For more than forty years, Cornell Masters students have worked with companies and organizations on projects that offer valuable insights to the sponsoring client while fulfilling a central requirement of each student's academic program. Your organization is invited to sponsor a Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) project in Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE).

Why sponsor a project?
Analytically trained students, working under faculty guidance, can provide fresh insights on problems that the sponsor may not have manpower, skills, or time to pursue in-house. The sponsor receives a written report, a management presentation, and, sometimes, prototype spreadsheets or other software. The sponsor gains working experience with Cornell engineers and recruiting visibility on campus.

What are the sponsor's responsibilities?
The major sponsor responsibility is to serve as a client for the work, designating contacts, allocating meeting time, and providing data and site access. Sponsors often provide sales or operational data, which can be held in confidence as needed. There is no fee for student or faculty time. Sponsors usually pay project expenses (e.g., travel, telephone, reproduction, computer charges, and systems support). Cost estimates can be provided and major components can be negotiated in advance. An invoice for expenses is submitted after the final report is delivered.

What are Cornell's responsibilities?
A faculty member advises the project team, typically consisting of three to five students from a variety of backgrounds, all currently enrolled in the Master of Engineering program. While sponsors are usually delighted with the results, and students must deliver a report in order to graduate, we cannot guarantee the outcome. We are rarely able to provide ongoing support for any prototype software developed by the team so a formal handoff and detailed documentation are advisable.

What kinds of problems do projects address?
The typical  problem involves systems with both technical and economic attributes. Problems might involve resource allocation, forecasting, production scheduling, facilities location, strategic and tactical planning, decision analysis and support, quality control, or improvement of manufacturing, distribution, marketing, information, or customer support processes. (Projects in Financial Engineering, i.e., modeling derivative securities, are administered separately.) Typical students deal with uncertainty and variability and with economic tradeoffs among a large number of potential alternatives. Teams arrive at solutions by developing representations of the problem charcteristics using mathematical and/or computer models. The projects provide students with a low-risk introduction to real-life internal and external consulting activities that are typical of professional practice in ORIE. The best projects relate in some way to our diverse faculty research and teaching interests.

How do we get started in sponsoring a project?
Contact
Dr. Kathryn Caggiano, Associate Director
607.255.2370
kec4@cornell.edu
216 Rhodes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14850

Applied OR and Information Technology Project Timetable

August: Sponsors agree to participate. Working with faculty, they identify suitable problem areas.

Late September: Students are introduced to the problems and break into teams.

October–December: Initial site visits, familiarization with organizations and processes, refinement of the problem statement into a terms of reference or memorandum of understanding, identification of key players and data, literature search,methodological approach, initial models.

Early January: Students return early for the spring semester and spend full time for two to three weeks on their projects until classes begin. Follow-up visits to the client site may occur.

January–March: Teams devote substantial time to the projects, building models, preparing software, developing analytical results, and deriving preliminary conclusions and recommendations.

April: Teams prepare presentations and reports.

Early May: Results are presented to project management. Reports are finalized and printed.

End May: Commencement for students completing the program.

Typical Recent Master of Engineering Projects