Northwestern IEMS Plays Pivotal Role at INFORMS Meeting
The conference was co-chaired by Professor Sanjay Mehrotra
Faculty and alumni from the Northwestern Engineering Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IEMS) played a prominent role at the 2023 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Annual Meeting, held October 15-18 in Phoenix.
The conference was co-chaired by the McCormick School of Engineering’s Sanjay Mehrotra and Esma Gel (PhD ’99), a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Mehrotra is a professor of IEMS and director of the Center for Engineering and Health.
The IEMS department was a platinum sponsor of the event, which brought more than 6,000 people to the world's largest operations research and analytics conference.
Northwestern IEMS also had a strong showing at the meeting, with faculty, students, and alumni earning awards.
Simge Küçükyavuz, professor and chair of IEMS, was formally named an INFORMS fellow. Incoming assistant professor Sean Sinclair received an honorable mention nod in the 2023 George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award category, and adjunct faculty member Stefan Wild won the Egon Balas Prize.
Meanwhile, PhD candidate Aysu Ozel won the Doing Good with O.R. paper competition, PhD candidate Xingyu Wang placed second in the George Nicholson student paper competition, and PhD student Shukai Li was a finalist for the Service Science Student Paper Prize. The Northwestern INFORMS student chapter received a Magna Cum Laude award, which is given to the organization’s top 15 student chapters in 2023.
Finally, Jonathan Owen (PhD ’98) received the 2023 George E. Kimball Medal in recognition of distinguished service to INFORMS and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences. Owen is currently the director of operations research at General Motors Global Research and Development.