“Systems have multiple components, such as organisms, resources, information, and activities, with various interactions among those components and the environment in which they operate as well as other systems,” said Keskinocak. “A narrow or myopic view, which focuses on one part of a system and ignores how that part interacts with the others, could not only lead to suboptimal solutions but also cause more harm than good in some cases.”

Keskinocak is also the Co-director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) along with Julie Swann, Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Professor. The Center, founded in 2007 by Keskinocak, Swann, and and Özlem Ergun, now a professor at Northeastern University, was elevated to an Interdisciplinary Research Center at Georgia Tech in 2015.

In 2014, the Center changed its name from the Center for Health & Humanitarian Logistics to the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems to better reflect the Center’s focus on systems.

“Humanitarian logistics is traditionally associated with procurement, transportation, and distribution operations for disaster relief or longer-term development activities,” said Keskinocak. “In addition to our ongoing focus on logistics, we place a strong emphasis on incorporating systems transformation for complex, long-term challenges.”

The Center has three primary areas of activity: education, outreach, and innovative solutions and research.

Keskinocak and team work with a variety of external organizations on addressing complex problems. They start by focusing on the symptoms, quantifying them to the extent possible, exploring possible root causes, developing potential solution approaches and estimating their impact under various scenarios, and then making recommendations.

“Our goal is to apply our expertise to help our partners improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations, leading to a positive impact on people’s lives,” said Keskinocak.

Depending on the application, Keskinocak’s work has led to different outcomes, such as hands-on decision support tools or policy-level recommendations. For example, in her work on modeling infectious diseases, such as cholera or pandemic flu, the models and analysis lead to “recommendations on the most effective intervention strategies or the allocation of scarce resources such as vaccines,” she said.

She also has worked with various hospital systems where multiple units interact with one another, for operational decisions such as staff scheduling or bed assignments.

At the individual — or patient — level, ISyE methods are used in medical decision making related to screening, diagnosis, or treatment. Examples include assessing the risk of infection in an organ transplant and the tradeoff of receiving a risky organ versus staying on the transplant list and prenatal screening for Down syndrome.

The projects utilize different methods, e.g., a combination of optimization, simulation, and statistics, but they generally follow a system’s approach focusing on the allocation of scarce resources for better outcomes, or decision support with the goal of improving health outcomes for individuals and populations.

In addition to lecture courses, Keskinocak regularly teaches project courses such as the undergraduate-level Senior Design, with an increasing number of projects being focused on health and humanitarian applications, and the master’s level Health Systems Practice, where several successful projects such as the Workforce Allocation Optimization Tool have been initiated.

The CHHS team’s educational offerings extend beyond the degree programs, and include a professional education certification in Health & Humanitarian Supply Chain Management. Participants in the program, who are active practitioners in health and humanitarian operations, come from all over the world — from non-governmental organizations, government, and industry.

“The knowledge sharing and conversations in these courses are extremely interesting and lively thanks to the experience and multiple perspectives of our participants,” said Keskinocak.

The CHHS team hosts an annual international conference on Health & Humanitarian Logistics. The conference was founded because they saw a dire need for the often siloed worlds of health and humanitarian organizations to be in conversation with each other, especially since an increasing number of emergencies affect wide areas.

The conference rotates around the world. The 2015 conference was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. David Sarley, a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation commented that the conference “creates space for bigger conversations and dialogue.”

The 2016 conference was held in Atlanta with over 200 participants from 27 different countries around the world who engaged in dialogue about challenges facing the global health and humanitarian sectors, and successful models of organizational collaboration and supply chain practices to strengthen health and humanitarian systems. Speakers and participants came from 115 different organizations across the private sector, non-governmental organizations, academia, and government.

There will be no retirement celebration honoring Christopher and her many contributions to the School. When the offer was made for such a celebration, Christopher requested instead that the funds be directed to support a promising ISyE undergraduate student in need of financial assistance. ISyE doubled the funds for the establishment of the Christopher Scholarship, which is providing critical resources for Donte Preston, a junior hailing from Dallas, Texas.

“This is a perfect way to retire. My family struggled financially, and I wanted to help someone who faced similar circumstances. I can’t think of a nicer way to celebrate my tenure at Georgia Tech,” said Christopher.

Recently Preston took a break from studying for exams to meet with Christopher before the end of the semester. He explained that he had always planned to stay in Texas for college — until he visited Georgia Tech.

“I loved it from the moment I stepped on campus,” Preston said. While it was a tough decision to attend an out-of-state university, he was “convinced that my investment in my education would be returned in the future,” and he has since set out to be the best industrial engineer he can be. Beyond studying and his involvement with organizations like the Georgia Tech Society of Black Engineers and the Student Alumni Association, Preston shared his interests and experiences with Christopher, discussing how he likes to spend his free time (reading) and what superhero he would be (Batman, because he doesn’t have superpowers and must rely on his brain to help other people).  

Describing how he felt when he learned he had been chosen as the recipient of the Christopher Scholarship, Preston said, “I was not expecting it at all. Receiving the scholarship was the assurance I needed. I can’t express how grateful I am.”

Bill George (BSIE 64, Honorary Ph.D. 08), former CEO of Medtronic, is Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School specializing in developing authentic leaders. His wife, Dr. Penny George, is a leader in the national movement to transform medicine and health care through the principles and practices of integrative medicine. Together, they founded the George Family Foundation in 1994 to support programs they are passionate about and that transform lives by changing the systems affecting those lives for the better. Their foundation focuses on three primary areas: Penny’s passion for integrative health and healing; Bill’s passion for authentic leadership, and a shared passion for community.

“To see a need, a need that connects with something we understand and can bring resources to make it happen brings us pure joy,” said Penny.

The Georges, who divide their time between Minneapolis, Minneapolis and Avon, Colorado, also support Georgia Tech at the Institute level through the William W. George International Study Abroad Scholarships, the George Family Foundation Women in Engineering Leadership Initiative in the College of Engineering, and several programs in the Stewart School of ISyE, including the George Family Fellowships, the William W. George Chair Endowment in Health Systems, and general program support for health systems.

What motivated you to start the George Family Foundation?

BILL: In 1994, I was with Medtronic, and I could see that our stock was going up and our future looked good. When Penny and I looked ahead at our income, we decided to set aside a significate amount to give back to society. We always believed in philanthropy, and creating the George Family Foundation enabled us to significantly increase our charitable giving well above what we were able to do before. However, it wasn’t until 1998 that we went from what you would call checkbook philanthropy into a well- managed family foundation. That’s when Penny took it over and put some focused leadership into it. At first, she hired an outside firm to support us. And then we moved to building our own foundation staff. We are really excited about the development and growth of this venture.

Bill, authentic leadership is currently your life’s work and one focus of your foundation. Why have you chosen to devote so much of your attention to this issue?

BILL: When I completed my time at Medtronic, I took some time off to take a hard look at what it means to be a good leader. I felt that the world was not being well-served by the current theories of leadership, and I wanted to look at the deeper side of leadership. During that examination, I realized we could empower many more leaders if we allowed and encouraged people to be themselves so that their leadership came from within.

This starts by examining your character, your values, your life stories, and especially your crucibles, which are the trials and tribulations you have faced. And that is the authentic you. In 2003, I wrote the book, Authentic Leadership. That led to new theories of leadership which were validated in 2007 with an in-depth leadership study we conducted at the Harvard Business School, the largest study ever done on leaders. I am very pleased with the progress that has been made in the last 13 years since I wrote Authentic Leadership.

What is one key area in the world of leadership that you hope will receive attention in the next two to five years?

BILL: I think it will be on how we gain self-awareness. The Oracle of Delphi told us four thousand years ago to “know thyself.” But very little work has been done on how to do this.

Our research at Harvard and my work shows that knowing yourself starts with your life story — especially the most difficult times you’ve had, because that is when you realize who the real you is. The key to emotional intelligence is self-awareness, which in turn can open up your capacity to be a good leader. Without a high level of emotional intelligence, one cannot become an authentic leader. But we have to learn how to do that.

There are wonderful opportunities for re- searchers to look at how we gain self-awareness. I’ve been working on this a lot, and I hope more scholars will start looking at how we become more self-aware. It is a life skill that can be developed.

What is one thing that we all could do to start becoming more self-aware?

BILL: I’ll give you three things. First, deeply explore your own life story — especially your crucibles — in order to understand who you are and where you have come from. Beyond that, adopt a daily introspective practice. In our 24/7 world with smartphones, social media, and so much going on, we need to take at least 20 minutes every day to do some form of reflective practice. I’ve meditated for the last 41 years, but there are many other ways to have a reflective practice. It can be through prayer, keeping a journal, sitting in a quiet place and reflecting, or going for a long walk, to name a few. And finally, I would add the importance of getting honest feedback from people you trust so you can understand how you are interacting with other people and the impact you are having on them.

Most ISyE graduates end up in leadership positions of one kind or another. What advice can you offer them on how to become the best leaders they can aspire to be?

BILL: Find an environment that is nourishing, and then jump in and ask for leadership opportunities. Get into a leadership role as soon as possible. Don’t wait for someone to tap you on the shoulder. Start leading where you are with your peers, and become that informal leader who makes things happen. Executives are always looking for people like that who show promise. And just as important, learn how to collaborate with your teammates because this is an essential skill in leadership.

I recently learned that you have both a 20-year-old and a 30-year-old mentor. Could you speak to having such young mentors, and to the importance of being a mentor as well as a mentee throughout life?

BILL: I believe in reverse mentoring. That means having mentors that are considerably younger than you are who can help you understand the younger generation/employees. My 30-year- old mentor helps me with all my social media. He also worked with me on my newest book, Discover Your True North. My 20-year-old mentor is a young man from Harvard. He and I have worked together for a little over a year, and I have learned a lot about millennials from him. I also have a couple dozen millennial mentees, but to have someone mentor me on digital media and to learn the hopes, dreams, and passions of millennials has given me a deeper understanding of this generation.

Penny, integrative health is one focus of the George Family Foundation. What is it about this area that captured your attention?

PENNY: I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996. It was through this personal experience that I became interested in different approaches to healing. At that time in medicine, the focus was on the disease and the body part. As I went through the process, I thought that seemed misguided. We come into a disease state, as with anything else, as a whole human being— connected in mind, body, and spirit. Not to acknowledge that we can call on all those resources to heal seemed shortsighted to me. I realized I needed to do something. I’m a doctor’s kid, and I’m accustomed to taking responsibility for myself. Something contributed to me getting cancer — it did not just come out of the blue. What could I do to prevent this from potentially coming back again? And if I couldn’t prevent it, how could I make my life such that I could feel that this life was a good one, and the illness served me in some way?

Those were my personal objectives as I went through my own healing process which included assembling a team of healing professionals — what was referred to then as alternative approaches. Now it is referred to as integrative medicine. People don’t want just traditional medicine or just the alternative approaches, they want the best of both. They want the integrative approach — something that would give you the chance to have optimal wellness and well-being.

My family was loaded with cancer, but no one had ever talked to me in my medical appointments about what could be done to prevent it because people did not believe you could. Now we know 80 percent of cancer is largely preventable; it is lifestyle related. That is the gist of how I became so passionate about integrative health care.

What is one key area of health care that you hope will receive attention in the next two to five years, and why?

PENNY: I would like to see health care institutions partner with individuals/patients wherever they are in their health journey and start focusing on the benefits of self-care, which is the true primary care. What we do for ourselves is just as important as what the health care system has to offer. Medicine certainly has something to offer, but the primary thing is what we are doing for ourselves to live optimally.

Is self-care the same as preventive care?

PENNY: In medicine, preventive care is getting the colonoscopy, mammogram, etc. It’s more about looking for disease. My notion of self-care is all those things that an individual can do for themselves — eating well, exercising, reducing stress. For example, if someone has gastrointestinal issues, what if the first approach was to try an elimination diet as they waited to come in for their appointment to see if their diet was causing inflammation — instead of going in for an appointment and being prescribed pharmaceuticals without further investigation into why?

As Greg Plotnikoff, one of my heroes in integrative medicine, said, “Fundamentals first, pharmaceuticals second.” Don’t go straight to a drug; figure out what is going on underneath first. We are too quick to jump to drugs. The worst case of this is the opioid epidemic in the country.

What word of advice can you offer to our students and young alumni who are heading into the world of health care?

PENNY: I would encourage them to consider researching integrative medicine and health and the challenges this poses for the current system. Our health care is moving in that direction already. We need to find optimal ways for a team-based approach that looks at the whole person to work in today’s system. Also, consider researching how we introduce a shift in consciousness so the patient/individual steps up and starts practicing self-care.

As part of your philanthropic endeavors, you have funded an endowed chair position in the Stewart School of ISyE, as well as student fellowships. Why?

BILL: I think the next big frontier for ISyE lies in health care. By applying systems theory and application to the U.S. health care system, Georgia Tech can make breakthroughs in the health care delivery system and in improving patient outcomes more efficiently.

Pinar Keskinocak is the perfect leader to hold the William W. George Chair in Health Systems. She is a real star, and we are fortunate to have her at Georgia Tech and particularly in ISyE. She really knows how to take an operations research and management science approach and apply it to health and humanitarian systems. This is exactly what is needed in the area of health care, and we are so pleased to support her work. We have an enormous opportunity at Georgia Tech to do breakthrough work in the field of health. I hope other alumni will continue to support these kinds of activities so we can make Georgia Tech a global leader in the health systems approach.

PENNY: The student fellowships we support enable ISyE students to work on these difficult health care challenges with Pinar and her team. We are thrilled to be associated with that and putting some wind under their wings.

Sheereen Brown (BSIE 12, MSHS 14) and Monica Villarreal (Ph.D. IE 15) were both George Fellows. Villarreal helped develop a workforce allocation tool that enables developing countries to deploy their health care workers in the most optimal manner. Brown is now working with the Task Force for Global Health to implement it in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. What is it like hearing about some of the students you have supported?

BILL: They have done some amazing work. We need more health care workers in the developing world to come up with approaches to get and maintain health care workers in these areas.

Someone told me once that I get a vicarious pleasure from the accomplishment of others, and indeed I do. It is a great pleasure to hear what our graduates are doing and to read about this kind of work. It inspires me to work with more of them. But I hope it also inspires younger students to work on projects that can make a difference in the world as well.

You also have funded the William W. George Family International Study Abroad Scholarships at the Institute level. What motivated you to make this gift, and what do you think the impact is on the students who go abroad as a result of to your generosity?

BILL: Many Tech undergrads cannot afford to participate in study abroad programs, which would open their eyes to the world and broaden their education. That’s why we created the William W. George International Study Abroad Scholarships to enable 50-plus Tech students to travel and study abroad each year. Meeting with them each year after they return and hearing their stories brings home just how transformative these experiences are in their lives.

If you had a crystal ball in which you could see the future, what problems do you think industrial engineers will be working on five to 10 years from now?

BILL: The future in solving any problem will be collaborative, bringing in people across disciplinary lines. We need to look at problems from a systems point of view. The great thinkers of the world will be systems thinkers. We are in great need of that systems mentality. Health care, in particular, is crying out for a systems approach. The Stewart School of ISyE is uniquely positioned to bring this capability of systems thinking into the health care arena. Health care is one of the most pressing challenges we have.

Speed Round

What are you currently reading?

PENNY: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodward.

BILL: The Art of Authenticity: Tools to Become an Authentic Leader and Your Best Self by Karissa Thacker.

What is one of the best meals you’ve ever had?

BILL: Enjoying a grilled leg of lamb, some vegetables, and wine with friends while sitting in our garden overlooking the lake and watching the full moon come up. This was the perfect evening and a perfect meal.

PENNY: I had a seafood stew the other night at Chimborazo, an Ecuadorian restaurant in Minneapolis, and it was just wonderful.

What is one of your favorite travel spots?

PENNY: Africa. I love going to Africa. The first time I traveled to Africa was 1967. I went with my parents on a photographic safari to Uganda and Kenya. Seeing the vast plain and the herd of animals was something that blew my mind.

BILL: I have many favorite travel spots. If I had to say one, I would say going to Colorado where we have a second home and go hiking in the mountains. The most challenging and rugged hike is Mount of the Holy Cross, which is just over 14,000 feet, and a very spiritual place for me.

What is your favorite leisure activity?

BILL: It would be a tie among skiing, hiking, and horseback riding.

PENNY: Horseback riding in wide open spaces.

Describe a perfect Sunday morning.

PENNY: Reading the New York Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune with a latte, and then going to church.

BILL: A perfect Sunday morning would be going for a walk around the lake by our house, reading the New York Times, and then going to church for a nice service with beautiful music and spiritual uplift.

This past spring, as a part of the Georgia Tech-Lorraine (GTL) study abroad program in Metz, France, I traveled to eight European countries in five months. The travel, while interesting, wasn’t the most impactful part of my study abroad experience — rather, it was the friendships I made. Even when checking off bucket-list destinations, the experience always resonated more when I went with friends.

Meaningful, too, were the experiences that stretched my intellectual boundaries. Over the course of the semester, I studied and worked harder than I ever had before. I helped make an app with coding experience from CS 1301, wrote for the official GTL blog, and served as vice president for the Bureau des Étudiants (Resident Housing Association). My classmates and I even volunteered at a former holding camp in World War II, Fort Queuleu, where we repaired the historic iron gate and mingled with fellow volunteers from Metz.

As a result of this semester, I have become more confident in my presentation skills, reconsidered preconceived notions on politics, welfare, and the intricacies of financial markets, and changed my priorities. I’ve seen the beauty of people around me, as I saw complete strangers on trains help my friends out for no reason other than being kind.

When signing up for my semester abroad, I thought I’d find inspiration in grandiose buildings and seeing renowned works of art and architecture, but really, I found it in the people around me and in new experiences. And now that I am back in the States, my experience has afforded me the opportunity to reflect on what success means to me and the road ahead.

For me, success is rooted in happiness — being able to look back at my life and sigh contentedly. For some, happiness is etched in a fire-engine red Ferrari, but mine rests on one key pursuit: balance. I’m happiest — and most successful — when all the different aspects of my life reach an equilibrium point. So success is never a stagnant accomplishment, but rather evolves as life does.

This includes facets like personal health and well-being, relationships with people I love, achieving my goals and satisfaction in academics and career, volunteering in the community, and enjoying leisure. It’s hard to live a life teetering toward imbalance: If I don’t spend enough time with people I love, then I’m unhappy; if I don’t spend enough time studying for that ISyE 3232 test, then I’ll also be unhappy once T-Square loads the grades.

Balance in all pursuits is tricky to maintain because some- times life gets in the way. As an ISyE student at Georgia Tech, the demands of classes can make balance even more difficult. The thought of achieving my academic goals — a degree from the most prestigious industrial engineering program in the country at a reputable Institute that I love — fuels my quest for a purposeful career.

Here at Tech, I am fortunate in many ways. Beyond exemplary academics, Georgia Tech tries to make the pursuit of balance realizable with events, clubs, and programs that create opportunities to expand horizons. The Institute of Industrial and System Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, Energy Club, and French Club have all brought new perspectives, responsibilities, and experiences. And Georgia Tech’s International Plan, a degree designation that encourages a global mindset in studies and careers, is the reason I had the opportunity to go abroad in the first place.

Georgia Tech is a place you come to be successful — not just in school, and not just in finding your perfect job, but in defining your terms of success and pursuing them. For me, that’s the most valuable part of attending this Institute and studying industrial engineering: I’m pursuing the balance I need while at the same time earning a degree I’m passionate about, and that makes me very happy.

Clean water and sanitation for the developing country of Tanzania are particularly on the mind of ISyE alumna Tracy Hawkins (BSIE 85). Hawkins is the face of SAFE Water Now (SWN), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization providing expertise, services, and resources to solve the problem of unsafe drinking water in Tanzania, all on a completely volunteer basis. This includes her role as the executive director for the organization, in which she handles the business development of SWN — everything from operations and communications to fundraising. “I wear a lot of hats,” she said.

The goals of SWN are to both raise awareness for the need for clean water and to raise funds for ceramic pot filters that can provide clean water for a Tanzanian family for up to five years at a total cost of $40. To accomplish this, Hawkins works alongside her partner, Mesiaki Yonas Kimirei (who prefers to go by “Kim”).

Kim runs SWN’s sister organization, Safe Water Ceramics of East Africa (SWCEA), from just outside Arusha, Tanzania’s second-largest city. SWCEA’s employees actually make the ceramic pot filters.

Hawkins described this pursuit of clean water for the people in East Africa as a deeply felt mission: “I got involved in this without really knowing exactly what I was getting into. I got really scared because the venture grew bigger than I anticipated, and it was more important than I realized.

“So I struggled with continuing to do this work or not, because it’s very complicated. But I just had to keep doing it. It’s a passion, it’s a calling, and because it’s so fundamental to all life, to all people, to children, to the most vulnerable. I feel like it overrides religion and politics and gender – you can’t segregate our society when it comes to water.”

The development of SWN and SWCEA has something of a winding history: Hawkins was visiting Tanzania in 2005, when she collaborated with local potters to develop handcrafted ceramic souvenirs to sell to tourists coming to the country. Hawkins was looking into fundraising possibilities for this venture when she came across the ceramic pot water filter promoted by Potters for Peace, another U.S.-based nonprofit that produces ceramic pot filters in Central America.

Remembering that she had to drink bottled water on her Tanzanian trip, Hawkins was struck with the idea that a similar endeavor could be started in that country. She took the idea to the group she was working with in Tanzania and the rest, as they say, was history: “My current partner, Kim, said ‘We have to do this.’ And so we did, and we’ve been doing it now for 10 years.”

On a family property near Arusha, close to the main road, SWCEA has built its ceramic factory. The factory produces both ceramic pot filters and traditional pots. Making and selling the pots has allowed the factory to be sustainable during the filter’s development.

According to Kim, there are several challenges to producing the filters, which are made with clay, sawdust, and colloidal silver. Potential obstacles include a minimal consumer market for the filters — most are purchased through donations; the difficulty of filter delivery to customers throughout East Africa; flooding, which has damaged production machines and materials; and an unreliable source of electricity, which can cause production to lag.

Additionally, slow production is a problem. Right now, 500 filters are produced each month, and that’s where Georgia Tech’s Engineering for Social Innovation Center (ESI) comes in. ESI matches students with real-world projects for corporations and nonprofit agencies. All projects aim to improve the lives of the underprivileged domestic population or people at the bottom of the pyramid in the developing world.

Three separate ESI teams are working to make SAFE Water Now’s process for creating the filters more efficient. One group is creating a test tube incubator that tests the water before and after it is filtered, by adding a bacterial agent and heating it to an exact temperature. A second group is building a drying tent for the filters that is made out of inexpensive, lightweight, readily available materials. To deal with the issue of inconsistent electricity, and to power the incubator and the drying tent, another team is developing a solar-powered generator. With these three innovations in place, which are all still in the prototyping phase, the outcome of these ESI projects will reduce bottlenecks in the process to produce filters at the current capacity of 500 units per month.

“This project was the biggest highlight of my college career. We all want to be able to help, but we don’t always know how. ESI made taking my skills and applying them to something meaningful an amazing, effortless, and natural process,” said Meriem Guehaiz (BSIE 16), member of the SAFE Water Now incubator team.

SWCEA has, fortunately, also found a unique solution to distributing the ceramic pot filters: via the safari circuit. Hawkins said, “A large safari company that works in Tanzania and other countries – Overseas Adventure Travel [OAT] – brings their tourists for a cultural safari to our factory. Afterward, the tourists journey to the most rural locations, where they are able to donate filters to rural people living without safe water. OAT tourists have the opportunity to actually participate in delivering safe water to the local people living on the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, or along the Great Rift Valley — a life-changing experience for everyone.”

In contrast to Kim’s list of very specific and immediate challenges, Hawkins described the challenges — which are two-fold — of their joint venture a little differently.

First, there’s an educational component to using the ceramic pot filters that must be bridged. Hawkins said this involves “helping [the users] understand that water is making them sick and what they can do to prevent getting sick. It means helping them achieve simple goals, such as handwashing and treating their water. Beyond that — once the people we’re serving feel better and see progress — we can talk about things like sanitation and girls’ menstrual needs. [But] water has to come first.”

Second, there’s a cultural component to figuring out how to scale up and enlarge SWN/SWCEA from a business perspective. Hawkins noted that the two organizations are working with a social enterprise incubator and accelerator called Anza that is helping her figure out how to overcome cultural challenges.

“For instance, we really need consumer micro-credit to go to scale,” she explained. “Think about going to Sears and buying a refrigerator, where it’s easy to get credit.” It’s not currently possible for people to buy the pot filters on a credit system like someone would be accustomed to in the U.S.

Further, Hawkins and Kim want the ceramic pot filter to become an aspirational product, something that appeals to the middle and upper classes in Tanzania, which will increase the filter’s desirability.

“So as you can see,” Hawkins added, “This is using every single bit of IE systems knowledge that I could possibly drum up. This whole project is a systems engineering project. It’s different from a systems engineering project that you would find in an industrialized country.

