MSandE News

2012

Society for Medical Decision Making awarded 3 of the 4 student awards to MS&E doctoral students of Margaret Brandeau. First-year doctoral student Sze Suen won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Health Services and Policy Research. Fourth-year doctoral student Lauren Cipriano won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Applied Health Economics. Eva Enns, who finished her PhD in June, won the Lee Lusted Award for Best Student Presentation in the area of Quantitative Methods and Theoretical Developments. These awards were announced at the Society’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix the week of October 15, 2012.

Alvin "Al" Roth was awarded the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Roth received his MS and PhD degrees in 1973 and 1974, respectively, from Stanford's Department of Operations Research, one of the predecessor department's to today's Department of Management Science and Engineering. (link)

MS&E Professor Tom Byers has been appointed as the first holder of the Entrepreneurship Professorship in the School of Engineering. In 1994, a group of donors created an endowed fund to support the study of entrepreneurship in the School of Engineering.

The donors' intention was twofold: to permanently endow the position of the director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), and to support entrepreneurship generally at the school. Tom's leadership of the STVP over the past two decades led to the formal appointment to the Entrepreneurship Professorship.

MS&E Professor Yinyu Ye has been appointed as the second holder of the Kwoh-Ting Li Professorship in the School of Engineering. He succeeds Thomas Cover, who held the position from 1994 until his death earlier this year.

The Kwoh-Ting Li Professorship was one of four chairs established in 1997 by the Friends of Stanford University Foundation, who raised funds for the chairs from multiple sources, in both Taiwan and the US. In addition to the one at the School of Engineering, a chair was created in the School of Medicine, as were two in the School of Humanities and Sciences (in the areas of economics and Chinese culture). The drivers of fundraising for the foundation were Alice Yu, who received MS degrees from Stanford in statistics and business in 1970 and 1998, respectively; and Patrick Wang, who received an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1966. The fact that multiple chairs were supported through a large group of donors was and continues to be unique.

Yinyu has made fundamental contributions to operations research and the management sciences, with papers spanning a wide spectrum of the area of optimization and its many applications. For his work, he has received many of the major awards and prizes in his discipline, including the von Neumann Theory Prize of INFORMS, the Farkas Prize, and the inaugural ISMP Tseng Lectureship Prize. Yinyu has also been a wonderful contributor to MS&E over the years, as a teacher, researcher, and colleague.

Edward Kao, one of MS&E; Professor Ben Van Roy's PhD students of Electrical Engineering, received an Honorable Mention for this year's INFORMS Nicholson Award (to identify and honor outstanding papers in the field of operations research and the management sciences written by a student) in recognition of the paper "Directed Principal Component Analysis".

In addition, Edward also was a finalist for the Data Mining Section Best Student Paper Award for "Learning a Factor Model via Regularized PCA." He is joining Two Sigma Investments this Autumn.

The Production and Operations Management Journal periodically honors a senior person in their field. The July-August 2012 issue featured MS&E; Professor Warren Hausman for his continuous and valued contributions to the production and operations management community and noted his multi-disciplinary writings in business management and marketing. Warren's writings form the backbone of research topics in the field and appear as articles in the Journal and many other publications. The laudation overviews his research, writing and leadership roles over the years, and can be seen here.

MS&E Professors Steve Barley and Pam Hinds received a $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation for their work entitled "Understanding Technology Appropriation in Intercultural Global Work". This timely study addresses issues with collaborating in the global setting; see below for a summary of the research agenda.

Project Summary: Collaboration over national boundaries is increasingly prevalent in today’s organizations. Software developers create applications. Architects design buildings. Car manufacturers conduct crash worthiness tests. They all rely on interdependent workers spread around the globe. Despite the remarkable growth in global work over the last few decades, few empirical studies focus on what it means to work together across cultural boundaries. In their recent review, Hinds, Liu, and Lyon (2011) show that only 11 studies published in the top 25 management journals between 2000 and 2010 examined the role of national culture in global work. A critically understudied area relates to the design and use of collaborative technology for global work. The design and use of collaborative technology is intertwined with the cultural context of use, yet global workers must coordinate such that their technology use is compatible and facilitates collaboration across national boundaries. In the proposed study, the main goal is to build theory about how technology is appropriated in different cultural contexts when workers are collaborating closely across national boundaries and how different appropriation models affect collaboration.

MS&E Professor Yinyu Ye was awarded the Tseng Lectureship Prize (more info...) at the International Symposium on Math Programming (ISMP). The largest optimization conference, ISMP meets once every three years and was held in Berlin in September, 2012. The Tseng Lectureship Prize is one of six given at ISMP, and recognizes "outstanding contributions in the area of continuous optimization, consisting of original theoretical results, innovative applications, or successful software development." Yinyu gave a plenary lecture in connection with the Prize.

Stephen Boyd, a courtesy faculty member in MS&E, with his former student, Michael Grant won the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize(more info...). This award, another of the six given at ISMP is for "excellence in computational mathematical programming”. MS&E had a role in 2 of the 6 awards given out at ISMP this year.

