David Williamson appointed next ORIE director

David Williamson has been appointed as the next Director of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE). In addition to his role as a professor in ORIE, Williamson is also a professor and recently served as chair in the Department of Information Science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. He will begin his three-year term on January 1, 2025, upon return from sabbatical leave. Adrian Lewis, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering and a previous ORIE Director, has agreed to lead the school in an interim capacity for a six month period, beginning July 1, 2024. 

David Williamson received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent time as a postdoc at Cornell under Professor Éva Tardos, the chair of Computer Science in Cornell Bowers CIS. He went on to spend several years working for IBM before returning to Cornell as a professor in 2004. David’s research focuses on finding efficient algorithms for hard discrete optimization problems, with attention to approximation algorithms for problems in network design, facility location, and scheduling. He has won multiple notable awards including the 2022 American Mathematical Society (AMS) Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research and has been recognized as an ACM Fellow and SIAM Fellow. 

Lynden Archer, Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, said, "As we congratulate David  and Adrian on their new roles in leading ORIE, please join me in communicating deep gratitude to our colleague Mark Lewis, the Maxwell Upson Professor of Engineering, who will complete his second term as ORIE Director on June 30, 2024. Mark’s impacts as ORIE’s Director are as profound as they are broad. Most notable are his expansion of the ORIE faculty at Cornell Tech; oversight of ORIE’s systematic update of its undergraduate curriculum; nominations and advocacy for ORIE faculty at all career stages to receive college and national recognition; and improvement of the school’s staffing and financial outlook. Mark has, above all else, been a trusted colleague and a consistent, effective advocate for Cornell Engineering values and priorities at all levels of the university."