“I would say the biggest difference is the need for flexibility — to not plan too far ahead. As a matter of fact, the risks are so high working in this environment, you have to be able to flow with whatever’s going on.”

Pinar Keskinocak, ISyE’s William W. George Chair and Co-founder and Co-director of the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech, is on SWN’s advisory board. She has helped Hawkins with SWN’s development and confirmed the benefits of Hawkins’ IE background: “Tracy’s career, first in the private sector, then in the nonprofit sector, is an excellent example of how versatile and impactful industrial engineers can be. Through social entrepreneurship, she established SWN, offering a local and sustainable solution for clean water to many families in Tanzania, as well as creating job opportunities for the people and improving their livelihood.”

The time and attention Hawkins and Kim have devoted to SWN and SWCEA paid off at the 2015 Energy Globe Awards, given out for the best sustainability projects, when SWCEA won first place in the Water category. Kim and his wife attended the awards ceremony, held in Tehran, Iran.

When asked if she has an anecdote that exemplifies for her SWN/SWCEA’s work, Hawkins said she has two.

The first concerns her partner Kim, who comes from an educated family that knew to boil their water. However, Kim said that until he was able to drink filtered water, he always had a stomachache. Now he never has a stomachache, and he never has to go to the doctor.

The second example is a mother who received a filter but told SWN/SWCEA that she used to filter her water through her dirty clothes to get rid of any sand or dirt in the water. Now she doesn’t have to. “So this is what we’re dealing with here,” Hawkins said. “She has a real solution for treating her family’s water.”

When we think of success, we often don’t know how to define it, and when we do, that definition tends to never work in our favor. Rather than becoming a constructive benchmark or approach, success becomes an amorphous concept that always eludes us.

Why is this so? It’s because our society has convinced us that success is equivalent to fame, friends, and fortune, which makes it easier to constantly feel inadequate — like everyone else is doing life better than you can.

We need to redefine what it means to succeed. The traditional measures of success — promotions, high pay, high grades — are not enough. Our lives are made up of so much more than what we tend to measure and account for in a typical cost-benefit analysis. Success in our life must be holistic. After all, our lives have multiple aspects.

I see holistic success as an attitude, one that can help us develop as a complete individual: academically, professionally, spiritually, socially, and all other parts of our life. It’s a mindset that helps us to see our lives not as an endless competition that we’re doomed to lose — where everyone is constantly smarter, more popular, and better than us — but rather as an opportunity to learn, make mistakes, and ultimately, grow.

Part of this holistic view of success as an avenue for personal growth has been understanding the importance of being a global citizen. Through the opportunities that Georgia Tech has provided me, I feel like I have truly been able to push my boundaries, go outside my comfort zone, and grow.

Tech has allowed me to change the world while in college and not have to wait until after I graduate. My extracurricular activities, for example, provide me with ways to take these diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives and apply them toward causes that can better the world.

With the Grand Challenges Living-Learning Community, my team, the Food Fighters, has been working since our freshman year to empower college students who are at risk of food insecurity to take action regarding their food situation. We’ve recently conducted an official study to better understand what food insecurity looks like on Tech’s campus, using our ISyE skills to help us analyze our data.

With One Voice Atlanta, a student organization on campus that works to raise awareness about human trafficking,  assist victims, and prevent such crimes from occurring in the future, I have had amazing opportunities to connect with other community members, like the International Human Trafficking Institute and SKAL International Atlanta, being given the chance to speak and participate at film screenings, social justice nights, and symposiums.

Ultimately, what drives me is inner growth and a need to bring love to people. Even though I struggle with having that growth-oriented mindset and attitude of holistic success all the time, what has truly helped me develop clarity and purpose in times of chaos has been the practice of heartfulness meditation. I started this meditation practice when I was 17 years old, however, I began to meditate much more regularly after I started college. For me, especially at a high-paced environment like Tech, meditation is a way of stepping back, reminding myself that I am alive, and taking  a moment to invest in myself, by doing something that many students seem to have forgotten — to just be.

Heartfulness meditation is about bringing your attention to the heart, helping people connect with the very organ that literally keeps us alive and metaphorically brings us all together. By taking just a moment to bring myself within, I am often reminded of the importance of love and being connected with yourself. And what I’ve learned in the process is that when I choose to work on myself and try to grow as an individual, it creates a ripple that affects my environment and all those around me. As a result, I can begin to change the world — simply by changing myself.

This is exactly the challenge that was being faced by the staff of Georgia Tech’s library in the spring of 2016. Tech’s Crosland Tower and Price Gilbert libraries were scheduled to be closed in December 2015 for renovation to make the libraries’ physical space more user-friendly, rather than centered around housing the library’s material collection. In the last 10 years, visits to the libraries have increased by 50 percent, while check-out of print materials has dropped 75 percent in the same time period. Ninety-five percent of the library’s holdings were moved to the new EmTech Library Service Center (LSC).

The LSC is a high-density storage facility – there are about 40-50 similar high-density library storage facilities around the country – designed to permanently house Tech’s library materials, along with most of Emory University’s. The LSC is located on Emory’s Briarcliff campus, where materials are stored on 32-foot-high shelves at a temperature of 55 degrees with 30 percent humidity to preserve the life of the collected materials for up to 250 years.

Because of scheduling issues, Tech needed to get its materials into the LSC in the span of a few months. This was the   ingest process, part of which included what Kimberly Mull, Director of Security, Facilities, and Logistics for the Tech libraries, called “deduping” — removing duplicated book titles, journal runs, and other materials that Tech shared with Emory’s library.

Ingestion also involved processing each individual piece   of material, vacuuming it prior to storage, and giving everything a barcode so books and materials can be located by order pickers within the LSC.

Because the ingestion and set-up process of the LSC was essentially a warehousing project, Catherine Murray-Rust, Dean of Libraries & Vice Provost for Academic Effectiveness at Georgia Tech, knew that this was an area where industrial engineers could play a role. She thought the LSC ingestion process would make a good ISyE Senior Design project.

“If we had some IEs look at the process, then they could bring some warehousing strategies that the library community doesn’t really understand very well and apply them,” said Murray-Rust. “It seemed a really wonderful opportunity to give back to [the library community] from something on the other side of our lives, which is the engineering perspective.”

So that’s where the Senior Design team — Taylor Cormier, Sagar Govil, Ansley Hobbs, Jung Ha Lee, Trisha Long, Sinan Najm, and Andrea Norris (advised by Andrea Laliberte, Edenfield Executive in Residence and Professor of the Practice) — from ISyE stepped in.

“We were looking for a project we were excited about, and [we liked] the idea of having this project so close to campus and involved with Georgia Tech,” said team member Trisha Long. “It’s a really unique project, and we couldn’t have picked a better one.”

The team worked closely with Mull and Jay Forrest, a reference and subject librarian from Tech who was heavily involved with the ingestion process, on developing a plan to make the move from Tech go as smoothly as possible.

Initially, the team visited several other high-density storage sites, including at the University of Georgia and the research facility shared by Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Then the team came back and looked at EmTech’s LSC. These visits gave the Senior Design team information about the kinds of questions they needed to ask about EmTech’s ingestion process, while considering such constraints such as budget, safety concerns, and how much equipment needed to be purchased for the move.

“Our main constraint was trying to reduce the budget as much as possible within the safety constraints, and [visits  to the other high-density facilities] helped us picture how much equipment the library would want to keep [after the move],” explained Long. “We wouldn’t want to buy lots of equipment and have it not be useful, so we tried to take into consideration what they would use – such as how many carts and how many vacuums would keep the collection alive for the next few years.

“After those trips, we were totally inspired. We were able to create a flow-process model that gave us two different ways to make decisions: Is it the fastest way and is it the cheapest way and go back and forth between the two models, and narrow down what our final recommendations were.”

The team came up with several suggestions that positively impacted the ingestion process. One, said Forrest, involved the use of gravity conveyor belt rollers in the processing   line: “Prior to using gravity rollers, we were probably processing 12,000 books per day per average for about a month. We identified a source for gravity rollers, brought them in, and implemented them. That helped us get to 15,500 books per day on average. So that one change improved our throughput quite a bit.”

Perhaps most importantly, the team’s flow-process model and long-term projections confirmed that the library could hire a moving company at several hundred thousand dollars below the projected budget. “We went from one vendor that was over our initial budget to one vendor that was quite a bit under our initial budget,” explained Forrest. “This resulted in cost-savings to both Emory and Tech.”

Now that Georgia Tech’s library collection is safely moved and stored at the LSC, Mull praised the Senior Design team’s role in the success of the move: “I think it was a good collaboration. We see students all the time in the library, but to actually work with them had a good result. We incorporated around 90 percent of the team’s suggestions, and I would love to do another project with another Senior Design team. It left a really good imprint on the library.”

When asked how it made her feel to hear about the positive results of her team’s hard work, Long said, “From the beginning my team was excited to work with the school. The project let us learn so much about our library, and we walked away feeling even more connected to Tech."

Senior Design Team GTAA Gameday Flow was tasked by the Georgia Tech Athletic Association (GTAA) to redesign game day operations to improve the fan experience at Bobby Dodd Stadium. The team created a new staffing plan at all entry gates, which will reduce average fan waiting time by 78 percent. The team delivered a concept design for a new concession stand in the southeast corridor that integrates the Tapingo mobile ordering platform. The new stand will pay for itself while simultaneously reducing the congestion in the lower east corridor by 64 percent. The team developed a business case for using Tapingo at all stadium concession stands. They additionally proposed a police offer placement plan on Northside Drive that can reduce average traffic commute time on this road by 73 percent. The recommendations will save fans 13,000 hours of wait time over a season.

The Senior Design team designed a queuing strategy for the entry gates and concession stands, which involved converting multiple queues to a single queue that distributes to multiple servers. Fundamentally, a single queue (like at amusement parks) is faster than multiple queues (like at a grocery store). The team worked with the GTAA to implement a pilot of these queues during the October 29 Tech-Duke game at Gate 8 and one of the concession stands in the east concourse of the stadium. The team observed that there was a dramatic reduction in wait time in the queues, and so the GTAA plans to continue this queuing strategy and expand it to the rest of the stadium.

“Georgia Tech Athletics is proud to be able to partner with such a great group of ISyE seniors,” said Doug Allvine (BSIE 92, MBA 11), Georgia Tech Assistant Athletic Director. “The Senior Design team’s ability to assess real game day processes and propose improvements and new ideas that could positively impact our football fan/alumni experience is tremendously valuable.”

Team members included Murtaza Ali, Julia Bodea, Justin Hey, Jamie Morsberger, Jamison Porter, Aditya Raghupathy, Jennifer Sanders, and Kristen Shiflett. They were advised by Associate Professor Steven Hackman.

Senior Design Team CDC HIV Network developed a model that estimates HIV spread over time through a community of injection drug users (IDU) during an outbreak and evaluates the effectiveness of three intervention strategies: syringe exchange programs (SEP), pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and antiretroviral therapy (ART). The interventions were compared by the number of HIV cases averted as a result of their implementation and by the cost per quality adjusted life year gained. Using data from the outbreak in Scott County, IN, SEP was the dominate strategy for most scenarios, although this depended to some extent on the number of days since the start of the outbreak and the budget. The lifetime treatment cost of each HIV case is $433,000, resulting in significant cost savings for each case averted. A user-friendly interface allows state health departments to understand the impact of these various interventions in order to improve HIV outbreak response in the future.

The team successfully presented their project to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their work was recommended by team leads and is now being scheduled for discussion at the division-level senior leadership meeting, as well as the Center-level seminar. The CDC is planning to pilot the project pre-outbreak in selected state health departments, such as Kentucky and West Virginia, to advise them on how to prepare for an outbreak.

Team members included Bingyi Bao, Anmol Chhabria, Mathew Martini, Saeed Siddiqi, Katheryn Stephens, David Wang, Yuanheng Wang, and Yuyu Wang. They were advised by Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Chair and Professor Paul Griffin.

Senior Design Team Janssen Plan worked with client Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Johnson & Johnson company and global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. With a variety of experience and backgrounds, the team strived to embody their client’s motto: “There is so much work to be done … patients are waiting.” Working with their client, the team used predictive analytics and machine learning in order to identify and understand elements that cause delays within the drug development process. Specifically, they focused their efforts on building a predictive model, evaluating lead indicators of delay, developing a dashboard design, and providing Janssen with data structure recommendations. Their proof of concept is a step in the right direction that enables Janssen to both increase the number of drugs they can develop internally and release drugs to patients sooner.

The project’s result will help Janssen predict drug development delay and expand the company’s R&D portfolio by using statistical analysis and machine learning, accompanied with comprehensive yet user-friendly dashboard visualization, which highlights the insight from the underlying analysis and model. The proof of concept improves Janssen’s ability to accurately anticipate upcoming delay from the R&D pipeline (86 percent accuracy in delay prediction). Janssen can better allocate resources to either minimize the delays or reallocate the resources for unavoidably delayed projects to a new trial or project.

Team members included Siham Adous, Mou Anzhi, Alex Berry, Ai He, Nidhi Koshy, Christina Leamon, Lichen Jason Shen, and Shen Wang. They were advised by James C. Edenfield Chair and Professor Martin Savelsbergh.

Senior Design Team Wrigley's Lifesavers, which took home the Judges’ Choice Award at the Capstone Expo, worked with the Wrigley manufacturing plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to develop a solution for reducing unmet demand for Lifesavers mints. In evaluating the current system, a bottleneck was identified in the bagging stage of production. The team worked to create an optimization tool with an AMPL back-end and an Excel/VBA front-end, to minimize low-throughput bag combinations, thus increasing overall production for the entire system.

The solution resulted in an eight percent decrease in suboptimal bag combinations and a one percent increase in overall production of Lifesavers mints worldwide. Wrigley has since fully integrated the tool.

Team members included Coleman Alford, Zachary Cote, Young Jae Han, Dongwoo Kim, Robert Pagan, Abhi Malhotra, and Feifan Zheng. They were advised by Professor Renato Monteiro.

Soldner is now an advanced analytics manager for UPS, where she works on research and development projects and consults within the company. Her recent TED@UPS talk, “Your Company's Data Could Help End World Hunger,” is featured on the TED website and to date has been seen almost 675,000 times.

In this interview, Soldner discusses her passion for solving humanitarian issues and the idea of data philanthropy, which was the subject of her TED talk. (View Soldner’s TED talk here: http://bit.ly/2gLOQyp.)

Briefly describe how you began focusing on health and humanitarian issues in your graduate work at ISyE.

My research at Georgia Tech focused on how to improve decision-making in health and humanitarian operations. Application areas included optimization of the food aid supply chain, humanitarian staff reassignment, bottleneck management in transportation networks, allocation of limited resources (e.g., blood or vaccines), malaria prevention logistics, and HIV clinic integration. 

One of the best things about ISyE’s CHHS is its collaborations with real-word projects. During my first year at ISyE, I began working at the UN World Food Programme (WFP), where I worked for the next four years developing prototype decision support tools for routing, port bottleneck management, and food basket design/pipeline planning. The work took me from my tiny office at ISyE, to the WFP headquarters office in Rome, Italy, and on the ground in Zambia to witness supply chain movements firsthand. These humanitarian issues interest me because an engineering approach to get the most from every aid dollar translates into lives saved.

You recently gave a TED talk on how private companies could contribute data and decision scientists to aid humanitarian efforts. You called this “data philanthropy.” First of all, define what a decision scientist does, and please explain what data philanthropy is and how – in your words – “this is the future of corporate social responsibility.”

A decision scientist transforms pressing concerns into mathematical models that can help address the question at hand with the data available. Decisions can then be informed by the models or the insights generated by the models, which can lead to better choices.

My TED talk focuses on data philanthropy — companies donating their data, their decision scientists, and their technology to capture new sources of data. Data philanthropy is a modern extension of traditional corporate philanthropic activities.

Over the past decade, there has been a paradigm shift in how companies donate; it is no longer just about writing a check. Instead, there is an increased focus on sharing expertise and partnering. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the impact data can have on the humanitarian sector.

In your TED talk, you described a younger, highly optimistic Mallory who came to the UN World Food Programme in Rome with the intention of solving world hunger. As you say in your talk, your initial efforts were not successful. In spite of what could be considered a failure in this regard, what were your most important takeaways from this experience?

The real world faces many problems that an idealistic student assumes have already been solved. For example, you can have the perfect mathematical model, but if you do not have access to the necessary data that the model assumes, then you have to go back to the drawing board.

This was the case with the first prototype model that I took to Rome, but it wasn’t the end of the story. We continued to get feedback on the initial model and continued to refine the decision-making scope (e.g., changing from daily routing decisions to monthly tactical decisions). We also adapted the model for the available data, which led to a new prototype at the end of my time at WFP. The prototype was eventually implemented and impacts food aid operations touching millions of lives.

The single biggest takeaway from the experience was the importance of long-term partnerships and persistence. When you hit a wall, learn from it, and don’t be afraid to try a different approach.

Why did you move from the nonprofit sector to working for UPS?

Being in the private sector gives me the opportunity to be at the forefront of applying models and data to make better decisions. It’s a fascinating environment for someone like me who enjoys seeing theory being adapted for practical applications. Through the UPS Foundation, I have also been able to stay connected to the humanitarian sector, which makes it the best of both worlds.

What is the most exciting and fulfilling aspect of your current job?

I work with a bright team of other academics turned practitioners on a variety of R&D and internal consulting projects. One aspect of the job that I have really enjoyed is getting to work with many different parts of the business, from marketing to operations to pricing. In addition to interesting logistics and modeling problems, I am exploring avenues for larger data philanthropy projects in the humanitarian sector.

What are some of the biggest problems in the humanitarian sector that IEs will be working on in the next five years?

IEs can have an impact on many different areas in the humanitarian sector.

One trend I see is an increase in beneficiary-level data, whether that is from cellphones, Twitter, or even donated private sector package scanners. This data gives visibility to the final mile and handover point of the humanitarian supply chain and is rich with potential application areas to improve forecasting and streamline operations. 

Another interesting topic where IEs can have an impact is on coordinating the different humanitarian organizations’ responses together to maximize their impact. It is still the early days of making use of data for challenging problems in the sector, which makes it all the more important for engineers to get involved.

What do you see as your career trajectory for the next 5-10 years?

Over the next 5-10 years, I want to keep solving challenging business problems, expanding my analytics toolkit and experiences, and continuing to be an evangelist for data philanthropy. I was really inspired a couple of months ago when I visited Civic Hall in New York City, which is a collaborative workspace dedicated to projects for public good. I would like to explore whether a similar environment could be created in Atlanta if we tapped into and fostered the local Data for Good community.

That edition of Clean Old-fashioned Hate culminated with a thrilling Georgia Tech win, thanks to Butker’s kick, followed by defensive back D.J. White’s interception that ended the game at 30-24. The pair of plays have gone down in Tech football history as “the Kick and the Pick.”

While that kick – and 2015’s “Miracle on Techwood Drive” against Florida State, during which Butker kicked another game-tying FG – have endeared him eternally to the Tech faithful, Butker didn’t actually start playing football until his sophomore year at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta. He grew up playing soccer and basketball and tried out for the football team at the encouragement of his girlfriend and some of the older guys on the team.

“I wasn’t a football fan. I didn’t even understand the football positions until I got to college,” Butker recalls in a recent interview. “But I started kicking and was pretty decent, so then I started getting some scholarship offers. What stood out for me about Georgia Tech was the coaching staff and the team itself.”

“Coach [Paul] Johnson picks guys with good character,” he adds. “Just because you are a good athlete doesn’t mean you are going to get offered a scholarship. He makes sure you have good principles, and I felt that he cared about that more than just the football side.”

Butker will graduate in spring 2017. When asked what he’ll miss most about Georgia Tech, a lot of his memories are tied up in football: bonding with the team during morning workouts, Yellow Jacket Alley, playing on historic Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. “All the traditions are amazing,” Butker says.

But there are plenty of non-football memories he’s made as well: He has thoroughly enjoyed his ISyE classes and is currently active with Senior Design. And when not studying and not on the football field, he can be found at Tech’s Catholic Center.

“It’s a gem I didn’t know about,” he says, “and it’s another big reason I’m glad I chose Tech. My faith gives me the perspective that there’s a lot more out there besides football. When I first got here, it was everything football, and success, and getting accolades. My outlook on life has changed a lot. I don’t take comfort in those things like I used to.”

“If I look back on my life when I’m old,” Butker continues, “I think I’ll have had a successful life if I have a good family. If I raise my kids right, and in a good loving home, I’d be very proud, because that’s how my parents raised me, and that means a lot to me. So, to be a great father to my kids and a great husband, and have an impact on people’s lives.”

Butker, who is from Decatur, GA, has stayed close to home throughout his time at Tech. His parents have attended every football game that Butker has played in – including this year’s opening match-up against Boston College in Dublin, Ireland – except for one. Like many freshman, he would take home his laundry and get a hot meal from his mom on weekends. And although he doesn’t bring his laundry anymore, Butker still goes home on Sundays after game-day Saturdays and visits with his parents and both sets of grandparents, who live nearby.

His dad, also named Harrison, has played an integral role in Butker’s kicking career. He records Tech’s football games, and then together, the father/son duo watch Butker’s FGs and kickoffs. Butker holds a stopwatch to record his kicking times, and his dad tracks them in an Excel spreadsheet.

“I thought that’s all it was,” Butker laughs. But then he recently asked his dad send him the spreadsheet, and discovered that “it was incredibly elaborate. He’s taking into account wind and gravity with ball pressure and the trajectory of my kicks and the angle I want to kick them at. I’ve never seen a spreadsheet like that before. It was crazy."

Looking to the future – beyond this weekend’s annual renewal of the Yellow Jacket rivalry with the Bulldogs, and his obvious desire to go out with a win – Butker is hoping to keep his focus on sports.

“I’d love to give the NFL a shot,” he muses. “This spring I’ll be training for the NFL; maybe I can go to the NFL Scouting Combine. Not many kickers go, but it would be awesome to be in front of all those NFL coaches there. Pro Day is in March, and the draft is in late April. Regardless of what happens I’m looking forward to the opportunity and putting my best foot forward.”

He has also been thinking about how he can use his ISyE skills in coaching high school sports: “ISyE is great because you’re problem solving – not just with strategies you’re going to use to win – but also with the kids you’re around and how you can impact their lives.”

Interview Outtakes

On preparing for “the Kick” at UGA: “If you look at the TV broadcast of it, [before the FG] I ran over and did my practice steps and swing-through. I got disoriented as to where I thought the ‘ball’ was, because you just kind of have to pick a spot in the grass to swing through. I almost tripped and fell, and I thought, ‘Great – probably the biggest kick of my career, and I just almost fell over doing a practice swing.’”

On his mental approach as a kicker: “To this day, when I watch kickers on TV, I get nervous for them. During a game, you don’t think about the situation as much – you just kick the ball. As a kicker, you don’t want to be too invested in what’s happening. You want to be even-keeled. You have to stay somewhat removed from it.”

On being elected team captain this year: “I was surprised, and I think Coach Johnson was a little surprised. I didn’t think there was any way the team would vote me in as captain, but they did. I was very humbled. It meant a lot to me. I love talking with the guys on the team, being there for them, and helping them with whatever they’ve got going on. I always want to lead by example.”

ISyE junior Kaitlin Rizk has pursued helping with issues related to women’s empowerment – particularly sanitation – with a single-minded focus in her extracurricular activities at Georgia Tech. In addition to her work with Days for Girls, which she discusses extensively in this interview, Rizk’s collegiate activities have included:

• Participating in Grand Challenges as part of the STEMpower team, dedicated to improving the confidence and performance of young girls who are passionate about STEM through creative new programming in collaboration with the Girl Scouts of America;
• Founding the club She’s the First, which supports a girl’s school tuition in Ethiopia and raises awareness about women’s issues surrounding education;
• Planning the Women’s Leadership Conference at Georgia Tech, which empowers women at Tech to be bold and grow professionally and personally;
• Interning with Improve International, a young nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting accountability, learning, and innovation to better coordinate the efforts of international organizations working in the areas of sanitation and safe water in developing nations.

Why did you choose Georgia Tech for college, and ISyE for your major?

I chose Georgia Tech as my college because I wanted to study industrial engineering, and Georgia Tech is No. 1 in this area. I want to do IE because my dream job is to consult with NGOs working on women’s issues, and IE will provide me with the perfect problem-solving skill set to do this.

Who is your biggest role model, and why?

My biggest role models are my parents, both extremely intelligent, hardworking people. My dad is always there to help me with any engineering problem, and my mom introduced me to working on women’s empowerment. She specifically encouraged me to start a club in high school to support girls’ education in the developing world.

You have participated in projects related to women’s empowerment – from STEM to sanitation – since high school. What was initially motivating to you about this group of issues?

As women, we can be so powerful and induce so much change in the world. I feel empowered as a female engineer; I feel like I can control anything in my life. I think all women should have these opportunities.

Unfortunately, all over the world women are restrained, put down, and held back. I first noticed this when I learned that girls drop out of school to take care of their families and homes. This isn’t fair to them, so I began researching why this happens to them. I want to work to change anything that holds girls and women back.

