a group of donors created an endowed fund to support the study of entrepreneurship in the School of Engineering.
The donors' intention was twofold: to permanently endow the position of the director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), and to support entrepreneurship generally at the school. Tom's leadership of the STVP over the past two decades led to the formal appointment to the Entrepreneurship Professorship.
MS&E Professor Yinyu Ye was appointed as the second holder of the Kwoh-Ting Li Professorship in the School of Engineering. He succeeds Thomas Cover, who held the position from 1994 until his death earlier this year.
The Kwoh-Ting Li Professorship was one of four chairs established in 1997 by the Friends of Stanford University Foundation, who raised funds for the chairs from multiple sources, in both Taiwan and the US. In addition to the one at the School of Engineering, a chair was created in the School of Medicine, as were two in the School of Humanities and Sciences (in the areas of economics and Chinese culture). The drivers of fundraising for the foundation were Alice Yu, who received MS degrees from Stanford in statistics and business in 1970 and 1998, respectively; and Patrick Wang, who received an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1966. The fact that multiple chairs were supported through a large group of donors was and continues to be unique.
Yinyu has made fundamental contributions to operations research and the management sciences, with papers spanning a wide spectrum of the area of optimization and its many applications. For his work, he has received many of the major awards and prizes in his discipline, including the von Neumann Theory Prize of INFORMS, the Farkas Prize, and the inaugural ISMP Tseng Lectureship Prize. Yinyu has also been a wonderful contributor to MS&E over the years, as a teacher, researcher, and colleague.
Edward Kao, one of MS&E Professor Ben Van Roy's PhD students of Electrical Engineering, received an Honorable Mention for this year's INFORMS Nicholson Award (to identify and honor outstanding papers in the field of operations research and the management sciences written by a student) in recognition of the paper "Directed Principal Component Analysis".
In addition, Edward also was a finalist for the Data Mining Section Best Student Paper Award for "Learning a Factor Model via Regularized PCA." He is joining Two Sigma Investments this Autumn.
The Production and Operations Management Journal periodically honors a senior person in their field. The July-August 2012 issue featured MS&E Professor Warren Hausman for his continuous and valued contributions to the production and operations management community and noted his multi-disciplinary writings in business management and marketing. Warren's writings form the backbone of research topics in the field and appear as articles in the Journal and many other publications. The laudation overviews his research, writing and leadership roles over the years. hausmanlaudation.pdf
MS&E Professors Steve Barley and Pam Hinds received a $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation for their work entitled "Understanding Technology Appropriation in Intercultural Global Work". This timely study addresses issues with collaborating in the global setting; see below for a summary of the research agenda.
Project Summary: Collaboration over national boundaries is increasingly prevalent in today’s organizations. Software developers create applications. Architects design buildings. Car manufacturers conduct crash worthiness tests. They all rely on interdependent workers spread around the globe. Despite the remarkable growth in global work over the last few decades, few empirical studies focus on what it means to work together across cultural boundaries. In their recent review, Hinds, Liu, and Lyon (2011) show that only 11 studies published in the top 25 management journals between 2000 and 2010 examined the role of national culture in global work. A critically understudied area relates to the design and use of collaborative technology for global work. The design and use of collaborative technology is intertwined with the cultural context of use, yet global workers must coordinate such that their technology use is compatible and facilitates collaboration across national boundaries. In the proposed study, the main goal is to build theory about how technology is appropriated in different cultural contexts when workers are collaborating closely across national boundaries and how different appropriation models affect collaboration.
MS&E Professor Yinyu Ye was awarded the Tseng Lectureship Prize(link) at the International Symposium on Math Programming (ISMP). The largest optimization conference, ISMP meets once every three years and was held in Berlin in September, 2012. The Tseng Lectureship Prize is one of six given at ISMP, and recognizes "outstanding contributions in the area of continuous optimization, consisting of original theoretical results, innovative applications, or successful software development." Yinyu gave a plenary lecture in connection with the Prize.
Stephen Boyd, a courtesy faculty member in MS&E, with his former student, Michael Grant won the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize. link This award, another of the six given at ISMP is for "excellence in computational mathematical programming”. MS&E had a role in 2 of the 6 awards given out at ISMP this year.
