Management Science and Engineering

August 2024 Newsletter

A break from the grind

Summer at Stanford can be a time to relax, refresh, and prepare to come back rejuvenated for the upcoming year. As our faculty and students enjoy the next month before fall quarter begins, we share their stories so you can get to know some of the people who make MS&E a special place.

In this issue - community & recognition:

• Stories & voices
• New MS&E merch
• Awards & recognition

Explore articles, videos, podcasts, and more in this issue of the MS&E Newsletter.

Our lead story: MS&E stories & voices

portrait photos of faculty, students, and alums

Left to right: Peter Glynn, Nick Okafor, Montanna Riggs, and Alex Patel | Images courtesy of STVP and LinkedIn

Students and faculty come to MS&E from a wide range of backgrounds, take different routes through the program, and go on to create impact in a variety of ways. In other words, the diversity of our community reflects the interdisciplinary nature of MS&E itself.

One architect of our community is professor Peter Glynn, who was chair of the department from 2011 to 2015. Under his leadership, MS&E made strategic faculty hires in the then-emerging discipline of computational social science, which is now a major tenet of our teaching and research. In a series of articles tracing the history of MS&E’s leadership, he said his time leading the department was focused on investing in its people.

Those investments have, in part, led to the diverse and impactful community we have today. Below is just a small sample of recent stories and voices from across the department:

PhD student Nick Okafor is working to address the challenge of educational and environmental inequities in underserved communities. In an interview meant for kids, he describes the impact he aims to make.
Master’s student Montanna Riggs co-directed this year’s FashionX runway event at Stanford, as part of a student organization co-founded by MS&E alum Savannah Murphy (MS ’21).
Incoming master’s student Alex Patel, ’24, found pride in taking leadership roles during his undergraduate years and seeing his research have tangible impact.
Incoming master’s student Armin Rezaiean-Asel describes his experience applying to be and becoming a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.
Incoming master’s student Benjamin Zaidel shares his passion for precision medicine and his goal to impact the world by saving lives on a cellular level.
Senior Michelle Lahrkamp needed an intellectual break during a sailing competition. She decided to “check out” by watching a lecture on stochastic modeling and Markov chains.
Junior Samir Chowdhury founded the Youth Climate Action Team to advance climate justice around the world.

MS&E MERCH

Order your MS&E shirts by September 8

For the first—and a limited—time, you can order MS&E shirts! There are two links below for different color options. Orders must be placed by 9/8/2024 to be included in the limited run. Get yours now!

White and gray items

Red and black items

ORAL HISTORIES

Left to right: Don Morrison, Richard Larson, and John Lillie | Images courtesy of UCLA, Fox 5 San Diego, and Joel Simon

#OnTheShouldersOfGiants: We continue to celebrate MS&E’s history as we look forward to our 25th anniversary celebration next year. Hear from some of the luminaries in the department below:

Don Morrison (PhD ’65) describes how sports influenced his career in operations research and shares stories from his experience in the first OR cohort at Stanford.
Richard Larson was the advisor of Sam Chiu, professor emeritus of MS&E. Learn more about Professor Larson’s career and his influence on his field.
John Lillie, ’59 (MS ’64), discusses his journey to Stanford and the Industrial Engineering department, as well as his career as a business leader and Stanford trustee.

SUMMER READING LIST

Book and podcast recs from MS&E grads

As part of our podcast, Stanford MS&E: Stories & Voices ( Spotify, Apple, YouTube), we asked six graduating students for their book and podcast recommendations. Here’s what our students are reading and listening to.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Faculty

Vasilis Syrgkanis received an NSF CAREER Award to advance the state of the art in causal artificial intelligence methods.
Arvind Karunakaran received the Award for Responsible Research in Management and the American Sociological Association’s W. Richard Scott Article Award for his paper that explores counterintuitive hierarchical relationships at work.
Markus Pelger was appointed a Faculty Research Fellow in the Asset Pricing group by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Riitta Katila received the Tau Beta Pi Teaching Award.
Amin Saberi received the ACM SIGecom Test of Time Award for his paper that introduced and solved a model of online matching with budgets.
Ben Van Roy and PhD student Wanqiao Xu received the Outstanding Paper Award on the Theory of Reinforcement Learning at the first-ever Reinforcement Learning Conference.

Alums & Students

Paris Olympics: Eight MS&E alums and students competed in the Paris Games, including medalists Tierna Davidson and Naomi Girma (gold, women’s soccer), Grant Fisher (2 bronze; men’s track and field), Drew Holland (bronze; men’s water polo), and Brody Malone (bronze; men’s gymnastics). If MS&E were a country, we’d be tied for 38th place in the overall medal count—and 36th if counted by number of golds, followed by silver, followed by bronze. Meet all 8 MS&E Olympians on our Instagram.
Multiple students and faculty were among recipients of this year’s Commencement Awards.
Grace Baek (MS ’23) and Caitlin Casey (MS ’24) are among the inaugural cohort of NobleReach Scholars.
Master’s student Shreyas Lakhtakia received a Stanford Alumni Association Community Impact Award for creating the Beagle Cafe, a salon for ideas and conversation on campus. He describes his experience with the Beagle Cafe in an episode of our podcast.
Senior Belle Battistoni’s women’s rowing team was the national runner-up and Pac-12 champion, and she received a Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year award. She also shares stories from her MS&E journey on a new episode of our podcast.
Senior Michelle Lahrkamp helped lead the women’s sailing team to its second-straight national championship.

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Management Science and Engineering
Stanford School of Engineering
475 Via Ortega MC 4026
Stanford, California 94305
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