You’ve been an undergraduate researcher with the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems, which is where you became involved with Days for Girls (DFG). What drew you to this project?

Girls in developing countries frequently don’t attend school when they are on their period. They lack access to basic information about their body’s biological functions, as well not having access to pads during their periods.

DFG supports women and girls having access to reusable pads and reproductive health education. With pads and education about their bodies, we hope girls feel comfortable attending school while on their period. After distributing pads to girls, the percentage of girls staying in school increases.

So much of your extracurricular activities at Georgia Tech have involved working with women around sanitation and menstrual issues in developing countries. Why have you chosen to focus your time attention here?

Why is a normal biological function something that affects a woman’s life in so many negative ways? Talking about menstruation should not be taboo. I work on this issue so that people will realize that having a period is a normal part of life. Women and girls should not have to feel ashamed about it.

Tell readers something about the issue(s) of women’s empowerment that they may not already know.

People often do not realize that menstrual hygiene management (MHM) affects so many issues in women’s lives. Girls do not have to feel shame and embarrassment about having their period if boys and girls are educated about MHM and understand that it is a natural thing. With access to pads, girls stay in school the entire month and do not fall behind what the boys are learning.

DFG came across a case where a girl was forced to have sex with her male teachers in exchange for pads. Once she learned how to make her own DFG pads, she was empowered to free herself and help her friends avoid a similar situation. The power of having menstrual pads is unbelievable.

You spent the summer in Uganda as part of a humanitarian project. Describe what you did in Uganda, and why it was important for you to be involved in this project.

In Uganda I worked for DFG. A center here makes reusable pads and distributes them to local communities in two different ways.

First, DFG conducts trainings for girls all over Uganda where they teach the girls reproductive health and how to sew the DFG kit. The kit contains reusable pads, and it comes in a pretty bag that girls can carry around like a backpack for their pads. Second, DFG distributes kits by selling them in the local community. Women can start a micro-enterprise selling kits and homemade soap. This empowers women to improve their lives and help their communities while making a profit to sustain themselves.

My role at DFG was to develop both an inventory and an ordering system that improves kit production. The inventory system helped us find optimal ordering quantities of our fabrics and manage our production. The ordering system is a way to manage the large volume of orders we have for kits at the center. Both of these systems have involved significant collaboration and patience of the DFG staff to help me understand the processes already in place and develop the best options for them.

Can you share an anecdote that illustrates the importance of the work you’re doing?

During my time in Uganda, I traveled to Karamoja, one of the most impoverished and neglected regions of Uganda. We taught reproductive health and trained over 250 girls on how to make the DFG kit. Each day, we taught 30 girls at a time in a classroom. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life because I saw firsthand all of the issues I had read about related to women’s empowerment.

Some of the girls were 14 and already had babies that they brought to the training. During lunch I talked with many of the girls and told them of my hope to stay in school and not get married until I am 30. They thought I was strange.

However, I did meet girls who were young, unmarried, and still in school. I spoke to them about how well they could do if they continued in school. With their new DFG kit, these girls will not have to miss three to five days of school each month. They now have knowledge about hygiene and how their bodies work. Additionally, they know how to protect themselves against rape from men in their communities, as self-defense against sexual assault is part of the curriculum we teach in the trainings.

Each day when I worked on the DFG inventory system, I thought of how many more kits we can make. More girls can have access to the training that gives them good resources and empowers them to change their situations.  

How do you plan to continue your work for women’s empowerment now that you've returned to the U.S.?

I plan to continue to work for DFG by analyzing the data I collected from the tracking system set in place for inventory. I will stay engaged with the workers in Uganda and continue to improve the production of the center there. I also will continue to make period kits with my friends in Atlanta.

What are your post-graduation plans?

When I graduate, I plan to do consulting for an NGO that works on MHM or women’s empowerment. I want to learn as much as I can at Georgia Tech, so that I can help these organizations improve on their business side.

Kimbrough had countless thoughts running through his mind while counting down to Wednesday's 4:05 a.m. (EST) lift-off. Systems checks. Equipment. The months to come. But what weighed on him most is family.

“I already miss them,” Kimbrough said during an interview with Georgia Tech last month from Star City, Russia.

It was the second time this summer Kimbrough talked with Georgia Tech, and both times, when asked about the preparation for such a long mission, he quickly mentioned his wife and three children. He’s missing his twin daughters’ first semesters at college this fall and much of his son’s junior year of high school in the Houston, TX, area. 

“Being a military officer, deployments and being gone are nothing new,” said Kimbrough, who served in Operation Desert Storm and is a retired Army colonel. “But I’m realizing that it’s not any easier. In fact, it’s probably harder because of the age of my kids.”

This is Kimbrough’s second trip to space. He flew in 2008 aboard the space shuttle Endeavour for a 16-day mission, far different from the four months or so he’ll spend away from family during this trek. But in a few ways, the missions are similar. The main job for his shuttle mission was to deliver and install equipment that expanded ISS living quarters to accommodate a six-person crew. Three people are already on the space station, so Kimbrough and his crewmates will make six when they arrive on Friday.

Also, just like in 2008, Kimbrough is scheduled for two spacewalks, tentatively set for January.

This time, however, his main mission on the station is to conduct the science experiments.

“A lot of the experiments will be done on our bodies,” he said. “For instance, we’re going to look at mini-exercise devices. In order to get to places like Mars, we’ll need to develop really small things to put in capsules. I’m one of the first people to get to try them, so I’m looking forward to that.” 

Kimbrough is one of two Georgia Tech alumni selected to live on the ISS this year. Tim Kopra (MSAE 95) was commander of the station for four of his six months in orbit (he left in June). Kimbrough will assume command at the end of the month.

Kimbrough grew up in Smyrna, GA, attending Georgia Tech football and basketball games. His plan was to play baseball at Tech, but life took him to the United States Military Academy after President Ronald Reagan wrote an appointment letter on his behalf. He earned an aerospace engineering degree at West Point, served in Operation Desert Storm, and eventually came back to campus to study operations research in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. 

“It was nice to be home after moving around so much while in the military,” Kimbrough said. “I always wanted to be an astronaut, but it’s such a long shot to be chosen. When I look back on it, having a master’s degree from Georgia Tech was a huge stepping stone.”

The next step takes him 210 miles above Earth to an orbiting lab that moves 17,000 miles per hour. Fortunately, he’ll have a few reminders of home. He’s bringing a flag that waved on the Ramblin’ Wreck. He’s also taking a camera and plans to snap photos of Georgia Tech and other schools he attended.

“I’ll also have a few Tech football games piped up to the station. That will keep me going.”

(You can follow Kimbrough on Twitter and Instagram @astro_kimbrough).

Georgia Tech has produced 14 astronauts, tied for second-most among public universities. They include John Young (BSAE 52), who walked on the moon and was on the first space shuttle, and Sandy Magnus (Ph.D. MSE 96), who flew on the last one. When Kimbrough flew on Endeavour in 2008, he was joined by Magnus and Eric Boe (MSEE 97).
 

Connelly, who received an ARCS Scholar Award in the amount of $7,500, is a first-time ARCS award recipient. His research focuses on efficiently solving time-dependent integer programming problems, both in theory and in practice.  He is seeking to improve a theoretical framework used to solve these problems, and, in parallel, is working with an airline to implement a time-discretized model to address workforce challenges they are facing.

“I was drawn to the ISyE department due to the range and depth of research areas I would be able to explore,” he said. “The possibility to pursue both my interests in advancing fundamental theory as well having the opportunity to implement ideas in practice was very attractive. The fact that Georgia Tech was located in such an amazing city as Atlanta was simply an added bonus.”

Connelly’s anticipated graduation date is spring 2020.

The Roche/ARCS Foundation Award in the amount of $7,500 represents the second ARCS award for Musselman, who plans to finish her dissertation early next summer.

Her research interest focuses on applied optimization, in particular as it relates to renewable energy and national security challenges. For her dissertation, she is studying three problems in these areas. Two of these problems are related to electricity development: One focuses on challenges specific to sub-Saharan Africa, and the other addresses the impacts of wind variability. The third project she is working on involves selecting resources to defend against the illicit transport of nuclear material.

“I've always been interested in research problems that I hope will have some positive societal impact,” Musselman said. “Receiving the ARCS award twice now has encouraged me that other people care about what I'm doing and think it's meaningful as well.”

Xu’s current research interest focuses on data, learning, and decision-making. Specifically, he is interested in machine learning, high-dimensional statistics, robust and stochastic optimization, sequential decision making, and application to large-scale systems.

He is currently an associate editor of both IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and Computational Management Science.

Xu received his B. Eng. from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1997, his M. Eng from the National University of Singapore in 2003, and his Ph. D. from McGill University in 2009. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, after a postdoctoral stint at the University of Texas at Austin.

He is also member of INFORMS and the Mathematical Optimization Society.

Overview of the Akaike Memorial Lecture Award

The ISM and the JSS have inaugurated the Akaike Memorial Lecture Award under the organizations’ joint sponsorship. The Akaike Memorial Lecture Award is named after the late Hirotugu Akaike, who left a wide-reaching and influential legacy of research in the statistical sciences.

Every two years, one lecturer is selected under the standards of the Akaike Memorial Lecture Award nominating committee from among those individuals who have, like Akaike, stood out as being ahead of their time, exercising an international influence over a wide range of fields in the statistical sciences (including mathematical sciences such as control and optimization, and mathematical engineering) and applied fields.

The lecture and follow-up discussion will be published as an invited paper in the Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (AISM) or the Journal of the Japan Statistical Society (JJSS).

Overview of Professor Wu’s Research Accomplishments

Wu has been a vigorous pioneer in the theory of experimental design, EM algorithms, and resampling. His research has addressed a broad spectrum of topics in statistics; some of his particularly notable accomplishments are described below.

He proposed a general optimal design algorithm using the fact that approximate optimal design problems become constrained convex problems and proved that they converge asymptotically to the optimal design. He examined the convergence of the celebrated EM algorithms and obtained results under conditions that are applicable to most practical problems. He also made key contributions to the justification of the bootstrapping and jackknife methods from the viewpoint of mathematical statistics.

As experimental design methods were quickening the development of new products and technologies in Japanese industry in the early 1990s, Wu used advances in statistical methods to propose fundamental revisions to experimental design, based on the agricultural methods of R. A. Fisher and the robust parameter design method of Genichi Taguchi. He developed a new method called "conditional main effect analysis" for distinguishing among the effects of configuration, sparsity, the principle of transmission, and aliasing in factorial experiments, thereby contributing greatly to the development of the technometrics field.

Recently, Wu has devoted attention to virtual experiments on computers, in search of principles beyond those identified by Fisher for problems examined with numerical experiments.

Why did you choose Georgia Tech for your college experience, and ISyE for your major?

I have always been a Jackets fan. My father and grandfather went to Georgia Tech, so the school was always on my radar. When I began researching degrees and careers in high school, industrial engineering seemed like a calling. The problems we solve can be applied to any business. I couldn’t have been more excited when I learned the best school for IE was Georgia Tech!

Starting with your undergraduate internships, you have gained extensive experience working for utilities of various types. What interests you so much about this sector?

We depend on electricity for so much. The balance between reliability and cost is key. I think the constant innovation attracted me to this field.

In addition to your internships with various utilities, were you involved in any other environmental or sustainability work while at Georgia Tech?

Early on in my undergraduate career, I joined the Georgia Tech Trailblazers. This club organizes outdoor service trips for students to national and local parks, offering students a great way to travel and explore while giving back to environment. I loved having a healthy outlet from school to take my mind off of my classes, and by my senior year at Tech I had become president of the club.

What would you say is the most important issue in terms of sustainability right now?

There are so many ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle: becoming politically involved in sustainability issues, eating less meat, creating less trash, biking instead of driving. I know firsthand how hard it is to understand what effects our actions have on the environment around us. If we dedicated more time to educating ourselves, I think we would be able to find a good balance with the environment.

Describe what you do as a commodity leader for Upwind Solutions.

At Upwind Solutions, I buy and sell spare parts for wind turbines all over the U.S. I work with Upwind’s suppliers to locally source parts, so I can provide them to my customers quickly and cheaply, and work with other engineers to develop solutions to increase turbine reliability and decrease downtime. This improves the value companies get from investing in wind power, making it a more attractive option.

What is your favorite part of your job?

I like getting to work with people in all different parts of the industry. I get to talk to everyone: wind technicians in the field, corporate buyers, transportation logistics people, and parts suppliers.

Share an anecdote that illustrates the importance of the work you’re doing.

When a turbine is down, money is being lost, so getting the necessary part to the wind site quickly is critical. It always feels good to hear that a part I sourced was able to get the turbine working again.

How does your ISyE background, and in particular your focus on supply chains, impact what you do at work?

Parts consumption forecasting is very important to my department, and lets us predict which parts to stock. My ISyE degree gave me the skills I need to forecast, source, and stock the parts that will help our customers the most.

You’re involved with the organization Women of Wind Energy. How do you participate in this organization, and why is it integral to what you’re currently doing?

I feel so lucky to work for a company with many intelligent, hard­working female role models in senior management, but historically, women have been underrepresented in the wind energy field. Women of Wind Energy hosts events that offer networking opportunities and encourage hiring and promotion of women in all sectors of the wind industry.

Where do you see yourself in three to five years?

As e­commerce takes off and we have more data, parts forecasting will improve significantly. I want to be the Amazon of spare turbine parts.

You’re originally from the Atlanta area. What was it like to move all the way across the country to San Diego?

I fell in love with San Diego after a visit during my junior year at Tech. I started to utilize my network to target jobs in San Diego, and it worked. After graduation, I had two weeks to pack up my apartment in Atlanta and drive to California with my sister before my new job started. It was the road trip of a lifetime. I am loving the West Coast.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I love traveling, so on the weekends I explore the beaches, mountains, and deserts when I can. San Diego has an amazing zoo, so I spend a little too much time watching baby animals. To fill the void after leaving Trailblazers, I have joined a club called CropSwap that picks excess fruit from farms for food bank donation. And in the fall, I meet up with the San Diego Georgia Tech Alumni chapter to watch football games. Go Jackets!

In the following interview, Martin reveals her passion for her chosen sport, what motivates her during a hard practice, and why she chose ISyE for her major.

Did volleyball specifically bring you to Georgia Tech, and if so, why?

I decided to attend Georgia Tech because it offered a complete package including its excellent academic standards and rich athletic tradition, but volleyball was the means by which I was introduced to Tech. The atmosphere at Tech for volleyball was unlike any other campus I visited. I first experienced Georgia Tech volleyball as a spectator, and I was blown away at how much the Institute supports the sport – and athletics overall. The support from students, faculty, alumni, and fans all make playing volleyball in O’Keefe Gymnasium a unique – and loud – experience. The fervor for volleyball on campus really sold me on coming to Georgia Tech.

Describe what your position – setter – does on the volleyball team.

The setter acts like the quarterback on a football team. She is responsible for running the offense, calling plays, and distributing the ball to the hitters. The setter has the most demanding mental job on the court. Before each serve, a setter must assess the other team’s defense, decide which hitter has the best match up, and then make the set. The mental aspect of the position is one of the main reasons why I chose to play it.

What keeps you going during a hard practice or a challenging game?

One of the main things that helps me during an especially hard practice is my love for “the grind,” and knowing that I will be better for it in the long run. Growing up, I ran to stay in shape for some of the other sports I played at the time, and for training, I would run up a hill that was about a mile of gradual incline. Every time I looked up from the road when I ran, I would still see the seemingly endless hill and wonder if I would ever get to the top. Eventually I would, and the satisfaction of reaching the top made that mile of grind worth the results. My lessons learned from that hill have given me the mental strength to push through the tough practices. 

Describe your favorite volleyball-related moment so far here at Tech.

I will have to cheat and pick two favorite moments. 

In my freshman year, we had a weeknight match against Clemson at home in O’Keefe Gym. Because the match was on a weeknight, we did not have the normal student and fan turnout. However, the Language Institute in the O’Keefe Building had an event, and many of the students came to the game.  The atmosphere was similar to that of an international soccer game. Our students were chanting and cheering the entire time, with both the typical cheers at our weekend matches, as well as chants they made up on their own. The support really played a role in our success that game, and we used the home court advantage to defeat Clemson! 

The second experience was a bit more recent: this past year when we defeated Duke for the first time since November 2007, and the first time we swept Duke since November 2004. They have had very disciplined and strong teams that are tough to beat, and our team knew that this match would be a battle. It took a full team effort with many teammates stepping up, but we pulled off a historic win in front of a great student crowd.

Why did you choose ISyE for your major?

Before attending Georgia Tech, I knew I wanted to major in either business or engineering. ISyE allows me to do both. In high school, I liked my math and science classes, but I also liked by economics and business classes. The combination of technical tools and business concepts are the best fit for my strengths, and ISyE’s real-life problem solving are the best fit for my interests. 

As I have taken more classes within my major, I have realized just how versatile this engineering discipline can be.  Unlike more technical engineering disciplines, ISyE is not confined to a few industries but can be applied to problems in essentially any industry and for any company.

How do you balance the demands of your sport with your schoolwork?

Collegiate athletics have about the same time demands as a 30-hour/week job.

Our typical week during season includes morning lifting two days a week, practices every afternoon, film sessions, treatment and rehab, light practices on weekends, and of course the matches. On the weekends we travel, our team leaves Thursday nights after afternoon practice return Sunday evening after our Sunday afternoon match. This could be overwhelming, but the athletes at Tech are fortunate to have a great academic staff that help schedule classes, schedule tutoring, and give other academic advice.

In addition to the available resources, I also take time at the beginning of every week and every day to plan when I will study. I assess priorities and estimate how much time each assignment might take me to complete, and then I find pockets of time in my schedule to fit them in. My emphasis on scheduling and time management have been a large contribution to my success here at Georgia Tech.

What is something not many people know about you?

If you see me on campus, I almost always have my earbuds in my ears, and you might think I am rocking out to my favorite music. But actually, I listen to audiobooks while walking around campus! When I was younger, I really loved to read, but now that I have more time demands in college, I haven’t been able to find time to dedicate to my hobby. With my audiobooks, I’ve been able to “read” a lot of books that I normally don’t have time for. 

Where do you see yourself headed in the future?

While some collegiate volleyball players continue to play overseas professionally, I see myself joining the workforce.  As far as my plans for industry and position, I suppose only time will tell. But until I graduate, I will be focusing on finishing my last volleyball season strong, staying on top of my studies, and job searching.

The Test of Time Award recognizes “papers published between 10 and 25 years ago that have had significant impact on research or applications that exemplify the interplay of economics and computation,” said David Pennock, on behalf of the award committee. The two winning papers, selected by unanimous vote of the award committee, have influenced “a thriving subfield of computational social choice. In many ways, these papers catalyzed an entire field.”

The first winning paper, written by Bartholdi and MIT Sloan School of Management Professor James Orlin, is “Single Transferable Vote Resists Strategic Voting,” which appeared in the journal Social Choice in 1991.

The second winning paper, written by Bartholdi, Tovey, and then-ISyE graduate student Michael Trick (M.S. OR 1984, Ph.D. IE 1987) is “How Hard Is It to Control an Election?”, which appeared in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modelling in 1992.

Tovey and Trick (now associate dean of research and a professor of operations research at Carnegie Mellon University) will travel in July to the 2016 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation in the Netherlands to accept the award and give a presentation on the work.

About the Award-winning Papers

These two papers helped start the now-flourishing field of computational social choice, a blend of voting theory from economics with complexity and algorithmic analysis from operations research and computer science.

“Single Transferable Vote Resists Strategic Voting” discusses how a “strategic vote” is a vote cast to tilt an election by voting other than one’s true preferences. This is troubling because it seems contrary to the purpose of voting, which is to elicit the true opinion of the electorate. The Gibbard-Satterthwaite-Gärdenfors theorems famously proved that every minimally fair voting system is susceptible to manipulation by strategic voting. Bartholdi and Orlin proved that the system of voting known as “single transferrable vote” (STV) is resistant to manipulation, even though susceptible in theory. That is, when votes are to be tabulated by STV, it can be computationally difficult – and therefore impractical – to devise a strategic vote that will advance one’s true objectives. Furthermore, STV seems to be unique in this regard among voting schemes in common use.

In “How Hard Is It to Control an Election?”, Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick proposed the search for voting systems that are computationally resistant to attacks by the addition or disqualification of candidates or voters.  They proved that of two popular systems, one is resistant to attacks on voters, and the other is resistant to attacks on candidates. 

About John Bartholdi

Bartholdi, as well as being an ISyE professor, serves as Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Tech - Panama Logistics Innovation and Research Center. He teaches supply chain issues, primarily warehousing, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and in SCL's professional education program. His research centers on problems in warehousing and distribution, but he reserves some time to pursue wider-ranging interests, including mechanics, politics, computer science, geography, biology, and, more recently, public transit (he is the co-creator of the software that coordinates buses on the Georgia Tech campus).

He was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for 1984-1989 and received the IIE Innovation Award in 1999. His research has been supported by the Defense Logistics Agency, the Office of Naval Research, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, among others.

Bartholdi graduated in 1968 with a B.S. degree in mathematics from the University of Florida and then served two tours of duty in Southeast Asia as a paratrooper in a Naval Special Warfare unit. He returned to the University of Florida to complete the Ph.D. program in operations research in 1977 and later served on the faculties at the University of Michigan, the Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering, the National University of Singapore, and Stellenbosch University.

About Craig Tovey

In addition to serving as an ISyE professor, Tovey also co-directs CBID, the Georgia Tech Center for Biologically Inspired Design.

His principal research and teaching activities are in operations research and its interdisciplinary applications to social and natural systems, with emphasis on sustainability, the environment, and energy. His current research concerns inverse optimization for electric grid management, classical and biomimetic algorithms for robots and webhosting, the behavior of animal groups, sustainability measurement, and political polarization.

Tovey received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the NSF in 1985 and the 1989 Jacob Wolfowitz Prize for research in heuristics. He was granted a Senior Research Associateship from the National Research Council in 1990, was named an Institute Fellow at Georgia Tech in 1994, and received the Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award in 2011.

He received an A.B. in applied mathematics from Harvard College in 1977 and both an M.S. in computer science and a Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford University in 1981.

Baseball, after all, has been a stats-driven sport for decades, and its fans are well versed in the value of BA, ERA, WHIP and even OPS and BABIP. And football not only employs an endless array of complex, drawn-up plays and schemes on both sides of the ball, but also collects and critically analyzes data on its players’ physical attributes and skills—such as height, speed, bench press repetitions and even hand size—like few other sports do.

Not long after NHL executives started looking beyond their scouts to bring in non-traditional voices into the decision-making processes that shape their multimillion dollar franchises, Alexandra Mandrycky, IE 13, was ready to be heard.

Although watching and studying hockey was merely a growing hobby while she worked on her industrial engineering degree at Tech, Mandrycky realized that the data analytics she picked up from the sport also applied to her undergraduate classes. After she got out of Tech, Mandrycky decided to pursue data analytics in the hopes it could make following hockey something much more than a pastime.

Mandrycky’s own shot at securing a job with an NHL squad first came through a consultant gig with the Minnesota Wild last September. In January, that turned into a full-time position as a hockey operations analyst. “It’s still surreal that I’m working for a pro hockey team,” Mandrycky says. “It says a lot about the Minnesota Wild that they are open to outside voices.”

Read the rest of Mandrycky's profile here: http://bit.ly/29noiO5.

Until recently, there has not been a tool that helps would-be ED users – specifically those who do not arrive via ambulance – determine which nearby hospital has the shortest wait time. Thanks to an interdisciplinary undergraduate team of students from Georgia Tech, the web-based application FindED.io does just that.

When a user goes to the FindED website, she sees a search bar based on the user enabling location services, or else she can enter her location manually. She is then taken to a screen that displays hospitals within a 15-mile radius of her location. Each hospital shows the wait time (based on an annually reported average), the travel time based on real-time information from Google Maps, a quality index average, and – for the state of Georgia – the major insurance providers accepted.

Prashant Tailor (IE 2016), a newly graduated alumnus in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) and a member of the FindED team, served for several years as an undergraduate researcher for ISyE professor Eva Lee. (Lee is also Director for the NSF-Whitaker Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare, Co-Director for the NSF-I/UCRC Center for Health Organization Transformation, and Distinguished Scholar in Health Systems, Health System Institute, Emory University and Georgia Tech.) It was through his research with Lee in support of her research that Tailor came up with the initial idea for FindED.

“I was working at Grady and other hospitals,” Tailor explains, “and I noticed that there was an excessively long wait, especially at Grady. I thought, ‘I can look up wait times for other things online – like food – why can I not do this for a hospital?’”

Tailor emphasizes the importance of the team’s interdisciplinary nature as integral to the success of putting FindED together. In addition to Tailor, the co-founders include Farhan Khan (CS 2016), Dale Rivera (CS 2016), and Tony Shu (MSE & CS 2017). The group knows each other well; the latter three have been friends since high school, and Tailor met them through a mutual friend when they all arrived at Tech together.