A New York Times article featured a Stanford study which compared nutrient and pesticide levels in organic versus conventional foods. Margaret Brandeau is the second author on the study, and Maren Pearson, an MS&E undergraduate, is one of the other co-authors. The main conclusion is that the published literature lacks strong evidence that organic foods are significantly more nutritious than conventional foods. However, consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resitant bacteria. NY Times link... The original paper is " Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review" (from the Annals of Internal Medicine)

Two of this year's eleven Lieberman Fellows are MS&E students: Douglas Hannah and Gustavo Schwenkler. The Fellowship rewards doctoral students whose personal and professional traits resemble those of Professor Gerald J. Lieberman. In particular, through their research accomplishments, teaching, and university service, awardees must have demonstrated their potential to become academic leaders. The award is made in honor of former MS&E professor, Gerald J. Lieberman, who also served Stanford as provost or acting provost during the tenures of three Stanford presidents. In 1985, Jerry was presented the Kenneth M. Cuthbertson Award for exceptional service to Stanford, in part on the basis of his "tireless efforts on behalf of Stanford's graduate students."

The Department of Management Science and Engineering presents the 2012 Commencement Awards:

Senior Project
"Castlight Health Physician Practice Cost Forecasting"
Oliver Friedberg, Alex Fryer, Charles Huyi, and Chris Seewald
"Ground Up Coffee Shop"
Andrew LaForge, Wyatt Ratliff, Brian Tolkin, and Harrison Ward

Outstanding Academic Achievement at the Undergraduate Level
Charles Huyi

Outstanding Academic Achievement at the Graduate Level
Katie Schmalzried

Department Service Award
Annie Kwon
Joanne Chiew

Department Course Assistant Award
Brad Powley
MS&E; 193/293 CA Team: Adeel Arif, Sumit Arrawatia, Lauren Cipriano, Matt Daniels, Dennis Li, and Gabriel Shields-Estrada

Eugene L. Grant Undergraduate Teaching Award
Riitta Katila

Graduate Teaching Award
Ben Van Roy

Professor Michael Saunders of MS&E is a co-winner of the 2012 SIAG/LA Prize. The SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra (SIAG/LA) awards the prize every three years to the author(s) of the most outstanding paper(s) on a topic in applicable linear algebra published in the three calendar years preceding the year of the award. Michael has been recognized in 2012 for his joint paper with Sou-Cheng Choi and Chris Paige entitled "MINRES-QLP: A Krylov Subspace Method for Indefinite or Singular Symmetric Systems" that appeared in SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing in 2011. According to the prize committee: "The authors improve on MINRES, an elegant, efficient and widely used iterative method for linear systems, achieving optimal accuracy and extending the algorithm to the solution of least squares problems." For more information on this year's prize, see: SIAM.

Professor Steve Barley has been awarded an NSF grant, entitled "Compliance Police or Business Partner? Institutional Contradictions and Contested Legitimacy in Human Resources."

Professor Margaret Brandeau has been appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This federal advisory committee provides guidance to the Secretary for Health and Human Services, the US Assistant Secretary for Health, and the CDC regarding the activities and goals of the CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OHPR). OHPR leads the CDC's preparedness and response activities and provides a critical component of overall U.S. national security efforts: for example, OHPR manages the Strategic National Stockpile, and works with states to insure that states can adequately respond to natural and manmade disasters, including terror and bioterror attacks.

Jessie Juusola, a Ph.D. student of Professor Margaret Brandeau, has a paper forthcoming in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The journal has provided Jessie with the opportunity to post a short video about her work on the journal website. In this 3-minute video, Jessie talks about how our tools of engineering systems analysis apply to problems in health policy, and how she used such techniques in her paper. The video can be currently found here.

Professor Sig Hecker of MS&E; will be the recipient of the 2012 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society. This award is sponsored by donations from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and individuals, and was established to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy. The citation will read: "For his leadership in developing international science and technology cooperation in areas critical to global security resulting in real reductions in the dangers of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terroism."

Chuck Eesley has received a prestigious International Young Scientist Research Fund award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (the Chinese equivalent of our NSF). It provides for funding of research, plus living expenses and arrangements while traveling in China. Chuck's award was one of only 5 nominations from Tsinghua University this year.

The most recent issue of Business Week includes an article on Twitter. In this article, Twitter's CEO, Dick Costolo, talks about the key role that Ashish Goel played in helping Twitter build its current ad strategy, in which tweets can double as ads. For more details, see: Link

Tom Byers and Heidi Roizen of MS&E; were in Abu Dhabi at a conference sponsored by the Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Education (REE). These REE events are designed to stimulate communication and collaboration between business, science, and engineering faculty who teach high-technology entrepreneurship in tertiary institutions around the world. For more information, and remarks from Tom and the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology for the UAE, see: Link

The Stanford School of Engineering recognizes the memory of Management Science and Engineering Professor George Dantzig with his selection as a Stanford Engineering Hero. The Heroes program celebrates the achievements of the most accomplished engineers associated with the Stanford School of Engineering and the profound effect engineering has on our everyday lives. This year's Heroes join the inaugural class of Vint Cerf, Ray Dolby, William F. Durand, Bill Hewlett, Donald Knuth, Charles Litton, Dave Packard, and Fred Terman. To learn more about George Dantzig and this year's Heroes, please go to: 2011 Engineering Heroes.

