News: ORIE

Mark Lewis elected 2025 INFORMS President-elect

By: Chris Dawson

INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in operations research, analytics, management science, economics, behavioral science, statistics, artificial intelligence, data science, applied mathematics, and other relevant fields, with more than 12,000 members. Lewis is the second Cornell ORIE faculty member to serve as President-elect of INFORMS, as well as the first African-American to fill the role. Brenda Dietrich, the Geoffrion Family Professor of Practice, served as INFORMS President-elect in 2006 and as INFORMS President in 2007. Lewis has written that, as President... Read more

Eight early-career professors win NSF development awards

Researchers studying artificial intelligence training data and treatment of swelling linked to breast cancer are among the eight Cornell assistant professors who recently received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Awards. Read more

Andrew Chin is named AllianceBernstein's Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer

For the past 27 years, Andrew Chin '93 MBA '94 has worked at AllianceBernstein in a variety of executive positions. His most recent role prior to the announcement was AB's Head of Investment Solutions and Sciences. At Cornell University, his alma mater, he has taught Financial Engineering students since 2014. Professor Chin has worked with our students as a teacher, mentor, and project advisor. For more details, you can read the firm's official announcement. Read more

New model could help provide expectant mothers a clearer path to safe fish consumption

By: Mark Michaud, University of Rochester

Fish consumption during pregnancy is a complex scientific topic. On one hand, fish are rich in nutrients essential to brain development, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, selenium, iodine, and vitamin D. On the other, fish contain methyl mercury, a known neurotoxicant. This has led the US Food and Drug Administration to recommend that expectant mothers limit consumption, which inadvertently causes many women to forgo fish consumption during pregnancy altogether. Because fish consumption is an important route of methyl mercury exposure, efforts to understand the health risk posed by... Read more

M.Eng. student honored by Jamaican Prime Minister

By: Chris Dawson

Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan (CFEM) student Tashae Bowes recently received the Prime Minister’s National Youth Award for Excellence from Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness. Bowes is one of 21 Jamaicans under the age of 30 to be chosen for the honor this year. Bowes was awarded in the category of “Academics” and was nervous at the ceremony. “All of the nominees who made it to the short list were invited,” Bowes said. “But we did not know who the awardees would be until that moment when they announced our names.” The awards ceremony took place on April 20, 2024 on the lawns at... Read more

Merrill Scholars honor mentors who inspired them

At a luncheon on May 21, 42 Merrill Scholars celebrated the mentors who had the greatest influence on their early education and the Cornell faculty or staff members who contributed most significantly to their college experience. Read more

Three faculty members elected AAAS fellows

Cornell faculty members Ailong Ke, David Shmoys and Martin T. Wells have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. Read more

ORIE junior wins Goldwater Scholarship

By: Chris Dawson

ORIE third-year student Kiran Chandrasekher ’25 has won a 2024 Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater Scholarship is one of the most competitive scholarships offered to undergraduates in the US pursuing careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. For a student to be considered for the Goldwater Scholarship, which honors former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, their name must be put forth by their undergraduate institution. This year, 446 academic institutions nominated 1,353 science, engineering, and math students. Of this group of nominees, 438 were chosen as 2024 Goldwater... Read more

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... Read more

CFEM Faculty Marcos Lopez de Prado Receives Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award

Lopez de Prado's article, "Where are the Factors in Factor Investing?" was published in The Journal of Portfolio Management and identifies a significant logical inconsistency within the factor investing literature. It was recognized for its critical examination of the econometric approaches used in factor investing studies. He argues that while factor models are intended to have a causal interpretation, researchers virtually never justify their model specification choices in causal terms, hence the question “where are the factors in factor investing?” This oversight leads to misspecified... Read more