“We wanted to leverage the technical skill sets we have to make something people can really use,” he notes. “I would say that it was almost essential to work with an interdisciplinary team, as [FindED] is a very technical product.”

Shu, who is earning a dual degree in MSE and computer science, describes his own experience with FindED: “Working on my first real web design project was intimidating, especially considering how my background up until that point was all in materials. My primary contributions were to the front end of the website. Learning web design from scratch kept me busy for weeks. My biggest takeaway from this project is an understanding of how websites are built and shared.”

Tailor adds, “Working with an MSE, it was good to have a different perspective on the project – how he would approach something versus how I would approach something versus how the two computer science majors would approach something. One [of us] was more design-oriented, so he was always focused on the user experience, and another was focused on making the [site load] as fast as possible. [So the question] was how can we balance these two things?”

For Tailor, it was to look at the big picture. “The IE aspect to me is how can I look at the entire system? How do I use a data set to model a real-life system? That’s pure ISyE.”

He adds, “From the start, I came to Georgia Tech and wanted to get into the complex intersection of ISyE and health care, and Professor Lee has been instrumental in showing me that this area is huge. IE can help improve patient care, patient quality, and delivering health care.”

The team’s hard work paid off with some considerable attention. They put the site up on Reddit one night: “We put it on Reddit just to see what [would] happen,” Tailor says, laughing. “We expected a couple of people to look at it, but then it ended up on the front page. It was very exciting. ” FindED went viral. In the end, the application was beta-tested by over 50,000 Reddit users in a 48-hour period.

In addition, the team took the paper based on their project to a first-place win in the technical paper competition at the 2016 IIE Southeast Regional Conference. Shu presented the paper at the University of South Florida in Tampa. The entire team will travel to Disneyland in Anaheim, CA to present the paper in the Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition Global Finals at the IISE Annual Conference & Expo in late May.

Advisor Eva Lee confirms the significance of the team’s win: “It's an honor for the team to have won this regional competition. The composition of the team showcases the interdisciplinary nature of the work. The key challenges are to ensure that the app is relevant, the information provided is objective and up-to-date, and that patients can choose what matters them the most – how long they have to wait versus quality ranking, or insurance acceptance, etc.

“We have already beta-tested its usability to over 60,000 users. The win definitely motivates broader dissemination.”

Right now, the team is focused on polishing and improving their paper for the global competition. As far as the future for FindED goes, Lee says, “There are other features that I would like the team to investigate; we will continue to improve it as more feedback is received from the provider and consumer ends.”

However, the application was not created with entrepreneurship and profit-generation in mind, according to Tailor. “At its core, it was how we can help people and how we can learn something new.”

Sebastian Pokutta has been appointed David M. McKenney Family Assistant Professor, as announced by Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE), effective March 15, 2016.

“Sebastian was selected for this professorship because of his exceptional record of scholarship and leadership in the areas of optimization, big data analytics, and machine learning,” said ISyE School Chair and Professor Edwin Romeijn.

Pokutta, who is also the director of the Interactive Optimization and Learning Lab, has research concentrations on combinatorial optimization and polyhedral combinatorics, and in particular focuses on cutting-plane methods and extended formulations. His industry research interests are in optimization and machine learning in the context of analytics with a focus on real-world applications, both in established industries as well as in emerging technologies. Application areas include but are not limited to supply chain management, finance, cyber-physical systems, and predictive analytics. To date, Pokutta has successfully deployed analytics methodology in 20-plus real-world projects.

Subsequent to his graduate studies, Pokutta worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Operations Research Center where the topic of his research was combinatorial optimization and cutting plane procedures. Upon completion of his postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Pokutta was appointed as an optimization specialist at ILOG where he worked on production planning and supply chain optimization within the steel industry, automotive industry, and energy industry. In early 2008, he joined KDB Krall Demmel Baumgarten in order to set up a quantitative, state-of-the art risk management practice and develop risk management methodologies at top tier banks. He then returned to academia and held the position of a research scientist at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and was visiting lecturer at MIT. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Pokutta worked as a professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Pokutta received his master's degree in 2003 and his Ph.D. in 2005 in mathematics, both from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

“ISyE has a very large impact on society, both locally and around the world, through our Senior Design program,” said Leon McGinnis, Senior Design coordinator. “We can be very proud of our students.”

The 28 teams presented their projects at the spring 2016 Capstone Expo on April 26, 2016. Out of this group, three teams — Interface Prod, reFUEL, and UPS Air Opt —were chosen as finalists to compete in the Best of Senior Design on May 4. Team Interface Prod was selected as the first-place winner.

The Interface Prod team developed a sales and operations planning system for Interface, Inc., the world's largest modular carpet tile manufacturer. The software-based system takes in sales history for demand forecasting and production planning. With customizable inputs, the system generates potential production scenarios to run through a simulator of the entire production process. The simulator outputs production time and cost information on a station-level for each production run. This allows Interface to analyze results, compare trade-offs, and make continuous improvements. With the team’s recommendations, the system predicts production savings of $2.2 million for the first quarter of 2016.

Interface plans to implement the project by the end of the third quarter in 2016. It will build the foundation of a sales and operations planning team, which Interface did not have prior to the Senior Design project.

“The Interface team is proud to have worked with the Georgia Tech ISyE Senior Design team. Their work to develop a sales & operations planning system gives us the ability to quickly evaluate various production and inventory strategies given a certain demand scenario. This system gives us the scenario-planning tool we need to continuously adapt our strategy to changes in the marketplace,”
said Chris Turk, senior vice president for manufacturing and operations at Interface.

Team members included Yaodong Jia, Lisa Liu, Alexandria Schmid, Antong Su, Kattelie Thys, Ziyu (Tino) Zhang, and Jingyu Zhu. They were advised by Professor Alexander Shapiro.

Team reFUEL developed a random forest classification model using machine learning to detect and prevent fraud for FLEETCOR. The company is a leading independent global provider of specialized payment products and services including fleet cards, food cards, corporate lodging discount cards, and other specialized payment services for businesses throughout the world. FLEETCOR, which is liable for all fraudulent transactions on their cards, can use this model to save upwards of $5 million in fraud payouts each year.

Team members included Saharsh Chordia, Andree Curran, Matthew Faenza, Mary Elizabeth Herndon, Kyung Kim, Haeun Park, Julia Wayne, and Haidan Zhou. They were advised by David M. McKenney Family Assistant Professor Sebastian Pokutta.

Team UPS Air Opt has enabled UPS International Air Freight to take full advantage of package consolidation for international shipments by redesigning their routing decision process. This was accomplished through the development of an optimization-based tool that effectively combines dense and volumetric cargo on flights. 

For 15 percent of the system, UPS will see an immediate estimated annual savings of $3.5 million by using the suggested guidelines. Going forward, the team proposed an alternative routing paradigm that could see an annual savings of $5.9 million. 

UPS has already begun to implement the project by using the optimization tool in the UPS International Air Freight business unit. After the tool has been fully vetted using sample data, the optimization tool will be implemented as a stable analytical tool that complements the business unit’s existing toolkit of evaluation software/methods, according to Jack McPherson of UPS Corporate Transportation.

Team members include Abubaker Abubaker, James Alcock, Peter Alcock, Cristian Barron, Emily Dong, Nicole Gottret Murillo, Eduardo Prieto, and Sebastian Salazar. They were advised by Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Chair and Professor Paul Griffin.

During the 2016 Capstone Expo, a panel of alumni judges chose Senior Design team Second Self as the ISyE winner. This team worked with local microbrewery Second Self (founded by two Georgia Tech alumni) to implement a project that will enable the brewery's scalable growth, from a local to a regional brewery.

Second Self team members include John Cho, Brian Homans, Yikyung Kim, Gloria Lozano, John Na, Charles Oliva, Sue Pedapudi, and Matthew Zerkus. They were advised by Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and Professor Benoit Montreuil.

The director of GT-AE’s Air Transportation Lab (ATL), Clarke traveled to Detroit last month to formally receive the honor during SAE’s World Congress.

The Society honored Clarke for his work as the principal investigator on a research team included colleagues from Delta Air Lines and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  Under Clarke's direction, the team developed the RIIVR Optimized Profile Decent (OPD) Arrival procedure at Los Angeles International Airport. Implemented in 2007, the procedure has reduced the fuel consumed by arrivals at LAX by an estimated 2 million gallons annually.

“In addition to reducing the amount of fuel consumed, CO2 and NOx emissions are also reduced – environmental considerations that are hindering the growth of aviation,” said Clarke.

The OPD procedure, pioneered by Clarke, minimizes noise, gaseous emissions, fuel consumption, and flight time while simultaneously maintaining or in some cases increasing landing efficiency via the accurate modeling of the vehicle’s performance when there are uncertainties with respect to aircraft weight, pilot performance, and turbulence.

“Instead of allowing aircraft to begin their descent and then periodically stopping their descent so that air traffic controllers can correct for the effects of uncertainties, we model the effects of these uncertainties ahead of time and compensate for them in a strategic manner through optimal spacing prior to the start of the descent, thereby allowing the aircraft descend continuously at or near idle thrust,” said Clarke.

Also honored by SAE  at the World Congress were Grady Boyce (technical pilot at Delta Air Lines); Sandy Liu (engineer in the FAA Office of Environment and Energy); Walter White (formerly the airspace manager in the FAA Southern California TRACON and now the CEO of PBN4ATC, Inc.); Jim Brooks (senior research scientist in GT ATL); Gaurav Nagle (formerly a graduate student in GT ATL and now a systems engineer at Lockheed Martin); Liling Ren (formerly a research engineer in GT ATL and now a principal scientist at the GE Global Research Center); and Annalisa Scacchioli (formerly a post-doc in the  ATL and now an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology).

In addition to LAX, the OPD procedure has been adopted at several other busy airports, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Anchorage International Airport (ANC), and Honolulu International Airport (HNL). The FAA estimates this has shaved $21.7 million off the annual fuel costs for these four airports, and “if you extrapolate those figures to the top 35 airports, we could see a savings of $112 million per year in fuel costs.”

In this interview, Mak extensively discusses his research interests and activities as an ISyE student.

Why did you select Georgia Tech and ISyE for your Ph.D. work?

After completing my undergraduate studies in statistics and professional actuarial exams, I worked as an actuary for a period of time. I eventually returned to pursue a doctorate degree, since research opportunities appealed to me much more than the problems encountered in the industry. The ISyE department at Georgia Tech, as one of the leaders in statistics and operations research, presents the ideal avenue for my goals, and I am very fortunate to be studying under the world-class faculty here.

From a high-level perspective, what are your research interests?

My research can be grouped into two categories: experimental design and emulation of computer experiments.

The first category, experimental design, is a systematic way to the relationship between input and output variables in a process by conducting experiments. At a high level, my research involves optimally assign experimental runs over different input combinations so that the maximum information can be extracted on the input-output process.

The second category, emulation of computer experiments, uses statistical tools to predict outputs from computationally expensive computer simulations. Given recent advancements in high-performance computing over the last decade, many engineering experiments can now be simulated on computer desktops and clusters. However, these simulations can still be computationally expensive, and may take weeks or months to complete. To this end, a major part of my research involves using statistical methods to predict these simulations at new settings, using a database of existing simulations.

You have received many awards and scholarships throughout the course of your academic studies. What was particularly meaningful about receiving NSERC’s PGS D scholarship?

Unlike previous awards and scholarships, the PGS D scholarship provides the financial means necessary for me to continue pursuing my goals and aspirations in research.

You are working in conjunction with the School of Aerospace Engineering on the emulation of rocket injector simulations. Describe this project and what you hope to accomplish with your work on it.

This project is a joint collaboration between ISyE and Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech to develop next-generation rocket engines. As mentioned previously, computer simulations are employed to study sources of combustion instabilities for these engines, but may take months to complete for one engine design.

Our work is two-fold as statisticians. First, using a database of existing simulations, an emulator is constructed which can predict flow evolution at a new engine design in a matter of minutes. Second, using this emulator, optimal design settings can be obtained which minimize instabilities in the combustion process. The goal for this project is to combine state-of-the-art emulation tools with high-fidelity simulations to create a new and powerful methodology for rocket engine design.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Research! Just joking. In my free time, I enjoy playing piano, reading, and volunteering.

What does the future look like for you?

After graduation, I am looking to pursue a career in research, hopefully in academia.

During her time at Georgia Tech, Poulos also had a passion for volunteering for the nonprofit organization, Wish for WASH. The nonprofit was started by Jasmine Burton, a fellow Georgia Tech graduate, who won the 2014 Georgia Tech Inventure Prize Competition for the SafiChoo mobile toilet. (“SafiChoo” means “clean toilet” in Kiswahili.) Wish for WASH “develops user-friendly toilet systems that are also cost-effective” for developing countries.

In this interview, which took place prior to Poulos’ graduation, she discusses – among other topics – her work for Wish for WASH, and how her ISyE training helped her improve the nonprofit’s business development.

You’re about to graduate. Why did you select Georgia Tech for your college experience, and ISyE as your major?

I decided to come to Georgia Tech because I really wanted to do engineering. Being an in-state student, Georgia Tech was a really great option, and it gave me so many opportunities, such as studying abroad and internships. I chose ISyE because I thought it would be a great way to gain exposure to engineering but still have a wide variety of options for internships and future career opportunities. The opportunity to study abroad in Beijing and Singapore with ISyE was also a major selling point.

You have considerable internship experience with financial analysis, and you’ll be pursuing a career in this field after graduation. What interests you most about this area?

My interest in the stock market has really fueled my general interest in finance. I love trading stocks, which I have done since I was quite young. In fact, I bought my first shares of a mutual fund when I was nine years old.

What are you looking forward to most about your new job in NYC with UBS Investment Bank as an equity derivatives analyst?

I love the pace of the market. The stock market is really a compilation of world events, and there is a living, breathing art behind it that I find thrilling. Every day on the UBS trading floor during my internship last summer was a unique experience. I love that I can walk into work where things can change at a moment’s notice. More specifically, I enjoy equity derivatives because they provide a very technical way to express opinions on the market. I feel incredibly grateful to have gotten the opportunity to work full-time doing something I love.

Other than Wish for WASH, of all your extracurricular activities, which has been the most significant for you, and why?

My time spent on Freshman Council was the most significant for my college career aside from Wish for WASH. The opportunity to be a part of that organization was really important for me, because it helped me to see that there is more to life than just schoolwork. Freshman Council really helped me to embrace equally important aspects in college: finding passions in life and forming lifelong friendships. I was fortunate enough to be an advisor for another council after my own experience.

Please briefly explain Wish for WASH’s mission.

Wish for WASH aims to develop user-friendly toilet systems that are also cost-effective. Wish for WASH really seeks to help better the human condition through improved sanitation for the 2.5 billion people who do not have access to adequate sanitation around the world. These sanitation issues disproportionally affect women, so part of improving sanitary conditions will be to improve the lives of women around the world.

What is your role at Wish for WASH?

I work primarily on business development for Wish for WASH – I am working to help find a sustainable business solution as Wish for WASH hopes to expand. It’s a very challenging project, as there are very limited resources and specific cultural norms, aid availability, and established systems unique to each potential market. There is no “one size fits all” solution to improve the sanitation needs for 2.5 billion people all over the world when no two situations or markets are the same. If it were easy, it would have been done already!

Describe your trip to Zambia with Wish for WASH: Why was it important for you to go, and what did you do while there?

During my trip to Zambia, I assisted with the first phase of the beta test of the latest SafiChoo toilet design in a peri-urban community in Lusaka. During my time there, the Wish for WASH team oversaw the retrofitting/cleaning of the current pit as well as the construction and installation of the SafiChoo toilet. We met with various stakeholders including toilet users, engineers, construction workers, and local fecal collection agencies to discuss possible further implementation of the toilet. We really aimed to gain information on the feasibility of implementing this system on a larger scale.

In Zambia, I was mostly interested in learning as much as possible regarding the availability of funding and the market in order to find the best way to create a sustainable business model. Until I went to Zambia, I did not fully understand the difficulty in implementing a revolutionary toilet design halfway across the world, in a community with few resources and established systems and cultural norms that are so different from ours here in the U.S. It was an incredibly worthwhile time.

Aside from working, we also went on safaris, were able to pet rhinos and cheetahs, and visited local markets. All in all, it made for a very exciting trip!

How is Wish for WASH piloting the latest SafiChoo toilet design in Zambia?

As mentioned earlier, Wish for WASH is working with a local community in Lusaka, Zambia. The organization is aiming to see how well the SafiChoo system meets user preferences and needs, test the feasibility of manufacturing and implementation, and evaluate the scalability of our system in this and other markets. We are testing the design for usability while also evaluation potential future costs, revenue streams, and production methodologies.

Again, this is largely a test of both the design feasibility and usability, and a test to see how the toilet performs in the marketplace, as well as gauging how expensive and feasible it would be to implement this on a larger scale in this community (and others and in different contexts elsewhere).

What does your IE background enable you to do for the organization that you might not otherwise be able to do?

My ISyE knowledge and background has helped me to approach this problem from a very practical, straightforward approach. While I may not be able to contribute as much to the design of the toilet, I am able to help Wish for WASH develop a sustainable business model and evaluate how to practically grow Wish for Wash as a business. I prefer to look at the problem from more of a logistics and business perspective.

Also, given my finance background, I am interested in determining how to get funding continuously so that this is not a one-time charity donation but rather a means of helping people help themselves. All perspectives are valuable and in the context of such a complex problem, making an interdisciplinary approach necessary. My particular ISyE background gives me a unique and valuable perspective in terms of developing a practical, scalable solution to an enormous global sanitation problem.

“Enlu was selected for this professorship because of her exceptional record of scholarship and leadership in the areas of simulation optimization and stochastic control,” said ISyE School Chair and Professor Edwin Romeijn.

Zhou’s research interests include simulation optimization, stochastic control, and Monte Carlo methods, with applications in financial engineering and revenue management.

Prior to Georgia Tech, Zhou served as an assistant professor at the Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2009 to 2013. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2009.

The Harrison family, King in particular, had a close working and personal relationship with Brown over the 20 years prior to Brown’s death. In fact, King Harrison inherited Brown’s books and research materials after Brown died.

The reason for the endowment, according to Harrison, is because many graduate students in ISyE study supply chain management, and among the pioneers of the field, Brown certainly stands out as a person who should be known and taught. “He laid the groundwork for those of us out in the field who must try to build, teach, and support forecasting systems,” says Harrison.

Jan Vlachy, an ISyE Ph.D. student (OR 2017) advised by ISyE Professor Turgay Ayer (George Family Foundation Assistant Professor), is one of the two 2015-16 recipients. Vlachy says, “It is inspiring to be awarded a fellowship named after someone so famous, and I hope I will live up to the expectations."

Vlachy came to ISyE on the advice of his master’s degree advisor and because “ISyE is large and diverse, with a wide range of both methodologies and applications.”

His research is focused on using mathematical models to improve health care delivery: policy modeling for new health care delivery models and technology, but also more clinically relevant work. For instance, Vlachy, Ayer, and an undergraduate researcher, Lianyan Gu, are working with Children’s Hospital Colorado, specifically the emergency department, with doctors and nurses, to evaluate treatment of asthmatic children.

He explains, “For asthma, one study found that only about 24 percent of all doctors and nurses read, let alone follow, treatment guidelines. The rest of them rely on their gut or on what their teachers told them. But we have massive data from electronic health records, and what we’re looking for is whether it’s possible to extract the work flow from those records, and see what’s best for the children.” This will help health care professionals determine whether and when to give an asthmatic child a drug or how long an affected child can wait.

Vlachy continues, “There has been literature on discovering such work flows, but in general, what works in manufacturing, or banking, or the service industry does not work in health care. Health care processes are much more complicated. Each patient is so individual, and we don’t know what works for each patient. So that’s all part of the challenge: Was the different work flow appropriate for the patient, or was it a fluke?”

Eventually, Vlachy will work with health care professionals to see if the work flow algorithms he comes up with can help guide their clinical practice. Ultimately, the results of this research has application appeal to other emergency departments as well.

“It’s very validating to get some outside feedback on the work we are doing,” said Vlachy. “Often when we are submitting something or write up something, it takes time to see what impact it really has. We submit articles to journals and go through cycles and cycles of revisions. And any validation such as the Robert Goodell Brown fellowship says that we are doing something right.”

He notes, “[In ISyE] we are taught to think big.” Fittingly, Vlachy has big dreams for the future. He will spend this summer at the University of Chicago, thanks to a Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship. After graduating, he might like to work on significant social problems, perhaps as a data scientist for a mission-driven organization.

“The world is full of uncertainty, but the future is bright,” Vlachy adds.

In this interview, Berry talks about his growing experience with supply chain engineering, his focus on cultural diversity here at Georgia Tech, and what he learned from studying abroad.

Why did you select Georgia Tech for your university experience, and why did you choose ISyE for your major?

From an early age, I knew I wanted to go to a top-ranked engineering school. Living in Albany, Georgia, I didn’t always have as many course options as I would have liked. However, based on family travel experiences, I also knew I would want an education that focused on the global experience and solving global problems. I visited Georgia Tech during a Connect With Tech admissions event and a scholarship weekend. I had never before met such a concentrated group of passionate, engaged, and brilliant students who all not only had dreams but had even started on plans to achieve those dreams.

When I went to the ISyE session at FASET [Tech’s 1^st year orientation program], I knew applied systematic thinking that not only relied on math and data, but also on a leader’s intuition and insights, would be for me. ISyE also provided me the technical background that has given me credibility and experience to begin to tackle the global problems that initially attracted me to the field.

You are developing significant experience in supply chain engineering. Why have you chosen to focus on this particular aspect of ISyE?

Corporate America. School systems. Governmental functions. NGOs. At the core of many large and small organizations is the quality, robustness, and responsiveness of their supply chains. Even with many of the buzz words that are popular today such as Big Data, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility, many organizations implement projects in these areas through their supply chain.

I think an organization’s supply chain has the greatest possibility of impacting individuals on a local and global scale. That’s why I chose it: the potential for impact.

This selection has also immensely helped shape my academics. For example, I also dreamed of being able to study abroad. Because of ISyE’s Beijing-Singapore program, I was able to take classes from the best professors in the world and gain a global perspective on supply chain and logistics management. With two other study abroad programs offered through the Denning & Technology Management program, I have been able to explore the relationship between global supply chains and how they drive macroeconomics and geopolitics.

You’re involved in a wide variety of campus-based activities. Briefly describe a couple of your current roles and what you do for each of them.

I am currently a member of the Student Government Association, having previously served as class president for three years, and as the co-chair of the Cultural and Diversity Affairs Committee. I’ve gotten to work on some of the underlying problems of inclusion and diversity at GT, from bringing cultural organizations together through round table discussions to planning Atlanta-wide Intercollegiate events aimed at fostering collaboration between the different Atlanta schools.

I have always been passionate about mentoring, whether being mentored or having my own mentees. I currently have over 25 Tech mentees in both official and unofficial capacities; they are nicknamed the Horde.

I’ve always believed that mentoring was the best way to build bridges at Georgia Tech, as well as to engineer cultural change on our campus. To this end, I am working with the New Student and Sophomore Programs Office and a talented group of student leaders to create K.N.I.T. [knowledge, nurturing, interactions, traditions], a 1^st-year campus-wide mentoring organization. We will have our first pilot semester this fall with over 80 mentors, and a bandwidth to connect and reach over 200 students!

You were the project manager for Psuedomorph Films for several years. This seems like a departure from your other activities. What interested you about working on film projects?

Many of my friends are creative, innovative, and artsy types who had beautiful ideas and grand visions. Together, we developed and expertise into telling meaningful stories. I wanted to use my organizational mindset to help make their visions a reality. Plus, we had a lot of fun! My favorite project was “The Difference.”

Diversity and sustainability are two areas where you have spent a considerable amount of your extracurricular time. What about these issues is important to you on a personal level?

For me, it comes down to in what type of community do I want to live. When I think of the best parts of my childhood, it was always getting to meet, learn about, and interact with people from all over the world. I was able to see firsthand how what I did in my local community could have large ramifications for another community thousands of miles away. I wanted that impact to be intentional and positive. When I think of my best friends at Tech, I notice that they come from all over the world—from here in Atlanta, to China, to Nigeria, to Columbia. So when we grab food and talk about growing up or the change we want to make in the world, it’s inherently a conversation about diversity and sustainability.

You have studied abroad several times. What have you learned from these experiences?

• Just go ahead and eat it, no matter what it is, and then ask what it is made of later. You’ll get to have so many more wonderful experiences without letting preconceived notions bog you down.
• Problem solving is great, and duly needed in many environments, but creating long-term and intercultural relationships is much more important.
• When you go abroad, history and politics really comes alive. It’s like diving into the pages of a textbook and being able to live out history.
• People have a natural curiosity about those from other cultures. Sometimes that may manifest in strange ways, but the underlying theme is curiosity.

The Capstone Design Expo is a right of passage for most engineering graduates, and while some projects turn into viable prototypes or business plans many students expect to finish their involvement with their projects when they leave Georgia Tech. That wasn't quite the case for industrial and systems engineering major Sangeeta Gadepalli and her team, who made such an impression on their project sponsor that they heard back from them almost two years later.