A New York Times article featured a Stanford study which compared nutrient and pesticide levels in organic versus conventional foods. Margaret Brandeau is the second author on the study, and Maren Pearson, an MS&E undergraduate, is one of the other co-authors. The main conclusion is that the published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods. However, consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resitant bacteria. NY Times link The original paper is " Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review" (from the Annals of Internal Medicine)
Two of this year's eleven Lieberman Fellows are MS&E students: Douglas Hannah and Gustavo Schwenkler. The Fellowship rewards doctoral students whose personal and professional traits resemble those of Professor Gerald J. Lieberman. In particular, through their research accomplishments, teaching, and university service, awardees must have demonstrated their potential to become academic leaders. The award is made in honor of former MS&E professor, Gerald J. Lieberman, who also served Stanford as provost or acting provost during the tenures of three Stanford presidents. In 1985, Jerry was presented the Kenneth M. Cuthbertson Award for exceptional service to Stanford, in part on the basis of his "tireless efforts on behalf of Stanford's graduate students."
The Department of Management Science and Engineering presented the 2012 Commencement Awards:
- Senior Project
"Castlight Health Physician Practice Cost Forecasting"
Oliver Friedberg, Alex Fryer, Charles Huyi, and Chris Seewald
"Ground Up Coffee Shop"
Andrew LaForge, Wyatt Ratliff, Brian Tolkin, and Harrison Ward - Outstanding Academic Achievement at the Undergraduate Level
Charles Huyi - Outstanding Academic Achievement at the Graduate Level
Katie Schmalzried - Department Service Award
Annie Kwon
Joanne Chiew - Department Course Assistant Award
Brad Powley
MS&E 193/293 CA Team: Adeel Arif, Sumit Arrawatia, Lauren Cipriano, Matt Daniels, Dennis Li, and Gabriel Shields-Estrada - Eugene L. Grant Undergraduate Teaching Award
Riitta Katila - Graduate Teaching Award
Ben Van Roy
Professor Michael Saunders of MS&E was a co-winner of the 2012 SIAG/LA Prize. The SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra (SIAG/LA) awards the prize every three years to the author(s) of the most outstanding paper(s) on a topic in applicable linear algebra published in the three calendar years preceding the year of the award. Michael has been recognized in 2012 for his joint paper with Sou-Cheng Choi and Chris Paige entitled "MINRES-QLP: A Krylov Subspace Method for Indefinite or Singular Symmetric Systems" that appeared in SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing in 2011. According to the prize committee: "The authors improve on MINRES, an elegant, efficient and widely used iterative method for linear systems, achieving optimal accuracy and extending the algorithm to the solution of least squares problems." link
Professor Steve Barley was awarded an NSF grant, entitled "Compliance Police or Business Partner? Institutional Contradictions and Contested Legitimacy in Human Resources."
Professor Margaret Brandeau was appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This federal advisory committee provides guidance to the Secretary for Health and Human Services, the US Assistant Secretary for Health, and the CDC regarding the activities and goals of the CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OHPR). OHPR leads the CDC's preparedness and response activities and provides a critical component of overall U.S. national security efforts: for example, OHPR manages the Strategic National Stockpile, and works with states to insure that states can adequately respond to natural and manmade disasters, including terror and bioterror attacks.
Jessie Juusola, a Ph.D. student of Professor Margaret Brandeau, had a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The journal provided Jessie with the opportunity to post a short video about her work on the journal website. In this 3-minute video, Jessie spoke on how our tools of engineering systems analysis apply to problems in health policy, and how she used such techniques in her paper. link
Professor Sig Hecker of MS&E was the recipient of the 2012 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society. This award was sponsored by donations from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and individuals, and was established to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy. The citation will read: "For his leadership in developing international science and technology cooperation in areas critical to global security resulting in real reductions in the dangers of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terroism."
Chuck Eesley received a prestigious International Young Scientist Research Fund award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (the Chinese equivalent of our NSF). It provides for funding of research, plus living expenses and arrangements while traveling in China. Chuck's award was one of only 5 nominations from Tsinghua University this year.
Business Week included an article on Twitter. In this article, Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo, talks about the key role that Ashish Goel played in helping Twitter build its current ad strategy, in which tweets can double as ads. link
Tom Byers and Heidi Roizen of MS&E were in Abu Dhabi at a conference sponsored by the Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Education (REE). These REE events are designed to stimulate communication and collaboration between business, science, and engineering faculty who teach high-technology entrepreneurship in tertiary institutions around the world. For more information, and remarks from Tom and the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology for the UAE: link
The Stanford School of Engineering recognized the memory of Management Science and Engineering Professor George Dantzig with his selection as a Stanford Engineering Hero. The Heroes program celebrates the achievements of the most accomplished engineers associated with the Stanford School of Engineering and the profound effect engineering has on our everyday lives. This year's Heroes join the inaugural class of Vint Cerf, Ray Dolby, William F. Durand, Bill Hewlett, Donald Knuth, Charles Litton, Dave Packard, and Fred Terman. To learn more about George Dantzig and this year's Heroes, go to: 2011 Engineering Heroes.
