Faculty

Cynthia Barnhart (Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering, Professor of Operations Research, and former Chancellor of MIT) has won the INFORMS (The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) 2021 George E. Kimball Medal, which recognizes distinguished service to INFORMS and to the profession of operations research and the management sciences. 

The detailed award citation describes Barnhart’s career contributions and recognizes her “distinguished service to INFORMS and her wide-ranging contributions to the profession of operations research through research, practice, education, leadership, and service.”

MIT Sloan Professor Bengt Holmström has won the 2016 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Holmström, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, was named winner of the award along with Oliver Hart, a professor and economist at Harvard University. The Swedish Academy cited Holmström and Hart for “their contributions to contract theory.” Calling his work “pathbreaking,” Holmstrom’s colleagues are lauding the decision by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  Holmstrom has held a joint appointment with MIT Sloan and the MIT Department of Economics since 1994.

Ernst Berndt has been selected to receive the 2020 Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics, which recognizes unusually original and important contributions to the development of economic statistics or to their use in interpreting the economy. In particular, the award recognizes Berndt “for conducting original and influential economic research on the measurement of multifactor productivity and quality-adjusted price change and for his leadership of key groups both within and with linkages to the U.S. economic statistics community.” More details on Berndt’s many contributions are in this press release. The award is sponsored by the Business and Economic Statistics section of the American Statistical Association, the National Association for Business Economics, and the Washington Statistical Society. The award was announced  on the ASA B&E section website. 

Dimitris Bertsimas and Alex Jacquillat have won the 2020 Pierskalla Best Paper Award from the Health Applications Society of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). This award recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science.

Their winning paper, “From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19,” was co-authored with Léonard Boussioux, Ryan Cory-Wright, Arthur Delarue, Vassilis Digalakis Jr., Driss Lahlou Kitane, Michael Li, Agni Orfanoudaki, Theodore Papalexopoulos, Ivan Paskov, Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Holly Wiberg, and Cynthia Zeng (all MIT Operations Research Center PhD students advised by Bertsimas); Omar Skali Lami (ORC PhD student advised by Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis); Galit Lukin (Datadog, ORC SM ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Jean Pauphilet (London Business School, ORC PhD ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Luca Mingardi (Interpretable AI, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Hamza Tazi Bouardi (BCG GAMMA, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); and two of Bertsimas’s former postdocs, Omid Nohadani (Northwestern) and Bartolomeo Stellato (Princeton).

Dimitris Bertsimas and Alex Jacquillat have won the 2020 Pierskalla Best Paper Award from the Health Applications Society of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). This award recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science.

Their winning paper, “From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19,” was co-authored with Léonard Boussioux, Ryan Cory-Wright, Arthur Delarue, Vassilis Digalakis Jr., Driss Lahlou Kitane, Michael Li, Agni Orfanoudaki, Theodore Papalexopoulos, Ivan Paskov, Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Holly Wiberg, and Cynthia Zeng (all MIT Operations Research Center PhD students advised by Bertsimas); Omar Skali Lami (ORC PhD student advised by Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis); Galit Lukin (Datadog, ORC SM ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Jean Pauphilet (London Business School, ORC PhD ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Luca Mingardi (Interpretable AI, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Hamza Tazi Bouardi (BCG GAMMA, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); and two of Bertsimas’s former postdocs, Omid Nohadani (Northwestern) and Bartolomeo Stellato (Princeton).

Dimitris Bertsimas and a team he led with MIT students and researchers from Janssen Research & Development, who developed the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, has received the 2021 Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (First Place) from INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). The award, sponsored by the Analytics Society of INFORMS, Kinaxis, and Adelphi University, recognizes the creative and unique application of a combination of analytical techniques in a new area.

In their winning application, entitled “Data-driven COVID-19 Vaccine Development for Janssen,” Bertsimas’s team guided Johnson & Johnson on where to perform the clinical trials for its COVID-19 vaccine. The team also included Michael Lingzhi Li (MIT PhD student advised by Bertsimas) and Omar Skali Lami (MIT PhD student advised by both Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis); Hamza Tazi Bouardi (BCG GAMMA; MIT MBAn ’20, formerly advised by Bertsimas); Ali Haddad-Sisakht (Dynamic Ideas, LLC); and Najat Khan, Jennings Xu, Jose Zamalloa, Amir Hashemi, Ankit Lodha, Yuqi Shang, Kris Standish, Shi-hua Yu, Levon Demirdjian, Xiaoying Wu, and Sid Jain (all from Janssen Pharmaceuticals).

The award was announced at the Virtual 2021 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference. More details can be found in this MIT News article.

Rahul Bhui, Assistant Professor of Marketing, and Jackson G. Lu, Mitsui Career Development Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Work and Organization Studies (WOS), have both been named APS (Association for Psychological Science) Rising Stars. This designation “is presented to outstanding APS members in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD”—“researchers whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.”  This is one of the top honors for junior psychologists (selected from across all fields of psychology—cognitive, clinical, developmental, social, etc.).

The APS Rising Stars were announced last month. 

Kara Blackburn (Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication) was named winner of the Sloan School Teacher of the Year for the 2022-2023 academic year. Each year, students nominate instructors for these teaching awards and the final recipients are chosen based on the quantity and quality of their nominations. Deputy Dean Michael Cusumano thanked the winners of this year's teaching awards for “exemplifying the dedication to pedagogical excellence that is so central to our mission at MIT Sloan.”

Kara Blackburn and Andrew Lo were each awarded the 2019 Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, established to honor educational innovation and excellence. The Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching Award is the most prestigious teaching prize offered by the School. The award was established in 2006 and is awarded each year to two MIT Sloan faculty members, as well as two electrical engineering and computer science faculty members, for their contributions to educational excellence at MIT.

Kara Blackburn has won a 2020 Teaching with Digital Technology Award from MIT for her work teaching on campus and/or remotely. Blackburn won the award along with fellow Sloan faculty members Vivek Farias, Michelle Hanlon, Alexandre Jacquillat, Miro Kazakoff, Ben Shields, and Rodrigo Verdi. These student-nominated awards recognize faculty and instructors who have used digital technology to improve teaching and learning for MIT students. This recognition also gives the MIT community the opportunity to learn from their innovative practices. The awards were co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. This year, students submitted a total of 487 nominations for 232 faculty and instructors, and 30 winners were selected by Dean of Digital Learning Krishna Rajagopal and Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz, with help from MIT Open Learning staff.