Read the interview with Gadepalli here: http://coe.gatech.edu/news/capstone-rome.

This year, the CoE inducted three alumni from the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) on April 16, 2016: Stan Chia, Deborah A. Nash, and Jocelyn Marie Stargel.

Stan Chia (B.S. IE 2005), Senior Vice President of Operations, GrubHub

Council of Outstanding Young Alumni

Chia received his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 2005, and he also holds an MBA from Emory University. Chia currently serves as senior vice president of operations at GrubHub, an online and mobile food-ordering company dedicated to connecting hungry diners with local takeout restaurants. His responsibilities include business development, operations infrastructure, sales, data operations, and general management of the local markets, as well as overseeing the Restaurants on the Run, Dining In, and Delivered Dish businesses. Since joining GrubHub in 2015, he has helped expand GrubHub Delivery from five to more than forty markets.

Prior to joining GrubHub, Chia held multiple senior leadership roles at Amazon, Cisco, and General Electric, running multibillion-dollar P&Ls as well as strategic supply chain organizations. His accomplishments at Amazon included the launch of the company’s first toy pop-up store.

The Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award recognized alumni who have distinguished themselves through professional practice and/or service to the Institute, the engineering profession, or society at large. They are on the “fast track” and have made rapid advancement within their organizations, and they have been recognized for early achievements by others within their profession, field, or organization.

Deborah A. Nash (B.S. IE 1978), Senior Vice President, Microsoft Corporation (retired)

Engineering Hall of Fame

Nash received her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 1978 and an honorary doctorate of sciences degree from the University of Arizona in 2001. She retired in 2003 after a career with Microsoft Corporation, where she served as senior vice president. Nash is credited with leading the sales, marketing, and support strategies for expanding use of Microsoft products from the desktop to the back office operations of large organizations. Previously, she was an executive at IBM Corporation, serving in a variety of positions related to hardware manufacturing and development. In her roles at Microsoft and IBM, she was instrumental in achieving many firsts for women in both technology companies, and she was twice named one of Fortune Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business.

Her honors from Georgia Tech include membership in the College of Engineering’s Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni and the Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni. Nash’s extensive involvement with her alma mater includes serving on the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees and the Campaign Georgia Tech Steering Committee, and as a mentor in the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Mentor Jackets program. She is also a past member of the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and an emeritus member of ISyE Advisory Board. In 2014 Nash also received the Joseph Mayo Pettit Distinguished Service Award at the Gold & White Honors Gala from the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.

Membership in the Engineering Hall of Fame is reserved for individuals holding an engineering degree or honorary degree from Georgia Tech. Those chosen have made meritorious engineering and/or managerial contributions during their careers.

Jocelyn Marie Stargel (B.S. IE 1982, M.S. IE 1986), CEO, Stargel Consulting

The Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award

Stargel earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech, followed by a certificate from the Information Technology Management Program. She also holds a certificate in managerial leadership from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Stargel is the founder and CEO of Stargel Consulting, specializing in IT and risk management. In 2015, she retired from Southern Company Services, where she was responsible for managing the Business Assurance program. Prior to joining the Business Assurance team in 2006, Stargel served as director of external affairs for Southern Company Gas. She also held positions as assistant to the CEO of Southern Company Gas and assistant to the CIO of Southern Company Services, as well as management roles in the information technology organization at Southern Company.

Stargel is the incoming chair of the Advisory Board for ISyE, the past president of the Georgia Tech Women’s Alumni Network, and she was recently elected to the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees.

The Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award recognized alumni who have provided distinguished contributions to the Institute, profession, field, or society at large. Candidates are highly placed executives and are actively involved in engineering.

A total of 17 teams from 11 universities took part in the competition. Graduate and undergraduate students used Walmart trend data and were tasked with developing solutions in two areas—customer segmentation and providing products for efficient shelf space usage.

Several Walmart executives were on hand for the 24-hour competition, including Karenann Terrell, executive vice president and chief information officer.

“You won’t find the kind of commitment these students displayed during the competition very often,” Terrell said. “I was incredibly impressed by the breadth and insight of the questions we were asked.”

For Northwestern student Eric Lundquist, who was part of the winning team in customer segmentation, the competition provided real-world perspective to what he is learning in the classroom.

“Statistics are only useful in the extent to which they provide business value and can be communicated clearly and understood fully. We spend a lot of time considering the business value and actionability of our approach, which is something that doesn’t always come up in some of our more technical academic coursework,” Lundquist said.

One of the groups, Team O-Mazing, sent by the Georgia Tech Business Analytics Center, took first place in the predictive analytics track of the competition, surpassing seven teams from other universities that also participated.

Georgia Tech’s Brian Burns said his team found the large amount of information allowed them to drill deeper into the company’s issues. “I’ve had experience with data-driven decisions prior to this competition, but what Walmart’s data set highlighted is that strategic decisions can become more granular as the volume and variety of information becomes larger,” Burns said.

In addition to the winning schools and the host team from Purdue, the competitors included entries from Indiana University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Rochester and University of Texas-Dallas.

The competition is believed to be the first data dive on a college campus. It was organized by Mohammad Rahman, associate professor of management at Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, and was the first major activity conducted by Purdue’s Business Information and Analytics Center.

Harati earned her undergraduate industrial engineering degree (IE 2015) with an emphasis on quality and statistics at Georgia Tech. As an undergraduate student, she received the Henry Ford II Scholar Award and the President’s Undergraduate Research Award.

As an undergraduate researcher, Harati worked with ISyE Coca-Cola Associate Professor Nicoleta Serban, focusing on health care access. Specifically, Harati determined the supply and demand for primary care services for both children and adults. She also found that if Medicaid is expanded, overall access will not, in fact, be decreased due to higher demand and a resulting supply shortage.

As a graduate student at ISyE, Harati has continued this work, specifically in the areas of predicting a child’s risk for cavities based on demographic information and estimating the clinical risk levels for children insured by Medicaid.

About Harati’s award, Alan Erera, ISyE Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and Coca-Cola Professor, said, “Pravara should be proud of her accomplishments, and she is very deserving of this honor.  We are looking forward to see how she uses this fellowship award to make a major impact in our field and on our world.”

"The Graduate Research Fellowship Program is a vital part of our efforts to foster and promote excellence in U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics by recognizing talent broadly from across the Nation," said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, NSF assistant director for Education and Human Resources. "These awards are provided to individuals who have demonstrated their potential for significant research achievements, and they are investments that will help propel this country's future innovations and economic growth."

The fellowship provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution). That support is for graduate study that leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree in science or engineering.

• Maintains a 4.0 GPA while pursuing a B.S. in industrial engineering, with a minor in international affairs and certificate in industrial/organizational psychology;
• Is a Stamps President’s Scholar;
• Serves as vice president for several campus organizations dedicated to student outreach, building community, and human rights;
• Has taken a trip to Iceland to study renewable energy and sustainability;
• Researches with Associate Professor Jarrod Hayes in Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs on the relationship between national security and climate change;
• Writes for Perpetual Change, Sehgal’s regularly updated blog at https://surajsehgal.wordpress.com.

Recently, Sehgal sat down for a Q&A about his internationally focused activities, his involvement with organizations dedicated to ending human trafficking, and the importance of a global perspective.

Why did you choose Georgia Tech for your college experience, and ISyE as your major?

I applied to 15 different colleges in high school and only two of them were in-state. Needless to say, I was pretty set on leaving Georgia (where I was born and brought up) to go out-of-state for college. However, the more I learned about Georgia Tech and about the different programs the university had to offer, the more appealing that it became.

I chose ISyE as my major because it provides me with a set of valuable skills applicable to almost every field. As someone who is interested in international affairs, I felt like ISyE would not only help me contribute to the field in meaningful ways but also allow me to act as a bridge between worlds – bringing together engineering and social science.

Many of your extracurricular activities involve a globally outward focus. What motivates your interest in this area?

I’ve been working with efforts to end human trafficking ever since high school. With the work I’ve done in this field – and any other activity for that matter – the main driver behind much of my interest has been sharing love and care with others. As I realized early on, I have been given many so opportunities by virtue of where I was born, which means the least I can do is try to help others experience some of those opportunities.

Talk about your time as a Summer Scholar in the European Union Program.

The program is called the EU-Brussels study abroad program, offered through Tech. It’s a 10-week summer program led by Georgia Tech faculty in which students take four 3-credit hour classes (12 credits total) on the European Union, European security, EU-U.S. relations, and human rights in Europe. Six weeks of the program takes place in Brussels, Belgium, in which students live with a host family in order to get a better feel for the unofficial capital of the EU and the culture.

The rest of the time is spent in other major cities of EU member states, including Paris, Berlin, Krakow, and Dublin. Throughout the 10 weeks of the program, we visited all kinds of official sites including NATO’s SHAPE Headquarters, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the U.S. Embassy in Paris, the European Court of Human Rights, and more. In addition to learning from readings and lectures, the bulk of the material came from hands-on meetings and dialogue with officials, experts, diplomats, and policy makers.

Why were you interested in this particular program?

It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to explore places that I had never been to before while also studying the European Union. To me, it felt like learning about the EU was a valuable experience, integral to being a well-informed global citizen, regardless of my major.

You were recently a representative at the United Nation’s Youth Assembly and were asked to write about the experience for the Huffington Post. Please describe the experience.

As I wrote in the beginning of the Huffington Post article, there were “numerous panels, inspiring keynote speakers, and workshops with notable leaders in the fields of international development, human rights, and so much more. It was a remarkable opportunity to meet youth from all over the world engaged in life-changing work!”

Going into the Assembly, I didn’t know quite what to expect but was amazed to see just how many young people were gathered together. I met people from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and more. And it seemed like they were all involved in well-intentioned and globally minded projects – everything from creating a nonprofit addressing education barriers in a local city in Mexico to having a well-followed blog and cleaning product line devoted to helping people live a waste-free lifestyle.

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to attend the Youth Assembly, because it helped me to see how the work that we do locally at an extracurricUnular level is really part of a much bigger, global youth movement trying to make the Earth a more habitable, equal, and loving place.

Discuss your work in the Grand Challenges Living Learning program, particularly your current project on food insecurity at Georgia Tech.

The Grand Challenges team that I am working with is called the Food Fighters. We originally entered into second semester of our first year (spring 2015) as a group of six students who wanted help address the inefficiencies of international food aid. However, we quickly realized that if we wanted to make a meaningful impact, we would have to focus our attention more locally.

One population that really caught our eye was college students. We found that unlike households or children, there was surprisingly little literature on the topic of food insecurity experienced by college students. Any study or literature review that we could find on the topic indicated that college students were at high risk of experiencing food insecurity for some period of time during their four years in college. This seemed to be true both in community colleges and universities, and happening in places around the world (found in studies conducted in Hawaii, New York, and Australia).

If you are a student, you should not have to compromise your ability to focus on your academics and overall wellbeing simply because you are not able to get consistent access to basic nutrition. There are resources and services available for students who are having to make that tough choice between food and academics, including Klemis Kitchen, which is an on-campus food pantry. All you have to do is email Dr. Dana Hartley or the Dean of Students Office in order to get access.

Temporary assistance is already available to students. My Grand Challenges group is focused on trying to address why these services aren’t being used more and understanding how to empower students who are experiencing food insecurity to take action regarding their food situation.

One area of important focus for you is on the timely issue of victims’ rights and human trafficking. What would you like us to know about your work in this area, and about the issue of human trafficking in Atlanta, as well as around the world?

Ever since I was a junior in high school, I have been passionate about fighting against human trafficking.

It all started with a Community Ambassador Training held by youthSpark, a nonprofit that works to end child sex trafficking in the state of Georgia. After learning about such a heinous issue and becoming aware that it was such a big problem in my own state, I felt like I needed to act.

Soon after, I started a club in my school, worked to organize a field trip, speakers, and fundraisers to get students engaged, and was even able to intern at youthSpark, helping them find ways to get more teens involved.

I was excited to get started with One Voice Atlanta, a student organization on Tech’s campus that works to raise awareness about human trafficking, help victims, and prevent such crimes from occurring in the future.

Human trafficking is often associated with international cases, but what many fail to realize is that it also occurs domestically. I find it incredibly important to understand how this can happen to any person of any age, demographic, gender, or location.

How is your ISyE work complementary to your minor and certificate and to your globally focused extracurricular activities?

The purpose in pursuing all of these subjects – ISyE, international affairs, and industrial/organizational psychology – is to better my understanding of the world at many levels – global, system, and individual. They each provide unique skills and ways of viewing situations that are necessary when trying to address any kind of problem. To me, my extracurricular activities are ways in which I can take these diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives and apply them towards causes that can better the world.

Discuss the presence that meditation has in your life.

Meditation has had a presence in my life from a very young age. Both of my parents have been meditating since before I was even born, and they also taught meditation as volunteer instructors at home. So while my parents were careful never to impose meditation on me, I grew up with an understanding of the importance of pausing and taking a moment to connect with ourselves.

It wasn’t until I was 17 years old that I began to meditate on my own, and it wasn’t until I started college that I began to meditate much more regularly. For me, especially at a high-paced environment like Tech, meditation is a way of taking a step back, reminding myself that I am alive, and taking a moment to invest in myself, by doing something that many students seem to have forgotten – to just be.

The kind of meditation I do is called Heartfulness, which focuses on the heart, helping people connect with the very organ that literally keeps us alive and metaphorically brings us all together.

What does the future hold for you, both immediate and long-term?

I am really excited to be able to travel to Hyderabad, India to attend an International Youth Seminar on Heartfulness Meditation in late April. This conference is bringing over 2,500 young people from all over the world to gather together, meditate, and grow.

This summer, I will be interning at Hershey, working with their digital marketing team.

Regardless of what my post-graduation job is, I aspire to make sure that my life is always socially minded.

Segireddy, who earned his Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Surat in India, traces his interest in supply chain engineering back to his post-undergrad work at Tata Motors – the automotive manufacturer of what Segireddy calls “the world’s cheapest car.”

“In India, there are 1.2 billion people, and not everyone can afford a car,” he explains. “The motivation is to bring a low-cost car so everyone can afford it.

“From a learning perspective, I joined this company when they started producing the first car, so it was a brand-new manufacturing plant. I was there from  week 1, so I started working in supply chain sourcing as soon as I got my EE degree.

“The business part of supply chain is what I was learning, and approaching supply chain as a business. I liked the way negotiations work, the way pricing strategies works, the way optimization works.”

From there, Segireddy wanted to further his education in supply chain engineering, so he began looking at graduate programs, particularly at schools in the U.S. The world-class faculty and the one-year master’s in supply chain engineering led him to Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE). He also liked how the program is structured – with numerous consulting projects with industry partners that allow for real-world experience.

After graduation, Segireddy was hired by Cisco and immediately joined the company as a supply chain program manager in the company’s Leadership Development Rotational Program. This highly selective leadership program enables participants – of which Segireddy was only the seventh in 4 years – to rotate through four of the company’s six functional groups over a period of two years. “The end goal is that we will be well-rounded supply chain officials who can understand supply chain from every angle and side,” he notes. “Plus having an awareness of different cultures and how they move toward one common goal to have the supply chain work on the part of customers on time and at low cost.”

Spending six months each in one of four groups – including in Norway and in Holland – furthered Segireddy’s real-world education. For him, it was both fun and challenging whenever he joined a new team: “I really loved it. It can take two to four months to understand what you’re doing, but I shortened it to one to one and a half months and got up and running. I always wanted more, so I was very passionate about learning something new and to get on new projects.”

One of the biggest hurdles he faced with each new rotation was coming into a team as project manager and earning the new team’s trust in his guidance. He had to learn how to adapt not only to a new culture, but a new role and a new team, largely by networking and forming relationships that developed a mutual sense of trust. When he was in Amsterdam, Segireddy says, “I learned from my team members both how they could get buy-in, and how I could make them responsible for what they’re actually responsible for. That made me grow and gain the respect of the team over time.

“I learned the basics of project management during the course of my job, especially from my mentors, and additionally took a formal class last December. I believe that being a detail-oriented, pragmatic, curious, and effective communicator are key for being a great project manager. I always keep this in mind when I work on my projects.”

Now that Segireddy has completed Cisco’s Leadership Development Rotational Program, he is back in San Jose, CA working as a project manager for the Network Design and Management Team. He works on a team of 15 who manages a multi-billion dollar supply chain network for the company. He says the team is “accountable for supply chain design, network strategy and governance, and product move capabilities. I am currently working with the team to conceptualize and execute a new consolidated fulfillment model in Europe. This will help Cisco reduce its carbon footprint and make the company’s supply chain more adaptive, innovative, scalable and cost-effective.”

So back to the original question of why supply chain engineering: Segireddy explains, “We are responsible for designing and managing a complex network. What load should the supply chain network have? And what type of fulfillment should we have, and how are these going to keep up with customers’ demand?

“This is what really interests me and motivates me to come to work every day.”

In this Q&A, he talks about his interest in entrepreneurship, the lessons he’s learned by starting his own companies, and the advice he would give to his younger self.

Why did you decide to attend Georgia Tech for college?

Georgia Tech was attractive to me for several reasons, including its strong reputation as a top engineering school, and the co-op program that would help me get some real world experience and figure out what I wanted to do professionally. It also didn’t hurt that Georgia has a much better climate than all of the other schools I applied to, most of which were in the Northeast.

What made you choose ISyE for your major?

I came into Tech as a mechanical engineering major, but I didn’t really know what that meant. After my first quarter, I landed a great co-op job with Yamaha Motor Manufacturing, about 45 minutes south of Atlanta in Newnan, GA. I commuted from the Tech campus for two quarters and had a fantastic work experience, which included getting to test-ride prototype wave runners and Jet Skis in St. Augustine and the Florida Keys. However, I quickly realized that I didn’t want to spend my career in manufacturing and promptly switched majors to ISyE.

In my mind, ISyE offered the most breadth, with a curriculum that allowed me to take courses from other engineering and non-engineering disciplines, ranging from electrical and mechanical engineering labs to database design and industrial psychology.

You’ve been called a “serial entrepreneur.” What lights that perpetual spark for you?

The reason I decided to pursue entrepreneurship at a very early age is the same reason I was attracted to engineering, Georgia Tech, and ISyE: I love solving problems. And as a technology entrepreneur, I love the challenge of trying to solve problems in a way that hasn’t been done before.

What is it about startups specifically that interests you?

Creating solutions to problems that no one has successfully brought to market can be exceptionally challenging and fulfilling – all at the same time.

Building and growing a team can be equally stressful and rewarding. I particularly enjoy helping younger employees develop and watching them grow.  

Seeing the idea your team sketched out on a napkin come to life is exciting, but what makes all of the hard work and sacrifice worthwhile is when you’re able to effect positive change on a large scale, like we’re doing today by bringing increased transparency to the health care industry and transforming the way patients choose doctors, with the technology we developed at Digital Assent.

What initially lit the entrepreneurial spark for you?

I always knew I would start my own business. When I was little, I remember asking my parents why people didn’t just start their career as president or CEO of a company. If that’s what you want to be when you grow up, why start out doing something else?

As I got older, I realized the huge difference between working for someone else and having other people work for you. But I was still very naïve in thinking that any combination of smart Georgia Tech grads could pick an industry and a business concept and make it successful with enough hard work and dedication.

Little did I know that my first business partner and I would have to endure two to three years of making no money, while paying our employees market salaries, in order to keep our first startup alive through the “nuclear winter” that followed the dot-com bubble in the early 2000’s.

You have chosen to focus much of your energy in the health care industry. Why is this sector so attractive to you?

My first company, which took 10 years to go from startup to a successful exit, was not in health care. However, my most recent company (Digital Assent), and the company that acquired us (NRC), operate exclusively in the health care industry. The reason we chose health care when I started Digital Assent was largely due to timing. It was 2009, right before the last economic downturn, and every other industry we evaluated was struggling, except health care.

Health care, at that time, had $36 billion in federal stimulus funds to help fund an industry-wide conversion from paper to electronic health records (EHRs). We knew there would be a lot of opportunity in health care, and that’s continued to be the case. Atlanta’s health care technology companies are growing fast, and I don’t see it slowing down any time soon.

What does Digital Assent or NRC do that is so vital to the health care industry?

Our team helps large hospitals and health systems embrace the movement toward health care consumerism and increased transparency. As consumers spend more of their own money on health care – and have more choice and more access to information than ever before, they are shopping around for quality and value.

We take the patient satisfaction survey data that hospitals already collect and convert it into online ratings and reviews that are published – good and bad – to the hospital’s own website and to each doctor’s profile page. This is similar to what you see on websites like Amazon, TripAdvisor, and Yelp! – to help consumers make more informed decisions when selecting a new provider.

By tapping into these federally mandated in-depth patient satisfaction surveys, we’re able to guarantee that the millions of ratings we publish each year are all from verified patients who have seen a doctor at a particular hospital or clinic in the past 12 months.

Many of the health systems that have implemented our Transparency solution have experienced a 10 to 20 percent improvement in their patient experience scores and a significant increase in the number of patients scheduling new appointments with their doctors.

The health systems who have selected us as their transparency partner, including world-renowned organizations like Johns Hopkins and the Cleveland Clinic, collectively operate more than 300 hospitals and employ over 70,000 physicians.

Can you share an anecdote about one of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your professional career?

A constant recurring challenge as a startup entrepreneur is not running out of money. It’s not a discrete event, it’s constant. Even after raising an initial $12 million to launch my last company – you’re still constantly worried about running out of money.

When you raised a lot of money, expectations for the speed and success of your business are also raised. You’re expected to move faster, which means a bigger burn rate. And, more often than not, figuring things out takes longer and costs more than you initially projected. It’s basically a race against the clock to figure out a viable, scalable business model before you run out of money – or have to go out and raise more money.

So, yes, there were many instances where we had months’ or weeks’ worth of cash left in the bank, and we needed to make something happen in order to keep the company going.

Most entrepreneurs will have experienced this at least once – probably many times over. It’s a roller coaster ride, unless you get lucky and knock it out of the park the first time, which rarely happens. It’s often one step forward and two steps back, which keeps things interesting.

If creating a successful startup was easy, everyone would do it.

If you could travel back in time to your time at Tech, what advice would you give your younger self?

Seek out one or two good mentors early in your career who share common interests and goals, even if they’re only a few years older than you.  Over time, surround yourself with advisors and mentors who will help you become a better business person and a stronger leader.

Try to figure out the things you’re not good at and stop doing them. I wasted a lot of time early in my career doing things that others could have done better and faster. Instead, try to surround yourself with people who are better than you in those areas.

Network with people of all different backgrounds and industries – I’m constantly surprised at the knowledge, insights and connections that weren’t initially apparent or obvious when I first met someone.

Don’t take yourself too seriously and don’t be afraid to ask questions – it’s the fastest way to learn. You can’t worry about sounding stupid.

If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, take advantage of all of the great resources available to you through Georgia Tech and in the Atlanta community. There wasn’t a big emphasis on entrepreneurship when I was starting out. Today, there are a rapidly growing number of incubators, accelerator programs, workshops, networking opportunities, and funding sources.

I recently sat down with Zeng to ask him about his research focus and his work with Amazon.

What is your educational background, prior to coming to Georgia Tech?

I’ve earned a bachelor’s in mathematics at Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, and a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Why did you choose Georgia Tech, and ISyE, for your graduate studies?

Georgia Tech is an excellent engineering school. In particular, ISyE is not only the largest industrial engineering program in the nation, but it also has many outstanding researchers. I was interested in mathematical modeling and optimization, and I believed I could strengthen my knowledge of operations research and contribute my talents here.

Give an overview of your dissertation, and why you focused on this area for it.

My dissertation stemmed from a collaboration between ISyE and the American Red Cross (ARC) back in 2012. Assistant Professor Turgay Ayer and Professor Chelsea White, ISyE Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics, determined that ARC potentially benefit from a significant cost-savings if we could convince ARC to change their cryo – a key blood product – collection policies.

Since then, we’ve found very interesting theoretical results (structural policy), provided extensive numerical results, and delivered a decision support tool (DST). My dissertation – and our paper on this work –show that our innovative blood collection method can save up to 70 percent of the cost due to cryo collection, and our DST has been implemented.

We found that due to the tight time constraint necessary for making cryo, the ARC spent a lot of money in transporting whole blood product. We improved the cryo collection policies by taking the advantage of the backhaul in the blood collection. We built a Markov Decision Processes model to generate decision support and analyze the societal impact.

What was it like to win the GTRIC fellowship for your work on cryo collection?

I presented preliminary results of the ARC cryo collection at the GTRIC in 2013 and won the GTRIC fellowship. I want to thank Georgia Tech for providing me with this excellent opportunity. This experience gave me more confidence to dive deeply into the research.

Following on the heels of the GTRIC fellowship, what was it like to win the 2015 Doing Good with Good OR Award at INFORMS? What did this tell you about the importance of your work?