Professor Peter Glynn has been selected for membership in the National Academy of Engineering, whose peer-elected members are recognized as among the world’s most accomplished engineers. Among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer, membership honors those in technical, educational, or government positions who have made outstanding contributions to advance engineering research, practice, or education. Prof. Glynn has been selected for his distinguished contributions to simulation methodology and stochastic modeling. link
Professor Kathleen Eisenhardt has been named the fourth recipient of the annual Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, the most prestigious award for outstanding research contributions in this rapidly evolving field. Prof. Eisenhardt’s research on corporate entrepreneurship, how existing firms can remain innovative, was honored for its substantial, original and innovative contributions to entrepreneurship research in the management and economics literature. link
2011
Professor Sig Hecker of MS&E will be the recipient of the 2012 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society. This award is sponsored by donations from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and individuals, and was established to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy.
Margaret Brandeau's comittee work with the Institute of Medicine was cited in a CNN news report on the public health response to an anthrax attack.
Anne Robinson, a 2005 Ph.D. graduate of MS&E, was elected President-Elect of INFORMS for the coming year. Anne obtained experience in elective office while studying here as a Ph.D. student, having served as President of our Stanford Student Informs Chapter in 2001-2002. At the time she was elected to head INFORMS, she was the Director, Connected Information, Global Business Operations, Customer Value Chain Management, CISCO. link
Amin Saberi and Shayan Oveis received the best paper award at FOCS 2011. FOCS (Foundations of Computer Science) is one of the two premier conferences in Theoretical Computer Science. They improved the best known approximation ratio for undirected TSP, perhaps the most famous hard problem in combinatorial optimization. link
Margaret Brandeau's doctoral students, Lauren Cipriano (from MS&E) and Eva Enns (from EE) won the prize for Best Short Course for their class (co-taught with our MS&E alums David Hutton and Greg Zaric) on Spreadsheet-Based Disease Modeling. This is the second time they have won this award, having also been recognized at last year's SMDM Annual Meeting.
Warren Hausman was elected chair of the 2011 INFORMS Fellows Section Committee.
Anant Sudarshan received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2011 Stockholm meeting of the International Association for Energy Economics.
On June 12th, Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) held its annual graduation ceremony for its 2011 graduates. Under a beautiful sunny sky, 66 BS degrees, 173 MS degrees, and 10 Ph.D. degrees were awarded by the Department. We wish our graduates the very best, as they embark upon the next phase in their lives, and hope that they will stay in touch with the Department in the years ahead .
2010
Nick Bambos received multiple awards for his work on wireless scheduling and IT security risks: 2011 IEEE Multimedia Communications Best Journal Paper Awards, Best Paper Award at the 2010 International Conference on Emerging Network Intelligence, and Best Paper Award at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications.
Kathy Eisenhardt received the first Ghoshal Award at the London Business School for her research on strategy and organization. She also received an honorary doctorate from Aalto University in Finland.
Siegfried Hecker was awarded the Eugene L. Grant Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Tom Kosnik was awarded the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Graduate Teaching Prize.
Vic Stanton received the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Prize.
Peter Glynn was awarded the 2010 John von Neumann Theory Prize from INFORMS, given for fundamental and sustained contributions to a theory in operations research and the management sciences.
Sabina Alistar won First Prize in the Lee B. Lusted Competition for Best Student Research Presentation at the Society for Medical Decision Making 32nd Annual Meeting.
John Carlsson was awarded the 2010 INFORMS Best Interactive Session Award.
Lauren Cipriano received the Stanford Centennial Teach Assistant Award, which honors teaching assistants who display an unusual commitment to, and excellence in, teaching.
Rory McDonald received Stanford’s Lieberman Fellowship, awarded for superior research, teaching skills, and university service.
Hugo Mora was awarded the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Course Assistant Award.
Michael Padilla received the Best Student Research Paper Award.
Waraporn Tongprasit received an honorable mention from the INFORMS Financial Services Section.
Patrick Hayes and Thomas Hansmann were the winners of the Outstanding Academic Achievement awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, respectively.
