IBM researcher to give seminar

IBM researcher Lilian Wu will give an Enterprise Engineering Seminar Wednesday, April 23 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in B17 Upson Hall. Wu, who earned her Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Cornell in 1974, is the program executive in IBM’s Global University Programs. Her talk is titled “Elephants and Computers, Examples of Applied Mathematics and Operations Research.”

“Applied mathematics and operations research has led me from building mathematical models of how many elephants the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania can sustain to working inside IBM on the planning of personal computers,” writes Wu. “More recently, I have been collaborating with universities on projects that take advantage of the enormous possibilities brought on by the advances in computing and data available.”

Wu has had a distinguished career at IBM mostly in Mathematical Sciences where she developed business planning methods under uncertainty, for which she received an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, and pricing of commodities and contracts under uncertainty. She also co-created IBM’s first graphical statistical system called GRAFSTAT (later sold as AGSS), for which she received an IBM Outstanding Technology Award. Her current interests are analysis of technology enabled and people intensive complex systems, particularly in the education, healthcare, and services sectors.

Each semester, the Cornell Engineering Alumni Association sponsors the Enterprise Engineering Seminar, a one-credit course in which Cornell alumni return to campus to talk to students about engineering in the real world. The lectures are free and open to the public.