It is a great honor. This is a nice result of our three-year industry-academia collaboration. I want to express my highest gratitude to the people who are actively involved: Professor White, Professor Ayer, Professor Vengazhiyil, and Can Zhang, another Ph.D. student in ISyE. There is no doubt that we’ve been doing meaningful work, and we will continue to work with ARC to improve their blood collection policies.

Even though you’re graduating this semester, you’re already working full-time for Amazon Web Services as a research scientist. Could you describe what you do as a research scientist, and how you got connected to your current position?

Amazon is growing very fast — especially my division, AWS. There are quite a few operations research scientist positions in Amazon, and I was referred by my colleague, who is also a Yellow Jacket.

My typical work includes analyzing data, building mathematical models, and providing decision support. I work with Amazon’s business people and software engineers to optimize the cloud computing’s supply chain.

What is one of the most challenging projects you’ve worked on for Amazon?

Business problems are often poorly defined, and the raw data is very messy. I must spend considerable time learning the domain knowledge from the stakeholders, then spend some time familiarizing myself with the data – then clean it up. Sometimes, I must make a trade-off between optimality and complexity to deliver results in a timely manner.

What do you bring to Amazon as a Ph.D. in ISyE that you might not otherwise be able to contribute?

There are quite a few Yellow Jackets at Amazon! I think as a Ph.D. in ISyE, I contribute my expertise in operations research as follows:

1. Think about the business problem holistically, and possibly propose a new prototype.

2. Use up-to-date technology to solve the problem and provide better decision support.

3. Similar to what a project manager does, work with business people and developers to implement a better method and make an impact on the business.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to work out. I went to the Campus Recreation Center almost every day at Georgia Tech. Living in the Northwest, I now like hiking. I also like to cook, making healthy food for myself. I love magic tricks.

What, if any, are your post-graduation plans?

I will continue to learn new things, work hard, and make an impact in my company.

About the Baker award, Edwin Romeijn, ISyE H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor, said, “This is an incredible, very well-deserved honor. We are very glad to have Jan here at ISyE, with everything he contributes to the school.”

Shi received the award for his scholarly contribution and achievements in the area of quality science and engineering for multistage manufacturing systems. In his research, he created a set of foundational mathematical models and associated tools to integrate system theory with advanced data analytics to support modeling, design optimization, operation monitoring, root cause diagnosis, and adaptive control of quality in multistage manufacturing systems.  Due to the nature of interdisciplinary research, his work has won numerous best paper awards from several professional societies, including IIE, ASME, SME/NAMRI, and INFORMS. He is also a Fellow of INFORMS, ASME, IIE, and an Academician of IAQ (International Academy for Quality). 

The implementations of Shi’s methodologies have made significant impacts in industrial practice. As an example, his methodologies for multistage system has been adopted by Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler in their vehicle programs and led to significant variation reduction in more than 20 assembly plants. The implementation in Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly Plant led it to 2mm six sigma body assembly variation, which was the first North American plant to have achieved this world-class dimensional quality.  His data fusion research, via collaboration with OG Technologies Company, led to early detection or prevention of defects in steel mills. Those algorithms has been implemented in OGT’s HotEye®/PRii™/PPS™ systems, which are in use by over 40 plants in 14 countries including the U.S., Canada, China, France, Germany, and Japan. The implementation of the technology has resulted in over 100 million dollars in cost savings, 1.2 billion KWh in energy savings, and 50,000 tons of CO2 emission reduction per year.

In addition to his research achievements, Shi has been successful in advising graduate students into independent and mature academic researchers. Twenty former Ph.D. students of his have become a faculty member in an industrial engineering program; among them, seven have received the NSF CAREER Award and one received the NSF PECASE Award.

Plumlee’s research interests include the interface of data and modeling, specifically in methods for experimentation and uncertainty quantification for complex systems.

Out of 526 doctoral degrees conferred by Georgia Tech in 2015, only nine were chosen to receive the Sigma Xi Best Dissertation Award. In addition, with the award given to Plumlee, the honor returns to ISyE after eight years. Previous winners include Tirthankar Dasgupta in 2008 (advisor: Jeff Wu, ISyE Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor); Wuqin Lin in 2006 (advisor: Jim Dai, ISyE Adjunct Professor); and Jean-Philippe Richard in 2003 (advisor: George Nemhauser, ISyE A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Institute Professor).

Plumlee’s dissertation advisers were Roshan Vengazhiyil, ISyE Professor, and Jianjun Shi, ISyE Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor. His thesis studied methodologies to assist users in blending computational models and data. This research seeks to design and evaluate methods for the combined usage of observational data and computational models to match the technological gains in sensor and storage technologies. Plumlee's findings impact economic sectors including health care, both clinical and operational, manufacturing, and energy.

About the award, Shi and Vengazhiyil said, “This is great news. Matt’s dissertation studies methodologies in uncertainty quantification, an emerging research area to which Matt has made unique and important contributions. He truly deserves this recognition. Furthermore, the fact that the Sigma Xi award has returned to ISyE after eight years is a triumph both for Matt and his work, and for the School itself.” 

Plumlee’s dissertation excellence was also recognized by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE) with the Ph.D. Thesis Award for 2016.

What led me to Georgia Tech is the great group of professors who make up the Health & Humanitarian Systems Center. I wanted to learn from the leaders in this emerging field. I chose to study supply chain engineering because it has more of a focus on practical application as opposed to a more theoretical focus in the general industrial engineering master’s program.

What was your favorite aspect of the program while you were studying at ISyE, and why?

I appreciated the international diversity within the students and the professors because it brought so many different perspectives to whatever we were learning. It played a role in our team projects, when we would have guest speakers, and when we were asked to share emerging technology or news in the field of supply chain with the class. Also, through partnering with other universities, we got real-life practice in working and learning with those who were not physically in the classroom.

In my current job, my team is comprised of people of many nationalities who are located throughout the entire U.S. Learning how to best communicate with remote teammates has become very important in the current working culture, and I started that process at Georgia Tech.

Give an overview of your career since graduating with your M.S. in Supply Chain Engineering.

After graduating, I searched for jobs in the nonprofit space but was unsuccessful. I decided to get some experience in the corporate world that I could later bring to the nonprofit sector and applied for a business analyst-type role in supply chain development at The Home Depot. My job focused on partnering with IT to create transportation systems solutions for any new project coming down the pipe.

I then found an opportunity to get some nonprofit experience in logistics at Habitat for Humanity International. I helped manage warehouse inventory of gift-in-kind donations and distribute these items to ReStores throughout the U.S.

Just over a year ago, I moved to the American Cancer Society where I serve as the main process consultant for our supply chain department. Whenever our department begins something new, I help to figure out how we are going to accomplish it with our people, systems, and process. I also conduct reviews of existing systems and processes to discover new and more efficient ways of accomplishing our goals.

You’ve done quite a bit of work in the humanitarian sector, what with your study abroad experience in France, your research in the Caribbean, your internship and later employment with Habitat for Humanity, and now with the American Cancer Society. What about this particular sector draws you to it?

Since high school, I have wanted my career to have some kind of international impact that improves the lives of people around the globe. I also have a strong passion to use the skills and principles of our field in the humanitarian sector. Typically, the types of people who start up and lead humanitarian organizations are passionate, energizing, and mission-driven. They hire people who can fulfill that mission. Many times these organizations don’t have people who focus on optimizing their impact using the same or fewer resources. That’s the gap I want to fill. I want to focus on making donor dollars go further in these organizations.

Why is supply chain work so important in the humanitarian sector? Or, put another way, with your training and background in supply chain engineering, what do you bring to these positions?

It is important that leaders of the humanitarian sector continue to realize the value that supply chain operations and logistics can bring to their organizations. The work that I do on a daily basis saves my organization money and time, and ultimately helps us to be more effective in our mission. Supply chain engineers bring analytical tools and objective perspectives to a humanitarian field that often neglects these business practices.

My education and background give me the confidence to stand behind the changes we recommend, especially when they can be unpopular. However, in my experience, I have also learned that supply chain engineers like me must learn to listen and absorb the values of their humanitarian organizations and to not engineer away their mission and passion for the sole sake of improved efficiency. We must find the path that embraces both efficiency and the humanitarian spirit.

The Denning Award for Global Engagement recognizes a Georgia Tech faculty member who has demonstrated sustained outstanding achievement and commitment to the advancement of the Institute’s global engagement. This program is funded through the generous support provided in the establishment of the Steven A. Denning Chair in Global Engagement in the Office of International Education.

About the Steven A. Denning Award for Global Engagement

This award seeks to recognize a tenured or tenure-track faculty member who has made a significant and sustainable impact in one or more of the following areas:

• Promoting the recognition of Georgia Tech in other countries
• Advancing research, education, and economic development engagement at the international level
• Enriching the experiences of international students or scholars
• Incorporating global perspectives in teaching or international components into the curriculum
• Giving of their time and influence to organize and/or promote international events, visitors, or other international exchanges at Georgia Tech
• Creating new ideas, structures, procedures, or products which promise to eliminate international inequalities, to promote global cooperation, or to foster respect for human dignity among nations and peoples of the world.

About Pinar Keskinocak

Pinar Keskinocak is the William W. George Chair in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and an Advance Professor for the College of Engineering.  She is the co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech.

Her research focuses on applications of operations research and management science with societal impact (particularly health and humanitarian applications) and supply chain management, with an emphasis on resource allocation, revenue management, auctions/pricing, due date/lead-time decisions, production planning/scheduling, and logistics/transportation. She has worked on projects in several industries including automotive, semiconductor, paper manufacturing, printing, healthcare, and airlines. She is actively engaged in research and applications in healthcare and humanitarian logistics. Her research has been published in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, Interfaces, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, BMC Public Health, Epidemiology and Infection.

Dr. Keskinocak serves as the department editor of the Policy Modeling and Public Sector/Area of Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and IIE Transactions, and a department editor for IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. She is one of the founding members of the INFORMS-JFIG (Junior Faculty Interaction Group) and INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service, and Needs group, and has served as the president of both sections. She also has served as the INFORMS Vice President of Membership and Professional Recognition; Chair of the INFORMS Doctoral Colloquium in 2003; Chair of the Nicholson Prize in 2005; Vice President-Projects and Vice President-Meetings, INFORMS Forum on Education (INFORM-ED); Treasurer, MSOM Society; and President and Vice President-Meetings, INFORMS Forum for Women in OR/MS (WORMS).

About Julie Swann

Julie Swann is the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and co-director of The Health and Humanitarian Systems Center, one of the first Interdisciplinary Research Centers on Georgia Tech campus.

Dr. Swann is currently focused on the modeling and analysis of problems and algorithms in logistics, transportation and supply chain management. She has particular interests in developing and analyzing tools to manage demand, such as pricing, revenue management, or lead-time quotation, to increase the flexibility in the system and is currently doing work in humanitarian supply chains. Other research interests include applications of economics and optimization to healthcare policy.

Dr. Swann participated in several research projects at General Motors and IBM, focusing on pricing in different industries. At General Motors, Dr. Swann developed a tool integrating pricing, production and distribution of vehicles while meeting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements. At IBM, she explored pricing models for efficient bandwidth allocation.

She was awarded an NSF CAREER grant in 2004, and recently, one of her papers was selected as a Finalist in the Shepherd award at the CDC. In 2002, she received the Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Council of Logistics Management and was a Finalist in the Dantzig Doctoral Dissertation Competition at INFORMS. In 2006 she was inducted into the Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni of Georgia Tech.

Mehta has taken a somewhat circuitous route to get to ISyE: He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Nevada in electrical engineering, with an emphasis on biomedical engineering.

He found his way to the PMASE program at Tech because, he explains, “I was always fascinated by the large-scale complex systems that are all around us and wanted to learn more about what it takes to weave together so many moving parts. Not only do you have to engage in technical engineering design but you must also take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and consider all the other aspects like manufacturing, operations, human factors, business—and the inherent uncertainty of it all.” After doing research on his various options for graduate school, he says he “quickly came to select Georgia Tech because it fit all my criteria” -- world-renowned faculty, a fully online degree program, and the fact that the Stewart School for Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) is consistently ranked No. 1 in its field.

As for pursuing an internship with NASA, Mehta notes, “I have a grounding in electronic and electrical systems but have always been curious about other arenas, so I’m thrilled to be confronting not just one problem space at NASA, but several altogether.” He adds, “It all goes back to the leaps and bounds [NASA’s] been making for decades and answering the question of ‘What else is out there?’  

“Really we’re just a speck in the known universe; there’s so much more out there that has yet to be explored, so being able to collaborate with the visionaries here at Langley to help in answering those questions is a humbling experience. Fortunately, I’ve been afforded an opportunity to work directly in the two areas that pique my interest – system architecting and modeling and simulation (MODSIM).”

System architecting and MODSIM are fields of study experiencing rapid growth.

Mehta says, “The essence of architecting is bringing order out of chaos: unifying components, their relationships, and the principles governing their design into an organized manner. It’s both an art and a science because you can end up with countless alternative solutions to the same problem, and you’re left with the mission of balancing all the moving parts in order to find a sweet spot.

“MODSIM is another cornerstone of engineering because it can be applied across the board – to experimentation, testing, training, risk analysis, and even cost estimation. One good example of how useful it can be is when you consider the fact that it’s not practical to fly into space or travel 300 days to Mars just to test a new design or piece of equipment, so simulation modeling is the next best thing.”

MODSIM has applications beyond space exploration and space travel, involving large-scale projects in construction, defense, manufacturing, and medicine.

Mehta will specifically be working in the Systems Engineering and Engineering Methods branch at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. While there, he will be “tasked with conceiving, architecting, maturing, and integrating a model based systems engineering infrastructure that will facilitate both ongoing and future space exploration missions, like the journey to Mars.” 

When asked how IE will play a role in his internship, Mehta has a ready answer: “We’ve already covered a lot of material in our first few classes like system architecting, robust design, human systems integration, engineering economics, and probabilistic methods. I really love how the focus of Tech’s coursework is comprehensive in nature, covering end-to-end phases of the product lifecycle.” His next couple of PMASE classes, which cover advanced system modeling and simulation, will have direct applicability to his NASA internship across multiple NASA projects.

Conversely, Mehta’s internship will also expand his IE skills. He explains, “If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that there’s always room to grow. The icing on the cake for me is that I get to collaborate with engineers who work day-in and day-out in my precise field of study – so I fully expect to flourish not only as a systems engineer, but also as a person.”

As if Mehta doesn’t have enough to keep him busy as a full-time PMASE student and NASA intern, he has also become an entrepreneur, starting his own web-based company called DynamiCoupons. Unlike such Internet coupon companies as Groupon and LivingSocial, Mehta says that DynamiCoupons – which will launch in mid to late 2016 – focuses on the mom-and-pop enterprises that make up the backbone of American business, putting “money and marketing power” back into their pockets.

He explains that the site will work “by offering merchants and businesses the DIY ability to create their own deals, offers, ads, coupons, and promotions and post them in real time – without breaking the bank. The searchable database is updated constantly using an exclusive interconnected network. This provides customers the opportunity to find the things they want most by keyword, type of product or service, city, and zip code – all free of charge. I even integrated geo-location capabilities via Google Maps to the site so anyone can search for nearby deals on their cell phone, tablet, or mobile device.”

The site for DynamiCoupons has largely been developed, so the next step for Mehta is getting the word out about his enterprise. He is confident in the venture’s potential success: “I really believe that businesses and customers alike will be impressed when they start using our platform – and then the real growth potential begins.”

This promises to be a challenging venture. In addition, the NASA internship lasts six months, during which time his full-time school work on his PMASE degree will continue. “I know it won’t be easy,” acknowledges Mehta – but then he adds, “When has anything worthwhile ever been easy?”

About the Professional Master’s in Applied Systems Engineering

Georgia Tech's College of Engineering, the division of Professional Education, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute collaboratively designed the Professional Master's in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE) program for experienced professionals interested in building and expanding their systems engineering expertise. The systems engineering master's program offers a practical, hands-on approach to learning how to successfully integrate systems engineering processes to gain a competitive advantage in any industry.

This master's in systems engineering will help students develop the skills and knowledge necessary to successfully compete in the global market. Students gain real-world experience by collaborating in a team environment. They will learn how to think strategically to determine project plans and identify areas of risks.

ISyE Professor Emeritus Leon McGinnis teaches in the PMASE program.

For more information on the program, click here.

About Ayer’s appointment, ISyE’s H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor Edwin Romeijn said, “Turgay was selected for this professorship because of his exceptional record of scholarship and leadership in the areas of stochastic modeling and optimization, with applications in predictive health, medical decision making, and health policy.”

About George Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Predictive Health Turgay Ayer

In addition to ISyE, Dr. Ayer is the research director for medical decision-making in the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Ayer conducts research on stochastic modeling and optimization, with applications in predictive health, medical decision making, health care operations, and health policy. Together with his students, Dr. Ayer has received several awards for his work, including an NSF CAREER award, first place in the 2011 and 2015 INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR Student Paper Competition, finalist in the 2015 INFORMS George Nicholson Student Paper Competition, 2012 and 2014 Seth Bounder Foundation Research Award, and second place in the 2011 MSOM Student Paper Competition.

Ayer received a B.S. in industrial engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He is a member of INFORMS and the Society for Medical Decision Making, and he currently serves as the president of the INFORMS Health Application Society.

Dr. Valerie Thomas is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in the School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. She is also a member of the FAS Board of Experts. Dr. Thomas's research interests are energy systems, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning. Dr. Thomas is a member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. In 2004-2005, she was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society, and has been a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board. She has previously worked at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute. Dr. Thomas received a B.A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

What made you want to become a scientist or engineer and what is your primary field of focus?

I became a scientist because I was fascinated by quantum physics. I wanted to know about it and I wanted to know more.

But now I am working on a very pragmatic and applied problem: how to create a sustainable energy system. It’s an easy problem. That is, we can solve this and I am confident we will. The challenge is in how gracefully we get there, and the details of the solution.

I keep wanting to get back to theoretical physics. But I love working on energy problems and with so much work to do currently, I haven’t yet found a way to do both.

What was your first science experiment?

Great question. It made me think: What makes something a science experiment, and what makes it mine?

My first experiments were engineering experiments – about making things rather than discovering the world. As a child, I liked to design and make things – out of fabric, paper, yarn, paint – and I liked to explore and build forts in the woods.

So, what makes an experiment “mine"? It’s “mine” simply when I create it and carry it out. In high school  and college, all the science experiments were with a partner, so to me, that doesn’t count. Finally in graduate school, we had a lab course in which we had to carry out the experiment alone, by ourselves. That was great; I worked on superconductivity.

What advice would you give scientists and other technically-trained people in how to apply their knowledge and experience to societal issues and/or to educate policymakers?

I would specifically like to address this question in the context of climate change and energy challenges. In my view, there has been too narrow a focus on the science of climate change and on the impacts of climate change, at the expense of a focus on how we can change our energy and industrial systems. There is huge potential for us to change our systems for the better; there is a very positive message and opportunity here.

My advice is to bring forward any of the myriad innovations, and to convey the happy enthusiasm that we have for continuing to be creative and innovative.

What advice would you give someone trying to break into your field or the scientific and technical worlds in general?

Keep a deep and intense commitment. Make sure to have lots of failures, and remember that it is really fun. Don’t be afraid.

Do you find that people react in a certain way when you tell them you’re a scientist? Do they make any assumptions?

I find that people assume I’m a rigid, narrow-minded, boring, uncreative person, focused on the immediately practical, with no vision, poetry, or spirit. And they definitely assume it would not be fun to ask me much about what I do.

What do you personally find to be the most rewarding and the most irritating parts of studying science?

I like to sink down into a problem, to really work at it hard and thoroughly, and to come up with a new way of thinking (or to at least slightly change how people understand the questions and the solutions).

I also really like working with a wide variety of people – on research projects, in class, in committees – and finding ways to get to better and more satisfying outcomes – whether in my teaching or in the research we are doing, or in how our scientific and engineering institutions are set up. People don’t realize how wildly social science can be.

The most irritating parts? Hm, here’s a list: boring talks, having to sit in my chair for too long, slow computers, unhealthy boxed lunches, so many airplane flights…

What do you believe is FAS’s greatest strength and how can the organization take advantage of it?

FAS’s greatest strength is its clear and consistent record of focus on science and technology issues of international security. This provides a platform, both for building dialogue with policy makers and for providing opportunities for scientists and engineers to engage with policymakers. FAS could further develop this potential by finding more scientists and engineers, from different locations and institutions, who could use FAS as a bridge to communicate with policy makers and the public.

What are the top issues that FAS should focus on in the next five years?

Nuclear power and nuclear proliferation, globally. I used to work in the area of nuclear arms control, and in that field, the challenges of nuclear proliferation are well understood. Now I work in the energy field, and, strangely, nuclear proliferation is generally seen as “out-of-scope.” Developing an integrated understanding of nuclear energy and nuclear proliferation risks as part of the energy future is something that FAS is very well suited to do.

Energy solutions, globally: New approaches to buildings and transportation for large, system-level efficiencies. New technologies – piezo-electrics, thermo-electrics, energy storage.

Nuclear problems have been and continue to be a challenge that FAS can address comprehensively and with credibility. Energy solutions – as mind-blowingly different as nuclear energy was in the 1930s – are what scientists and engineers are working on now; their potential is what we desperately need to communicate to our policy makers and the public

 Complete this sentence: Science is vital because ...

Science is vital because we are exploring the nature of the universe. It is part of what makes us vital.

In this interview, Goel talks about giving back to the Georgia Tech community through his work with these two organizations and why that’s important to him, and how his IE training strengthens his leadership roles.

Why did you select Georgia Tech and ISyE for your undergraduate work?

Before coming to Georgia Tech, I was fortunate enough to go to an international high school affiliated with the University of Cambridge, UK, in India. As a result, I had a multicultural experience that motivated me to go abroad for my undergraduate education. I wanted to choose a school that was not just challenging and prestigious but also really diverse in terms of its student body and the opportunities it offered. Georgia Tech was the perfect choice since it met all my expectations.

As far as choosing ISyE, I had never heard of this major until I got accepted into Tech. I stumbled upon the ISyE curriculum while browsing through the list of available majors. As someone with a passion for problem solving and the desire to gain business knowledge, I felt like the ISyE curriculum was designed perfectly for my needs. And here I am pursuing my undergraduate degree in a school that has been ranked No. 1 in the nation for the 21st consecutive time.

You’ve said, “Coming to Georgia Tech as an international student from India, I was also motivated to pursue leadership opportunities on campus and make my own impact.” Why is making an impact so important to you?

Being an international student here at Tech, I have always considered myself to be blessed to have the opportunity to pursue my education in one of the most prominent universities in the world. When I think about how many people get such an opportunity in life, it makes me realize the value of using the resources around me to make a difference in other people’s life. And there’s no place better than your own campus to start giving back to the community.

Describe your work with both Alpha Pi Mu and International Ambassadors. Why did you select these organizations as places to focus your time and energy?

As organizations, Alpha Pi Mu and International Ambassadors are both very different from each other in terms of their goals, target audiences, and operations. In Alpha Pi Mu, our goal is to increase the professional development of our members and the overall ISyE community at Tech through the form of several on-campus events. In International Ambassadors, our goal is to help the Office of Undergraduate Admissions promote an accurate and holistic view of Tech around the world and to bring the best international talent on-campus through the form of several off-campus international outreach efforts.

Having said that, I have always believed in channeling my energy in a few things rather than trying my hand at everything. Personally, I resonated with the core values of both these organizations. While one allowed me to passionately serve the ISyE community at Tech, the other enabled me to give back to the international student community outside Tech. Essentially, it was these different core values of both my organizations that made me choose them as places to focus my time and energy.

How does your background in IE contribute to your leadership roles?

The ISyE curriculum has a lot of classes that involve working on projects in order to solve complicated issues as a team. The ISyE program does a great job of teaching critical thinking and interpersonal skills. It’s these acquired skills that then contribute so much to my leadership roles, since they enable me to think through a problem or challenge in a comprehensive manner and then brainstorm ways to tackle it with my team.  

What do you like to do when you’re not working on schoolwork?

The best part about being in a different country is that you can spend so much time exploring the city, trying different food cuisines and just socializing with your friends. And that’s what I do when I am not working on schoolwork. I am also a brother in Alpha Kappa Psi, the largest co-ed business fraternity on campus, and our chapter always has some form of social, philanthropy, professional or fundraising events every week. I love spending my free time with my brothers at these different types of events.

You’ve mentioned that one of your interests is cricket. How do you follow the sport while at school here in the States?

I have a lot of friends at Tech who’re really passionate about the sport and follow it very actively through the help of social media and by watching cricket matches online. I do the same whenever I get time.

What does the future hold for you?

I am currently looking into consulting as a career path for my future, since it gives you the chance to work in a variety of different industries. Furthermore, I strongly believe that the combination of ISyE and consulting is a great opportunity to solve real life problems

It took only one analytics-related class at Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) for me to realize that I wanted to go into analytics. Like many undergrads, when I entered school I had chosen a general concentration in industrial engineering because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do at the time. But after learning about basic modeling techniques and realizing the diverse array of fields I could explore with an analytics-focused degree, I was hooked.