Professor Peter Glynn has been selected for membership in the National Academy of Engineering, whose peer-elected members are recognized as among the world’s most accomplished engineers. Among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer, membership honors those in technical, educational, or government positions who have made outstanding contributions to advance engineering research, practice, or education. Prof. Glynn has been selected for his distinguished contributions to simulation methodology and stochastic modeling. For more information, see: link

Professor Kathleen Eisenhardt has been named the fourth recipient of the annual Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, the most prestigious award for outstanding research contributions in this rapidly evolving field. Prof. Eisenhardt’s research on corporate entrepreneurship, how existing firms can remain innovative, was honored for its substantial, original and innovative contributions to entrepreneurship research in the management and economics literature. For more information on the prize, see: link

2011

Professor Sig Hecker of MS&E will be the recipient of the 2012 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of the American Physical Society. This award is sponsored by donations from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and individuals, and was established to recognize outstanding accomplishments by physicists in promoting the use of physics for the benefit of society in such areas as the environment, arms control, and science policy.

Margaret Brandeau's comittee work with the Institute of Medicince was cited in a CNN news report on the public health response to an anthrax attack.

Chuck Eesley has received a prestigious International Young Scientist Research Fund award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. It provides for funding of research, plus living expenses/arrangements while traveling in China. The award was one of only 5 nominations from Tsinghua University this year. (Click for more information).

Robert Carlson Memorial

Anne Robinson, a 2005 Ph.D. graduate of MS&E, has been elected President-Elect of INFORMS for the coming year. Anne obtained experience in elective office while studying here as a Ph.D. student, having served as President of our Stanford Student Informs Chapter in 2001-2002. She is currently Director, Connected Information, Global Business Operations, Customer Value Chain Management, CISCO. Visit Informs for more information.

Amin Saberi and Shayan Oveis receive best paper award at FOCS 2011. FOCS (Foundations of Computer Science) is one of the two premier conferences in Theoretical Computer Science. They improve the best known approximation ratio for undirected TSP, perhaps the most famous hard problem in combinatorial optimization. The paper can be downloaded here.

Margaret Brandeau's doctoral students, Lauren Cipriano (from MS&E) and Eva Enns (from EE) won the prize for Best Short Course for their class (co-taught with our MS&E alums David Hutton and Greg Zaric) on Spreadsheet-Based Disease Modeling. This is the second time they have won this award, having also been recognized at last year's SMDM Annual Meeting.

Warren Hausman was elected chair of the 2011 INFORMS Fellows Section Committee.

Anant Sudarshan received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2011 Stockholm meeting of the International Association for Energy Economics.

On June 12th, Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering (MS&E) held its annual graduation ceremony for its 2011 graduates. Under a beautiful sunny sky, 66 BS degrees, 173 MS degrees, and 10 Ph.D. degrees were awarded by the Department. We wish our graduates the very best, as they embark upon the next phase in their lives, and hope that they will stay in touch with the Department in the years ahead...[more]

2010

Nick Bambos received multiple awards for his work on wireless scheduling and IT security risks: 2011 IEEE Multimedia Communications Best Journal Paper Awards, Best Paper Award at the 2010 International Conference on Emerging Network Intelligence, and Best Paper Award at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

Kathy Eisenhardt received the first Ghoshal Award at the London Business School for her research on strategy and organization. She also received an honorary doctorate from Aalto University in Finland.

Siegfried Hecker was awarded the Eugene L. Grant Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Tom Kosnik was awarded the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Graduate Teaching Prize.

Vic Stanton received the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Prize.

Peter Glynn was awarded the 2010 John von Neumann Theory Prize from INFORMS, given for fundamental and sustained contributions to a theory in operations research and the management sciences.

Sabina Alistar won First Prize in the Lee B. Lusted Competition for Best Student Research Presentation at the Society for Medical Decision Making 32nd Annual Meeting.

John Carlsson was awarded the 2010 INFORMS Best Interactive Session Award.

Lauren Cipriano received the Stanford Centennial Teach Assistant Award, which honors teaching assistants who display an unusual commitment to, and excellence in, teaching.

Rory McDonald received Stanford’s Lieberman Fellowship, awarded for superior research, teaching skills, and university service.

Hugo Mora was awarded the Stanford Management Science and Engineering Course Assistant Award.

Michael Padilla received the Best Student Research Paper Award.

Waraporn Tongprasit received an honorable mention from the INFORMS Financial Services Section.

Patrick Hayes and Thomas Hansmann were the winners of the Outstanding Academic Achievement awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, respectively.