Almost a year into my career, I feel fortunate to have graduated from a school that has directly prepared me as well as two of my colleagues who also graduated from Georgia Tech, Abisht Raviprakash and Vinod Cheriyan, to succeed in our careers. From coursework to extracurriculars, we’ve pinpointed unique knowledge and experiences we’ve gained from our time at ISyE that have set us up for success as we grow our careers at Enova International, a technology and analytics-driven online lender in Chicago.

Take Advantage of Broad Coursework

One thing that Georgia Tech does really well is offer a broad range of coursework. Every single industrial engineer takes a fairly wide breadth of classes beyond their concentration. For instance, an introductory course to forecasting and regression gave me the model-building skills I need to write the models that oversee our sophisticated, automated underwriting process at Enova International. A data visualization course gave me the tools I’ve needed to successfully present information to our executives in a way that is both visual and meaningful.

Coding was another indispensible skill I learned through coursework and side projects. Having a basic understanding of a programming language – for me, it’s Python – has enabled me to work much more efficiently in my current role. Even something as simple as pulling data into a spreadsheet can save tons of time if I do it myself rather than relying on someone else with specialized knowledge.

Gain Real-World Experience

While textbook learning is invaluable, at some point theory stops and practice begins. Thankfully, through my Senior Design project, I was able to put my knowledge into practice and work on an analytics solution for a large telecommunications company. We were tasked with optimizing their network so that they could fit more data onto the same infrastructure.

The project taught me both people skills and technical skills that help me perform my job at Enova today.

Most valuable was learning how teams that are working on large-scale technical projects interact with each other. On the Senior Design project, eight of us were working together, so we had to learn how to efficiently decide who would be best at each task based on our individual strengths. We also learned how to interact with executives, both in a formal presentation setting and in sessions for data gathering purposes. The lesson: Much of our success was determined by knowing what to ask, when to ask it, and when to figure it out ourselves.

This has translated to my job at Enova, where I’m often working on a multi-department project designed to identify a business opportunity or answer a question such as, “What product should we launch in this state?” It will also come in handy as Enova begins to offer its analytics as a service to external clients through Enova Decisions. Knowing how to successfully contribute to large-scale projects has been essential, and also has enabled me to continue to expand my knowledge by constantly working on new things and learning from others. I get to go deep in the data, but I’m also getting inputs from others and able to watch the entire project lifecycle unfold.

Complete Personal Side Projects

When hiring analytics team members, companies look for passionate individuals who have gone the extra mile. The best way to show you’re interested in analytics and a great way to get practice in it is to take on a personal side project. Plus, these can be really fun. For instance, there is a website called Kaggle where businesses post a problem that they want modeled. Anyone can submit a solution, everyone’s answers are ranked, and sometimes there is prize money to be won. It’s a good way to check your progress in a real-world scenario.

Never Stop Learning

Georgia Tech does a great job of teaching students how to teach themselves, and this is a critical skill for those going into analytics. It’s a new field that is still changing, and because of this it’s never boring. I was fortunate to find a company that offers a flexible rotation program for new hires that are recent grads, so I was able to try a few different roles at Enova before landing in my current position on the portfolio analytics team.

Aside from surrounding myself with colleagues who bring great insights and perspectives and learning from them, I keep up with the latest analytics developments by attending meetup groups, reading online content, and always being on the lookout for new programming languages and techniques to try.  

Analytics is an exciting and ever-evolving field, and I’m looking forward to continuing to learn and grow as I progress in my career. I’m grateful for the foundation ISyE provided with its challenging coursework and ample real-world opportunities outside of the classroom, and I’d advise any student at Georgia Tech who’s interested in pursuing a career in analytics to take advantage of all the school has to offer. You have world-class opportunities at your fingertips, so make the most of them! 

Insights from

Vinod Cheriyan and Abisht Raviprakash

Vinod Cheriyan, Ph.D. in Operations Research (2014),

M.S. in Operations Research (2012)

Current role: Senior Data Scientist, Research Architecture and Platform Analytics, Enova International

Most valuable classes: Coursework in statistics, optimization, and stochastics

Most valuable experience at Georgia Tech: My Ph.D. research gave me familiarity with a wide range of algorithms and a great base in statistics and data analysis – especially with how to deal with imperfect data.

What Georgia Tech does best: The coursework is thorough and rigorous, and they teach the “why” behind the “what.” Because of that foundation, I can understand why things work and pick up new concepts quickly.

Favorite part of current job: We have a culture of managed autonomy, which means anyone – regardless of level or how recently they joined – can have a huge direct impact if their model is the best. I also love working with really smart people who are willing to help each other. 

Top tip for current students: Two things: 1) Know the “why” behind the “what” (e.g., why is multicollinearlity considered bad for regression?) and 2) gain experience using real datasets – not just curated samples used in courses. There are many public data sets available that you can play around with to get practical experience.

Abisht Raviprakash,

M.S. in Quantitative and Computational Finance (2009)

Current Role: Analytics Manager, Portfolio Analytics, Enova International

Most valuable classes: Coursework in regression analysis and corporate strategy

Most valuable experience at Georgia Tech: I had a graduate assistantship focused on building an energy trading visualization map. It gave me exposure to computational skills and programming languages that I use today.

What Georgia Tech does best: The coursework is very well structured for an individual looking to go into analytics.

Favorite part of current job: I have exposure to a ton of different projects and tools. I’m given a lot of responsibility but also a lot of flexibility in building my own career structure.

Top tip for current students: Find something that you’re passionate about and dig into it. Challenge yourself to improve every day.

She came to Georgia Tech knowing that she wanted to be an engineer, having been on a FIRST Robotics team in high school. After looking into the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) and the curriculum it offered, she found that it provided the mix of business and engineering that interested her -- "even going beyond," she says, her expectations of what she would learn at ISyE.

She was able to put her IE skills into play as part of the GC, which promotes student-driven cross-disciplinary teams that investigate societally relevant technological and sociological problems. Together, students in teams attempt to solve the world's most "wicked challenges," as Desai puts it.

Desai's particular team developed HIVE (Health Integration Via Education), a program targeted toward fourth graders in Chattahoochee Elementary School in Duluth, Ga. “We looked at how technology and interactive lesson plans impacted how students responded and retained health information.” The students wore a clip-on pedometer that plugged into a computer and connected to a website called Zamzee. The students were awarded points for the steps they took.

“We linked that back to a curriculum, so we would go in every week and teach the students about health,” explains Desai. “What we saw was that the kids were really receptive to the program we were creating, so the fact that they could wear these pedometers and take them home – we saw their fitness levels exceed our control group’s by almost 60 percent. So it was a huge difference.”

As the program developed, Desai and her team discovered the possibility of turning the project into an entrepreneurial venture by creating their own startup company. She says, "We began connecting with the start-up community in Atlanta and resources around campus to understand what building our own company would require and to also build our own wearable prototypes."

Desai’s specific role in the potential business was team CEO. As an IE, “we’re really good at strategy, critical thinking, and problem solving.” She was responsible for making sure each team in the business was on task and meeting the project deliverables.

Ultimately, due to technical challenges – as well as the fact that not everyone on the team was willing to drop out of school and work on the startup full-time – the GC team decided to put the project on hold. “We were really close,” Desai adds. “We were about to launch the business – we were looking through the paperwork and everything. [But] having the dedication to doing one thing is an important part of the process.”

In addition to the GC, Desai also participated in the VIP program, which offers credit to students for participating on research teams consisting of undergrads, graduate students, and professors. “Many of the teams also focus on building projects from an entrepreneurial perspective,” she says.

For three semesters, she was part of the patient similarity team. As Desai explains it, “This project focused on clustering patients into meaningful groups to provide targeted provider care and better use of hospital resources. As part of the program, we not only built our minimum viable product but also worked with external groups to gain feedback, write business cases, and present to industry experts on our project. Our faculty lead really pushed us to look at our projects from a business perspective and taught us the keys to really making the right pitch.”

As part of a VIP team, Desai was once again using her IE-driven business and engineering skills. When asked how her IE skills complement her entrepreneurial work, Desai reflects for a moment and then says, “Our curriculum encompasses a lot of different skills: business, engineering, and computer science. Thus, as an IE, I find myself at the intersection of all these groups, and it’s a really interesting spot to be in. We’re really the jack-of-all-trades. We have the breadth to manage teams effectively and understand processes from a holistic perspective. However, we also have the skills to dive further in and concentrate in a particular area to enable us to step into entirely different roles.”

As for her future work, Desai feels prepared with her IE skills “to look at problems and understand them analytically and from a holistic perspective. I would love to pursue entrepreneurial work after I graduate and to be a part of something that disturbs traditional ways of how things operate. I find innovation and challenges and possibilities of entrepreneurship to be really exciting. I am also really interested in analytics and how we can use data to drive new insights about people, businesses, and how processes work.”

She's going to use those analytical IE skills as an operations leadership intern for Amazon this coming summer: “I think this will be a really cool opportunity to see such a large supply chain network that’s really been innovating processes and disturbing traditional supply chains. I’ll basically act as manager of the operations facility – which is where Amazon gets your order, puts it in a box and ships it to the customer – a warehouse, essentially – and shadow the actual operations leader. So I’ll be managing a team of 100 associates on the floor the entire time.

“This will be focused more on the supply chain on the operations side of things, so I’ll manage the supply chain at this warehouse and make sure everything is flowing through it, monitoring and reducing bottlenecks. It’s a collaboration of the supply chain classes I’ve taken at Tech and then a lot of the optimization tools that come into play when I start looking at how I’ll change my facility or how another change might affect the system. The idea of doing two-day delivery, same-day delivery, delivering your groceries – those are all really cool things. It’s not how people imagined traditional supply chains, and the fact that Amazon can do it and do it so effectively – there’s a lot of opportunity to learn from that.”

While not sure what she'll be doing after graduation – perhaps eventually going on to get her master's degree in statistics or analytics – Desai did say that she is “looking for an environment where I can continue learning, innovating, and working with really talented people. And when you’re in an atmosphere where you’re ‘disturbing’ or causing some type of change, it’s cool in that you don’t know what to expect; you can only anticipate and think of every possible thing that could go wrong. So there’s a lot to think about, but it’s never been done before, so you’re on your own. You get to decide what you want to do, which is a cool place to be in.”

The $500,000 award begins in mid-May 2016 and lasts for five years. Toriello’s project is titled “Towards Exact Methods for Dynamic Integer Programs.”

Decision support tools in industry and government must increasingly account for uncertainty, and the recent explosion in the amount of available data and the frequency of its generation imply that decision makers must constantly react to new information in a dynamic fashion. Using the NSF CAREER grant, Toriello will develop general-purpose solution techniques and algorithms for a widely applicable class of dynamic optimization models with discrete components. In addition, the project’s educational goals include a series of interactive lectures aimed at attracting and recruiting high school students to operations research and STEM more broadly, with a particular focus on students from historically under-represented groups.

“Alejandro is truly deserving of this award, and we are pleased that the NSF decided to recognize him for his achievements," said Edwin Romeijn, the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair at ISyE. “He is a very accomplished young researcher, and his work is already having an impact on dynamic decision support tools used within industry and government.”

About ISyE Assistant Professor Alejandro Toriello

Toriello’s research interests lie in the theory and application of supply chain management, logistics and transportation, and in related optimization methodologies.

He received his Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 2010. Prior to joining ISyE, he served as an assistant professor in the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California.

He is a member of INFORMS and the Mathematical Optimization Society.

About Goldberg’s appointment, ISyE’s H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and Professor Edwin Romeijn said, “Dave was selected for this professorship because of his exceptional record of scholarship and service to ISyE, and his leadership in the areas of applied probability, stochastics, and machine learning.”

About A. Russell Chandler III Assistant Professor David Goldberg

Goldberg works in applied probability, interpreted broadly, on topics ranging from inventory control and queueing theory to distributionally robust and combinatorial optimization. Much of his work focuses on using ideas from probability theory to prove that high-dimensional complex systems can be well-approximated by much simpler systems, and using these insights to devise novel algorithms with provable performance guarantees. His work in inventory control has focused on applying this mantra to challenging problems in which there is a lead-time delay between when an order is placed and when it is received, such as lost sales models and dual-sourcing problems, for which Goldberg has derived some of the first nearly optimal efficient algorithms. His work in queueing theory has focused on the so-called stochastic comparison approach to multi-server queues, in which one proves that certain performance metrics (such as the probability of rare events) can be bounded above and below by those of more tractable models. He has also investigated robust approaches to optimizing inventory models with demand forecasting, as well as certain questions regarding the independent sets of large graphs.

He has received several honors for his work, including an NSF CAREER award, first place in the 2015 George Nicholson Student Paper Competition, second place in the 2015 JFIG Paper Competition, as well as finalist in the 2014 MSOM Student Paper Competition and 2010 George Nicholson Student Paper Competition.

Goldberg received his undergraduate degree in computer science at Columbia University, minoring in both industrial engineering/operations research and applied math. He completed his Ph.D. at the MIT Operations Research Center.

He is a member of INFORMS.

As Siebert describes it, his team’s project uses optimization to schedule the Chilean Soccer Leagues, which has both a youth league and a professional league with three divisions, and the South American World Cup qualifying tournament.

This is an ongoing project of some years in duration, so many people have been part of the team. Siebert’s involvement began after he took a 2010 undergraduate course in modeling and optimization at the University of Chile, where he earned his undergraduate degree in industrial engineering and his master’s degree in operations management. Homework for this particular course involved scheduling a simpler tournament with fewer teams. Because Siebert did well and demonstrated interest in the problem, his professors, Rodrigo Wolf, Guillermo Durán, and Andrés Weintraub, invited him to join the project full-on. Siebert describes himself as “a huge soccer fan” and says that the project combined his love of soccer and his appreciation for OR.

Siebert explains how the scheduling process developed: “At first, we started working on an optimization model for scheduling the first-division tournament. Given the success of the first year’s scheduling processes, we then extended the project to the other divisions of the professional soccer league and to the youth soccer league. And finally, in 2015, we used our knowledge of the soccer scheduling process to propose the procedure for the South American World Cup qualifiers. The process of scheduling each of the Chilean soccer leagues is very similar.”

The project, which is primarily led by Professor Andrés Weintraub from the University of Chile and Professor Guillermo Durán, from the University of Chile and University of Buenos Aires, has provided many benefits – not only for the Chilean soccer teams themselves, which have seen increased ticket sales and cost reductions due to better travel schedules, but also for the Professional Chilean Soccer Association (ANFP) and for the TV broadcasters. In addition, Siebert says, the optimized scheduling has brought increased “transparency to the scheduling process, improvements to the tournament’s attractiveness [by making the match-ups more competitive and interesting], and fairness for the less dominant teams.”

When asked how it feels to be a finalist for the Edelman award, Siebert describes it as “a dream come true.” He elaborates, “It is the most important award in applied OR, so being a finalist – at this young age – is huge for my career. Additionally, because this is the third time that the OR group from my university in Chile has attained the finals for this award, it is very important for the group, but especially for my country. This shows that we have world-class researchers in this field of study.”

Siebert is proud to be a student at Georgia Tech as well, having selected it for its preeminence in operations research. His professors in Chile encouraged him to apply for admission based on the high-quality teaching and research being done at ISyE. He says, “Being here for just one semester has shown me that it was the right decision to choose the OR program in ISyE.”

Siebert and his team will travel to Orlando in April to present this project in the Edelman’s finalists gala at the INFORMS Business Analytics and Operations Research Conference. The winning team will be selected at this conference.

“AIAA Honorary Fellows and Fellows represent the best of the aerospace community,” said AIAA President Jim Albaugh. “These individuals have advanced the state of the art of aerospace science and technology, making unique contributions to the profession. AIAA congratulates the members of the 2016 Class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows on their selection.”

About Professor John-Paul Clarke

Professor Clarke is a leading expert in aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to the development of flight procedures that reduce the environmental impact of aviation. His research in this regard has been instrumental in changing both the theory and the practice of flight procedure design, and has spurred efforts nationally and internationally to reduce the environmental impact of aviation via changes in operational procedures. He is also an expert in the development and use of stochastic models and optimization algorithms to improve the efficiency and robustness of airline, airport, and air traffic operations.

Professor Clarke is co-chair of the Joint Planning Committee for the AIAA-AAAF Aviation Noise and Emissions Reduction Symposium (ANERS) and a member of both the U.S. Army Science Board and the NASA Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee. Recently, he co-chaired the National Academies Committee that developed the U.S. National Agenda for Autonomy Research related to civil aviation, and served on the National Academies Committee that reviewed the enterprise architecture, software development approach, and safety and human factor design of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Over the years, he has chaired or served on advisory and technical committees chartered by the AIAA, EU, FAA, ICAO, NASA, the National Academies, and the U.S. DOT.

Professor Clarke is the director of the Air Transportation Laboratory at Georgia Tech. He was the first director of PARTNER, the Center of Excellence for Aviation Noise and Aircraft Emissions Mitigation, and was an active researcher in NEXTOR, the Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research. He is now a co-director of NEXTOR II, the follow-on operations research organization to NEXTOR.

He is member of the AIAA, AGIFORS, INFORMS, and Sigma Xi.

Dr. Lan's research interests lie in theory, algorithms, and applications of stochastic optimization and nonlinear programming. Most of his current research concerns the design of efficient algorithms with strong theoretical performance guarantees and superior practical performance for solving challenging optimization problems. Dr. Lan is actively pursuing the application of stochastic and nonlinear optimization models/algorithms in large-scale data analysis, such as machine learning and image processing.

Dr. Lan's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

His academic honors include an NSF CAREER Award, first place in the INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition, finalist in the Mathematical Optimization Society Tucker Prize, second place in the INFORMS George Nicholson prize, and first place in the INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper competition.

He serves as an associate editor for Computational Optimization and Applications (2014-present).

Dr. Lan received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2009 and served as a faculty member in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida from 2009-2015.

He is a member of INFORMS.

 The Bronx and Manhattan to Evanston to Baltimore to Ithaca

 George Nemhauser was born and raised in the Bronx. Growing up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, he claims to have had designs on stepping in to replace his childhood idol, New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio. Unfortunately, the Yankees somehow forgot to make the call

— a young Mickey Mantle may have influenced the oversight — so George made other plans. After graduating from the famed Bronx High School of Science, he enrolled at the equally renowned City College of New York (CCNY), from which he earned a degree in chemical engineering. After graduating from CCNY, he pursued graduate studies at Northwestern University, conducting his work in the newly emerging academic discipline of operations research (OR) under the direction of Jack Mitten, one of the field’s important figures at the time.

 Upon taking the Ph.D. in 1961, George joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in what was then one of the premier OR programs in the country. In his early to mid-twenties, after he joined the Hopkins faculty, he was often mistaken for a student. A famous story recounts how a prospective doctoral student knocked at George’s door, inquiring where he might find Professor Nemhauser, whereupon the youthful-looking guy behind the desk said, “He’s very shy. He often hides under his desk. Look for him there.”

 In 1970, George left Johns Hopkins to join the faculty in the highly acclaimed School of Opera- tions Research and Industrial Engineering (OR&IE) at Cornell University. There, he worked with some of the major figures in the OR community — perhaps most notably Ray Fulkerson. Fulkerson was one of the discipline’s giants, commonly identified as a founding influence in the theory of network flows, and a pioneer in creating the field of polyhedral combinatorics. During his stint at Cornell, George amassed an impressive record of scholarly production that garnered some of the discipline’s most-prized honors and awards. Eventually, he was named the Leon Welch Professor of Engineering. He also advised numerous Ph.D. students, some of whom also took up academic careers in OR at prestigious institutions. In 1985, after chairing OR&IE for six years, George pulled up stakes, leaving the harsh though beautiful winters of Upstate New York, and headed south.

 ISyE Circa 1985

The Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Tech was created in 1945 as the Department of Industrial Engineering. Always a strong program, its presence among traditional industrial engineering academic programs was well-established, and its substantial reputation was well-deserved. Even into the late seventies, ISyE was inclined to count as its peer competitors similar fine programs as the likes of Purdue, Penn State, Virginia Tech, and Texas A&M. But in the world of ranking high-powered OR programs — institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, MIT, and Columbia — ISyE was not a major competitor. Without doubt, ISyE counted among its faculty a few notable OR scholars — Mike Shetty and Mo Bazaraa in nonlinear optimization; John Jarvis in linear programming and network flows; Ed Unger and Ron Rardin in integer programming; and Bob Cooper in queueing theory — but, by and large, the general OR reputation of the School was heavily informed by teaching and research within the context of applications. This was especially true of those commonly identified with traditional industrial engineering domains, i.e., production, inventory, material handling, factory layout, engineering economy, quality control, etc. In general, focused theo- retical research activities in OR tended to be viewed as playing supporting roles rather than primary ones in the School’s programmatic profile, and especially in terms of its model for the recruitment of young faculty and doctoral students.

In 1978, Michael Thomas was named as School Chair, replacing the retiring Robert Lehrer. Interestingly, both men had connections to George: Lehrer had been the chair at Northwestern when George was pursuing his doctoral studies, and Thomas had actually been one of George’s first Ph.D. students at Johns Hopkins. Once at ISyE, Thomas wasted little time in adding OR strength to the faculty. He quickly brought in brand-new Ph.D.s from the OR programs at Cornell, MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley, as well as highly regarded senior people likeH. Don Ratliff (Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins) in network flows and Dick Serfozo (Ph.D. from Northwestern) in applied probability and stochastics.

Then, in 1985 — and armed with a newly established endowed chair named for its benefactor, ISyE graduate A. Russell Chandler III — Thomas lured George Nemhauser to Georgia Tech. Not only was the Chandler Chair the first endowed position in ISyE’s history, it was one of the first endowed faculty chairs at Georgia Tech. As part of the enticement to leave the elite, firmly established academic program that was Cornell’s School of OR&IE, Thomas made it clear to George that he would play a substantive role in looking for opportunities to shift ISyE’s trajectory in the direction of joining the ranks of those elites.

A Hard Job Well Done

Actions that have a substantive and transformational impact on an academic program, particularly a large and well-established one, do not involve quick fixes, nor can they be expected to produce results that happen overnight. Adding superstar faculty is an important start and can have an immediate, surface-level effect — elevating a program’s visibility, but fundamentally altering core programmatic and structural aspects of a program requires activism. Needed is an understanding of what constitutes academic quality at the top-tier level, a genuine belief that serious change can actually be effected, and a willingness to take on the difficult job of putting into place a structure that facilitates a program’s elevation. However, activism that captures those qualities is a rare commodity in academe. Required is a strong, credible voice that is not reluctant to be raised when needed, backed by a proven track record, as well as a willingness to take the lead in stepping up. Required is someone like George Nemhauser.

“It is unusual for any academic program, like Georgia Tech’s ISyE, to become top-tiered in a short period. It is no coincidence that this rise has taken place in parallel with the arrival of my dear friend, George Nemhauser. Quality follows him wherever he goes and in whatever he does, and the presence of someone of his stature and infectious disposition at ISyE has shined a beacon onto the academic community and been a magnet for attracting top-flight faculty and doctoral students that are essential to any leading academic program.”

—  Tom Magnanti, Institute Professor and former Dean of Engineering, MIT; member, National Academy of Engineering

Acting on Thomas’s request that he seek out ways to enhance ISyE’s chances of joining the small band of elite programs like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, and yes, Cornell, George indeed stepped up. There were a few speedbumps along the way. There were some nontrivial headwinds, derived from concerns born of the natural fear of change, and others who opined that ISyE was being “Cornellicised.” Fortunately, a large portion of the faculty were not only ready but anxious to embrace change, particularly if such change managed to preserve the best of what had been an historical strength of the School, while developing its ability to be a legitimate force among the great OR-centric programs identified above.

One of the early actions directly led by George was pedagogical. Stemming from the dis- entanglement of the doctoral and master’s programs of study — including the direct admission of qualified students to the doctoral program immediately after their undergraduate work —  students seeking the Ph.D. in all but a small number of concentrations were directed to a separate programmatic track. This added methodological rigor through a newly created set of core courses in optimization and stochastics. Others had attempted similar changes earlier but struggled to gain traction. Though by no means an easy task, George was able to pull it off.

At about the same time, and recognizing, in the late eighties, the emergence of commonali- ties at the growing intersection of academic research in theoretical computer science, discrete mathematics, and optimization, George was one of the foundational organizers in the creation of the prestigious Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization Program (ACO), a joint doctoral program supported by ISyE, the School of Mathematics, and the College of Computing. Vibrant and healthy, and still only one of two such degree programs in the country, ACO continues to attract exceptional Ph.D. students, and is commonly recognized as the model for high-quality interdisciplinary doctoral programs at Tech.

George’s presence in ISyE was certainly not unnoticed by other academic luminaries. Highly regarded professors at top schools, previously reluctant to do so, began to point their best students in the School’s direction, whether as a place for doctoral study, or in the case of new Ph.D. graduates, as an opportunity for faculty employment. In 1995, and certainly facilitated by George’s presence, ISyE was able to attract one of the world’s best-known research scholars in the important OR subdiscipline of integer programming, Ellis Johnson. Named to the Coca-Cola Chair, Johnson was also a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. In fact, he became ISyE’s second member. George was the first, and also remarkably, Georgia Tech’s first sitting faculty member to have been elected to the National Academy. Long-time academic colleagues in their research disciplines, George and Johnson joined to- gether in alerting the academic world that OR in ISyE was ready to contend for a place at the table of top-tier programs.

Throughout the nineties, now under the direction of John Jarvis, who had taken over when Thomas moved up to what would become the provost’s position at Tech, the visibility of ISyE’s academic and research programs steadily improved. Ph.D. applications from elite candidates evolved from sparse to steady to expected. The pattern was repeated regarding the recruitment of exceptional applicants for faculty positions — indeed, a number of hires were made that even a half-dozen years earlier would have at best been longshots. Elite doctoral applicants began to accept admission, and many others had ISyE on their very short list, even if they ultimately opted for the likes of MIT, Stanford, or Cornell. In short, ISyE was now becoming a potential destination for the best and the brightest Ph.D. applicants and young faculty candidates. Squarely in the middle of this activity was the influence of George Nemhauser.

When Jarvis retired in 2001, the chairmanship of ISyE was turned over to Bill Rouse who supported continuing ISyE’s great momentum directed toward cementing its place among the top programs in the country. Arguably the first decade of the twenty-first century ushered in a golden age of Ph.D. student recruitment — an evolution supported and nurtured in the Thomas–Jarvis era, with the admission of some exceptional doctoral students — students who did choose ISyE over similar offers from MIT, Cornell, Columbia, etc. But this also was the decade that brought to ISyE three of its most acclaimed senior faculty hires ever, all arguably the world’s best in their respective fields: Bill Cook in computational optimization, Arkadi Nemirovski in convex optimization, and Jeff Wu in industrial statistics. Ask all three if George’s presence influenced their decisions to come to Georgia Tech.

“It was certainly George, and the activity he created, that attracted me to Georgia Tech. George made Tech the place to be for optimization research.”— Bill Cook, University Professor, Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo; member, National Academy of Engineering

George’s positive effect on ISyE’s rise in prestige results not just from his own reputation, but from his inherent inability to sit on the sidelines. He works hard to recruit terrific students and faculty; he mentors the dissertation efforts of Ph.D. students who seek his advisement (and who are up to the challenge); and he actively engages other faculty, especially younger colleagues, as co-research advisors for those students. This results in a true win-win-win model of doctoral research advisement in the School. He talks the talk — sometimes aggravating the comfortable or the powerful, but he is always willing to walk the walk.

George is generous in his support, not only for his doctoral students and post-docs, but for fellow colleagues and would-be colleagues as well. Regarding the latter, it is noteworthy that George agreed to split his chair when its endowment had reached a certain point of growth, in order to create a new endowed-chair opportunity directly instrumental in luring a world-class figure to ISyE in the early 2000s. Shortly after that, he also (and quite privately) reached into his chair’s funds and formed, along with a couple of other chaired faculty, a very competitive financial package that made possible an extended visit to the School by another particularly renowned figure. This man ultimately was recruited to join the permanent faculty of ISyE, something that would not have happened without that initial visit. The addition of both individuals alluded to, whose names appear earlier in this piece, not only solidified ISyE’s rank among the best programs in optimization anywhere, but as one of the two would remark, made it the “center of the universe.”

Spreading the Word

Especially among research universities, the coin of the realm in calibrating reputational stand- ings is typically understood to be academic placement, that is, placement of a program’s Ph.D. graduates on university faculties and, to a lesser degree, in the most prestigious research labs. If one seeks to be credible in claiming a program’s stature, then the best way to validate that claim is to demonstrate that its top graduates are ultimately placed on the faculties of highly regarded programs. This is where the magnitude of George’s influence reveals itself in a fundamental way. A little history helps.

The first Ph.D. from ISyE was granted in 1961. Since that time, well over 600 have followed; historically, between 50 and 60 percent of these diplomates have sought academic positions upon graduation. In that regard, faculties at universities all over the country and around the globe have included graduates from ISyE — from large, research-intensive universities to small colleges primarily devoted to teaching. ISyE graduates take positions in engineering programs, business schools, mathematics, statistics, and computer science departments. Many of these positions are at strong institutions, including some that would be considered exception- ally strong; however, it wasn’t until the late eighties that ISyE Ph.D.s began to legitimately compete for placements at programs of the first tier.

And this was just the beginning. Throughout the nineties and into the oughts, top ISyE gradu- ates routinely began to get interviewed by the great programs, and to the point driving this story, many had a credible connection to George Nemhauser. They may have been directly influenced by George to consider an ISyE Ph.D. program (IE, OR, or ACO); they might have conducted their dissertation research under George’s advisement; or they might have been recruited and mentored by one of the highly regarded faculty superstars, who were themselves motivated to join the faculty based on the academic and scholarly climate that was so profoundly impacted by George’s presence. This is a highly relevant second-order effect that is particularly meaningful in validating his influence.

“1995 ISyE was a diverse, vibrant, and intellectually stimulating place. Heading this group was George Nemhauser, ‘The Godfather,’ if you will. He is remembered by many as ISyE’s greatest champion, well-regarded for being supportive but stern. If Nemhauser said it, you knew that he had thought through each angle so that the School would continue to thrive. Above all, he had the students’ admiration and respect. If I have had any modicum of success, it is in large part due to ISyE’s unique environment; an environment that Nemhauser played a critical role in creating.”

— Mark Lewis, Associate Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development and Professor, School of OR&IE, Cornell University

Accordingly, graduates from ISyE who fit the profile described above can be found, as this is written, on faculties or scientific staffs — some of which have more than one ISyE graduate — at the following universities or research institutions (note that included below are only graduates since 1987, and all but one of those since 1997):

• MIT (OR)
• University of California at Berkeley (IEOR)
• Northwestern University (IEMS)
• Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management)
• University of Chicago (Booth School of Business)
• Harvard (Statistics)
• Mount Holyoke (Mathematics)
• Cornell University (OR&IE)
• Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper School of Business)
• University of Wisconsin-Madison (ISyE)
• University of Wisconsin-Madison (Statistics)
• University of Waterloo (Dept. of Combinatorics and Optimization)
• University of Chile (Mathematical Engineering, IE)

• Georgia Institute of Technology (ISyE)
• Centrum Wiskunde Informatica (CWI-Netherlands)
• Google
• GUROBI
• New York University (Stern School of Business)
• Thomas J. Watson Research Center (IBM)
• University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Dept. of Statistics and OR)

But it’s not just faculty placement that has so profoundly changed in the Nemhauser era framed above. ISyE Ph.D. students began to not only compete for but also to win some of the most competitive and prestigious awards and prizes for work in OR and the mathematical sciences. Long dominated by graduates from the great programs that have been named here, Ph.D. stu- dents and graduates from ISyE began to have their day in the sun. Some of the most noteworthy prizes and honors are listed below, none of which had ever been won by an ISyE graduate prior to 1997, and all but three won from the early 2000s to the present (numbers in parentheses denote multiple winners):

• Optimization Society Student Paper Prize from INFORMS (3)
• Optimization Prize for Young Researchers from INFORMS (2)
• Quality/Statistics/Reliability Student Paper Award from INFORMS (4)
• Transportation Science Logistics Dissertation Award from INFORMS (5)
• George Dantzig Dissertation Award from INFORMS
• A. W. Tucker Prize from the Mathematical Optimization Society
• George Nicholson Student Paper Competition from INFORMS (4)
• Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award from IIE (2)
• Herman Goldstine Post-doctoral Fellowship-IBM (2)

The placements and awards enumerated above have all been realized in the span of George Nemhauser’s residence on the ISyE faculty, and, as pointed out, many of the students whose achievements comprise the lists either worked directly with George, or with like-minded faculty in an academic and scholarly environment that was kicked into high gear by George when he arrived at ISyE in 1985. What is not debatable is that ISyE’s stature and visibility among the premier programs — ones that, by whatever name, have historically been heavily OR- influenced — underwent a sea change traceable to the Chandler Chair that Mike Thomas used to bring George Nemhauser from Cornell.

Gadfly with a Conscience

As this is written, George Nemhauser will have been at Tech for 30 of his 55 years as an academic. It would seem that he found something here worth staying for. If asked why he has stuck around so long, there’s a good chance that he’d point to what is probably unique about ISyE: The program may have shifted over the last 30 years toward bolstering its role and its reputation in methodological research and scholarship, including the concomitant influence on graduate curricula, but it has done so while maintaining a healthy grip on the aim of doing genuinely good applications work. That’s not a small thing to claim. And that it’s true owes much to the perspective that George has brought to the program, as well as his energy in sustaining it.

Always a champion of rigor in basic research, he insists on similarly tough standards in relevant application settings. He has never been shy in calling out those who would be apologists for anything less. But even in deeper theoretical contexts, George conducts his work with a conscience. Proving hard theorems is important if quality scholarship is to be produced in our field, but it’s no weakness to find it gratifying to see one’s work put to use in the real world. That’s not necessarily a universal belief system, but it seems to be so for George Nemhauser. What we have here in ISyE is a good-faith marriage between deep theory and credible applications — a healthy respect for both that can often join to form something that is stronger than either.

And, George puts his money (or more accurately, the money of his sponsors) where his mouth is. He takes a backseat to no one in promoting theoretical research, the introduction of mathematical rigor into graduate curricula, and the highest scholarly standards for the admission of doctoral students as well as in faculty promotion and tenure decisions; yet he openly courts funding that supports good applied research — research that often motivates even newer avenues for theoretical pursuits. Few in ISyE would guess that some of the largest dollar amounts of research funding in ISyE from industrial sources have been garnered under a principle investigator named Nemhauser. And, critically, the applications themselves exhibit incredible breadth and depth: everything from airline fleet routing to sports modeling and scheduling.

Validation

A betting person would probably claim that George Nemhauser would not have thought too long, nor too hard, about coming to the likes of ISyE in the late seventies, or even the early eighties. The smart betting person would know that he probably saw an opportunity here that appealed to his natural instincts to create and build; a sense that there was really something in ISyE to work with in 1985. The signs were certainly evident: something new and different could be built in ISyE with the emerging impact of a few exceptionally talented young faculty, in combination with a core cadre of strong senior people in key areas. What was lacking was coordination and scholarly leadership backed with a strong voice; nothing involving magic or alchemy, but a special talent that was right for the time and place. George Nemhauser was that person. It seems appropriate to end this story with some additional gifts from those who articulate the best form of support for that claim in their own words.

“One of the reasons I was attracted to ISyE is that the School has come to be highly regarded as a magnet for talented researchers, largely due to the direct or second-order influence of George Nemhauser. ISyE’s environment and enthusiasm for fundamental research have clearly made it a ‘go to’ destination for scholarly work.”

—  Arkadi Nemirovski, John Hunter Chair and Professor, School of ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology

 “I had the great opportunity to be a doctoral student at ISyE beginning 1983 through 1987. At that time, it was clear that ISyE had a fantastic set of young faculty, and I owe whatever subsequent success I have had with the interactions I had with them. But partway through my program, George Nemhauser arrived from Cornell, and he immediately changed the whole at- mosphere and tenor of the program. The breadth and rigor he brought to research had a huge impact on my dissertation. The work I have continued with him and some of the other outstand- ing faculty he attracted to ISyE has had a lasting impact on my career.”

—   Mike Trick, Associate Dean and Professor, Tepper College of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

“George has an uncompromising insistence on quality, which is in my observation the single most important reason for ISyE to retain its top, world-class ranking. I am so glad that he is receiving the Class of 1934 Award. It is a great (and belated) honor that befits his great contri- butions to this institution.”

—   Jeff Wu, Coca-Cola Chair and Professor, School of ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology; member, National Academy of Engineering

Q.E.D.

ISyE junior Elise Alfonso (BSIE 2017) tells a great story about how she fell in love with Georgia Tech. As she explains, “Shortly after I began applying to colleges, I visited some of them with my family. When I visited Tech I fell in love with its campus, with its message, and with its people. Everyone I met was so friendly and welcoming, and they all reassured me that Tech was dedicated to making my educational experience exceptional. The pivotal moment in making my decision was my first tour of campus. It was cold outside, and there were flurries in the air.

“My tour guide, Paco, was wearing the thickest jacket I had ever seen, but he was also wearing cargo shorts and flip-flops. It was a peculiar combination of clothing, but he seemed perfectly comfortable and had a cheery smile on his face during the entire tour. I was astonished at how many people he knew on campus. Every few minutes, he would see someone, interrupt the tour to wave or say ‘hello,’ and then tell the entire group an extremely descriptive story about how he knew the person. That is when I decided I wanted to attend Tech – a university where I could feel comfortable expressing myself and walk around campus waving at everyone I passed by.”

With Martin Luther King Day coming up, and its increasing importance as a day of service, I sat down for a chat with Alfonso, who is heavily involved with volunteer opportunities on Georgia Tech’s campus.

You’re engaged with several volunteer groups and activities on campus. Describe a little about each of your roles.
I have been a Student Staff Member (SSM) on campus since August 2014, and it is a position I am extremely proud of. I have been a Peer Leader in the Freshman Experience program in two different communities, as well as a summer Resident Assistant. I have been able to work with amazing Hall Directors and fellow SSMs to implement programs focused on community development, transition, and career development. My position has allowed me to expand my network of friends, build more confidence, and develop my leadership and communication skills. However, I am most proud of my amazing residents, and I enjoy watching them thrive and gain their own leadership experiences at Tech.

I joined MOVE [Georgia Tech's umbrella organization for a variety of community service and volunteer opportunities] during my first semester at Tech, and this year I am serving as its Vice Director of Education. MOVE has several projects and education committees to serve the community’s needs, and as part of my position, I lead education committee chairs and help them with recruitment, advertisement, and program logistics. I often work with other MOVE executive members, and I helped implement Tech’s largest freshman community service initiative, Into the Streets.

This year, I am also a member of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service and Sunday Supper Planning Committee. I have always admired the idea of making MLK Day a “day on” rather than a day off to honor MLK’s legacy. I was so excited to be able to create the reflection component for this year’s day of service, and I designed informational trading cards that will allow volunteers to learn about past Civil Rights heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as inspirational modern-day human rights activists like Malala Yousafzai. I have loved planning the event, and I cannot wait for it to take place on Monday, January 18th.

Why is volunteer work where you’ve chosen to spend the bulk of your extracurricular time, as opposed to all the other opportunities that are available to you as a Georgia Tech student? What about it makes it particularly important to you?

Community service is my greatest passion, and as soon as I arrived on campus, I began searching for any and every opportunity to participate in service events. I chose to volunteer with MOVE, TEAMBuzz, Tech Beautification Day, and the MLK Day of Service. I felt like my volunteer experiences connected me to people at Tech as well as to those in the Atlanta community.

There are so many other organizations and activities on campus, but I feel happiest when a child I am tutoring feels excited about learning something new, or when I clear debris from the Atlanta Beltline, or when I think about how a tree I planted with Trees Atlanta will positively impact the planet. I have so much to be thankful for in my life, and I just want to be able to give back any way that I can.

What has been your most meaningful volunteer experience at Tech so far, and why?

This year I have had the opportunity to work on the logistics of several volunteer experiences, but I think my most meaningful volunteer experience at Tech so far was my role as a project lead for TEAMBuzz last year. I was able to advertise TEAMBuzz within my residence hall, and many of the residents and staff members joined the project that I was leading.

We volunteered at the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club of Greater Atlanta, and I spent my time making sure all the volunteers were working comfortably and were completing their tasks successfully. I was able to move around the facility and connect with several groups of volunteers while I helped out. I was so happy that I could inspire members of my community to volunteer with me, and that I could meet so many people through a shared interest.

Do you ever have the opportunity to use your IE skills as part of your volunteer experience?

Industrial engineering involves a lot of critical thinking, organization, and optimization, and I definitely use those skills when planning service events. Many times I have had to make quick decisions based on the situation in front of me, and I have had to solve last-minute problems that arise.

Planning a volunteer experience is all about analyzing the given information, making decisions based on that information, creating alternate plans for unexpected results or emergencies, and gathering data after the event to improve upon it for the future. Even though I have never solved for any probabilities while organizing service events, I have definitely learned to consider all possible outcomes.

What does the future look like for you?

After I graduate, I want to pursue a master’s degree and eventually find a career that will allow me to use my IE skills to help others.

His selection came about “because of the close alignment between his analytics research and Georgia Power’s business interests,” says Dean May. “Since arriving at Georgia Tech, Nagi has focused on power generation and help provide leadership to the Strategic Energy Institute. His work in predicting degradation and useful life of mechanical and electric power generation equipment is particularly important to companies like Georgia Power.”

According to ISyE Chair Edwin Romeijn, Gebraeel was chosen “for this professorship because of his exceptional record of scholarship and service to Georgia Tech, and his leadership in the area of prognostics and sensor data analytics.”

About ISyE’s Georgia Power Associate Professor Nagi Gebraeel

Gebraeel's research interests are in (1) equipment prognostics and diagnostics for improving reliability, maintainability, and availability by leveraging degradation-based sensor data streams, and (2) the integration of these results in subsequent maintenance, operational and logistical decision making. His specific focus is on tackling these problems in Big Data settings involving massive amounts of data streams and large equipment fleets. From the standpoint of application domains, Professor Gebraeel has a general interest in the energy industry with a focus on power generation, and the manufacturing industry with a focus on discrete and continuous manufacturing.

Gebraeel also currently serves as an associate director at Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute with the responsibility of identifying and promoting research activities and thought leadership at the intersection of Data Science and Energy. He is also the director of the Analytics and Prognostics Systems laboratory at Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Institute.

He is a member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He was the former president of the IIE's Quality Control and Reliability Engineering Division.

Lucas spoke at the Women in Engineering Banquet in 2015 at Georgia Tech and communicated her belief in the power of dreaming big to the young women assembled there. She says, “I spoke of the influence that my mother and father had on me, as I watched them pursue their dreams and break barriers along the way. But, to pursue your dreams, you have to overcome obstacles.  You may even have to defy stereotypes to ensure that you remain authentic to your dreams and yourself. Be brave.”

From early on, Lucas’s parents were her biggest role models. Lucas’s mother was a teacher and – perhaps pointing the way toward Lucas’s powerhouse media career – a board member at Turner Broadcasting. Her father was a groundbreaker: the first African-American general manager in baseball with the Braves. Both were first-generation college graduates who, Lucas says warmly, “understood the power of education, hard work, tenacity, and grace.  I think of them every day.”

As an Atlanta native, Lucas often found herself on Georgia Tech’s campus even before matriculating as a freshman. She participated in science fairs at Tech and says that she “loved the energy on campus.” Plus, Tech’s solid reputation was a draw. As a student, Lucas chose ISyE for her major because “the IE degree was the most versatile engineering degree. I loved the broad opportunities that IEs could pursue upon graduation.”

Ultimately, Lucas was involved in manufacturing and consulting post-graduation, starting out as a product engineer for Westinghouse Electric. She eventually applied to both MBA and law schools and earned her MBA at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Wharton, she found that her dreams and interests were moving her away from applied engineering into a combination of her “newfound love for marketing” with an involvement in the entertainment industry.

That said, Lucas’s move into the media industry was something of a surprise. She explains, “Never in a million years, did I imagine that I would be in the media and entertainment world.  Surprisingly, I have found many senior leaders in the media world who started with a foundation in ISyE.”

Lucas brings a breadth of media and entertainment branding experience to her PBA role. She was president and CEO of TV One, and prior to that, held several high-level positions at Discovery Communications, The Weather Channel Networks, and Turner Broadcasting, including CNN Networks Worldwide.

She even had the chance to meet and work with Oprah as the Global CMO at Discovery Communications, working on the launch of OWN, Winfrey’s network – an experience many would consider a dream opportunity. As Lucas tells it, she participated in small group meetings with Oprah and her team, which were “like a master class on not only branding but humility, self-awareness, and insight. At one point, everyone was asked to share a life-altering moment, and I found myself literally thinking, ‘Why am I baring my soul in front of people I don’t know well?’” But as Lucas notes, “That is the power of Oprah!”

Despite her heavy media involvement, Lucas hasn’t left her industrial engineering skills behind; in fact, she uses them every day. She explains that explains that “strong analytical skills are necessary to help develop short-term and long-term business strategies. The essence of engineering is the ability to question and seek answers. Creative problem solving enables me to identify changes in the media landscape, including technology disruptors, and consumer adoption. My skills also enable me to create experiential content that may begin with seeking an answer to a fundamental question.”

Lucas has big plans for PBA and her role there. Public Broadcasting Atlanta is already a group of successful media outlets, and she wants to grow and continue PBA’s success by focusing on the wide-ranging community it serves, “touching as many people as possible through our media vehicles, technology, and community engagement.” Like Lucas, who is pretty inspirational herself, PBA “is to be a trustworthy conduit for lifelong knowledge and a source of inspiration.”

Hailing from the state of Delaware, Nukuna came to Tech as a computer science engineering major, then switched to ISyE. She has interned with both Boeing and IBM and enjoys the supply chain engineering side of industrial engineering.

In this interview, she talks about her role as SGA president – a position that she’s held since April – and what she’s learned about leadership through her experiences at Tech.

What specifically motivated you to run for SGA president, and what have you learned in this role about leadership?

As a freshman, I told myself that I was going to be president. I am very aspirational, and I decided it would be cool to go for it. And then that changed over my years at Tech – I got deeper into my studies, and I was focused on attaining a high GPA.

There were also activities that I found I liked, such as being on the SGA cabinet during my sophomore and junior years. I also served on the Black Student Experience Taskforce, which was great. The idea of being president went off my radar for a couple of years, but then the time to decide came along. And Jennifer Abrams was SGA president last year; I also think it helps seeing people who look like you and who you’ve known for a while do it and how they have developed.

I keep telling people it’s been both the best and the worst thing I could have done for my fourth year here. It’s the worst thing because of the time constraints that I now have – they can’t really be anticipated and can’t be predicted until you’re in the job. And it’s the best thing because you learn so much: soft skills, networking, how to handle stress and emotion, how to put other people’s needs first, how to organize a team, how to motivate, your leadership style, how an organization or school is run from the back end, the difference between funding a building versus funding a program versus funding a school. There’s so much – and this is just within the first few months!

It’s also such an honor to represent students from Tech; they are so inspiring and intelligent. I’m definitely learning a lot.

What defines a good leader?

The best leaders are the ones who are open-minded and listen, who take into account what other people say before making a decision. There are so many ideas others bring to the table that you might not have thought about. Your ideas aren’t always going to be the best.

We’re living in a world that needs more innovation and more creativity, and that’s not going to come from just one person; it’s going to come from everyone.

You participated in the Harvard Business School Summer Venture in Management (SVMP) because of your interest in pursuing leadership opportunities following graduation. What was that experience like?

Anyone who knows me knows that HBS is my favorite business school in the whole wide world! But more specifically, I’m drawn to schools and companies that have a global impact and a global footprint. I like Harvard because they develop leaders to go out into the world and truly have an impact.

I applied specifically for SVMP to get a feel for what HBS is like. I’m considering both business school and getting a public policy graduate degree. In the SVMP, you run through case studies – something like 12 or 13 – throughout a week. It was super intense but also a lot of fun. I fell in love with the school all over again.

During that time, we went through cases on organizational development, international experience, the role that corporate America has to play in international companies and emerging nations, and sports media and entertainment cases. We broke down business problems and looked at them from the lens of a CEO or somebody in a high position.

Something else I also saw there was the diversity present in the room, which is something I’ve always been a strong advocate for. The case goes nowhere if you don’t have a diverse body of different experiences and different ages and backgrounds. Of course I knew it was important, because I am a black female, but the incredible value had never really struck me in that way until I saw it in that scenario.

What do you hope to be doing after graduation next spring? What is your five-year plan?

My five-year plan: Consult for two years at one of my dream companies, then get admitted into Harvard Business School’s 2+2 Program. After I’ve worked for two years, I want to attend HBS and do a dual degree in business and public policy, get out, and hopefully venture into the public sector.

I’m also applying for a Fulbright, so we’ll see how that goes. I’d love to get some international experience straight out of my undergrad.

I know that I will be trying to work in Africa within five years. But I want to be well-versed in how we do things here in the U.S. and why we’re so successful at what we’re doing, and implement it in places I’m familiar with, being able to help people who look like me get here.

Specifically, I want to look at emerging markets, such as in Cameroon, where my parents are from, and develop supply chain processes there. How they provide resources to people and improve infrastructure there is such a crucial area of growth. And not just in Africa, but in places like India as well – the developing world – because we’re only becoming more and more interconnected, and some areas need more help than others to get on the same level playing field.

I’m also balancing these ideas together because I think it’s really important not to place value on and define success as purely achievement – success should be what you’re happy doing and being able to support yourself comfortably.

Obviously I’m not quite there yet, but when I get there, hopefully I’ll be okay with whatever comes my way.