A “Fun and Exciting Career”

ISyE's Leo and Louise Benatar Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Alejandro Toriello (BSIE 03, Ph.D. IE10) wasn’t thinking about an academic career when he entered Georgia Tech as an undergraduate. As a matter of fact, “I thought, ‘OK, I’ll do my four years and get out of here and never look back.’”

But after graduating and spending almost two years working as a consul- tant, graduate school started looking better and better.

“My job wasn’t a good fit for me,” recalled the Guatemalan native, “so I talked to some professors here at Georgia Tech — particularly my undergrad optimization professor, Özlem Ergun — about my interests and what I considered doing career-wise. Their advice helped me decide to pursue a Ph.D. Once I got started, I realized that academia might be a fun and exciting career.”

Learning to Solve Difficult Problems

For Jim Luedtke (MSOR 04, Ph.D. IE 07), accepting a position as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008 was something of a homecoming. A Wisconsin native, he earned a bachelor’s degree in IE at UW-Madison in 2001. When he decided to continue his education at graduate school, Georgia Tech topped the list of possibilities.

“I was interested in operations research,” said Luedtke, who is now an associate professor and also serves as associate chair of graduate affairs. “Georgia Tech is a national research leader in that field, so Tech was a natural choice to obtain the background I needed to do good research.”

Luedtke’s research interests include stochastic optimization, mixed linear and nonlinear integer optimization, and optimization applications. His work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award and the INFORMS Optimization Society Prize for Young Researchers.

Had he not pursued an academic career, Luedtke imagines he probably would have found a position in a company research lab, “applying the operational research tools that I learned at Georgia Tech to solve difficult applied problems.”

One of the major strengths of the Stewart School, according to Luedtke, is the curriculum’s shared emphases on both theory and application.

Engineering Logistics Saves Lives

Jessica Heier Stamm (Ph.D. IE 10) is interested in many things: teaching, solving problems, advancing humanitarian efforts, and learning new skills and subject areas. “Being a professor allows me to combine all those interests in one profession,” she observed.

Since 2010 she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Kansas State University (KSU), where she earned her undergraduate degree in IE in 2004. For her doctorate, “I chose ISyE at Georgia Tech because of its excellence in operations research and, in particular, in supply chain and logistics applications.”

Even before graduate school, the Kansas native knew she wanted to workin the area of humanitarian logistics to improve the effectiveness of disaster preparedness and response.

As luck would have it, what is now called the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) was established shortly after her arrival at Tech, which proved to be an excellent match for her research goals.

“I took classes from leaders in the field,” she continued. “I also had the opportunity to assist in writing proposals, an experience that contributed to my receiving an NSF CAREER Award and other grants.”

Heier Stamm’s additional honors include the KSU College of Engineering Outstanding Assistant Professor Award, two Outstanding Teacher Awards, the INFORMS Transporta- tion Science and Logistics Society dissertation prize, and the Best Doctoral Thesis Award from the Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Research Institute.

Heier Stamm noted that while many ISyE faculty influenced and inspired her, three mentors stand out: CHHS co-directors Özlem Ergun, Julie Swann, and Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair and ADVANCE Professor and Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Development & Scholarship, College of Engineering.

Heier Stamm’s long-term career goal is to transform disaster preparedness and response supply chains “by developing contextually appropriate models and solution methods, and by preparing a diverse community of industrial engineers to address inter- disciplinary challenges.”

Bringing  Logistics Expertise Back to Alma Mater

Raised in central Arkansas, Ashlea Bennett Milburn (Ph.D. IE 09) didn’t know she wanted to be a professor until she was an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas (UA). After participating in a number of internships, she realized she was not applying her IE skills as much as she would like.

“I knew that staying in academia would be a way to really dig in with those skills.”

Milburn left Arkansas in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in IE, hoping to return to her alma mater one day as a professor and, perhaps one day down the road, an administrator. Her first stop was Virginia Tech, where she received a master’s in industrial and systems engineering. Then Milburn began looking for a school for her Ph.D.

“I wanted to do logistics work, and a lot of Georgia Tech faculty were doing that,” she said. “Plus, Tech has a great reputation and is the top-ranked IE program in the country.”

Her focus on logistics made practical sense, given its importance to many Arkansas companies and, consequently, to UA.

“We have a really strong emphasis on logistics, and a lot of our employers are looking for logistics engineers,” she said, citing the example of her undergrad internship with the J.B. Hunt trucking company. “Walmart is headquartered here, and at its core, it’s a logistics company.

“I knew Georgia Tech would equip me with the logistics skills and expertise I needed to come back here and be competitive.”

Even before arriving on campus, Milburn knew she wanted Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and Coca-Cola Professor Alan Erera as her Ph.D. advisor.

“His research interests appealed to me,” she explained. “His work is deeply theoretical, but he applies it to solving real-world, practical problems. I learned how to do that from him.”

Milburn’s honors and recognitions include an NSF CAREER Award; a Best Paper Award from IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering; the IISE Logistics and Supply Chain Division Teaching Award; and Outstanding Teacher, Outstanding Researcher, and Outstanding Faculty Advisor awards from the UA Department of Industrial Engineering.

A Strong, Positive Influence

The best part about working as a professor at MIT is “interacting with extremely smart and driven young people,” said Juan Pablo Vielma (Ph.D. IE 09). “It keeps you on your toes and forces you to keep your tools current.”

The Richard S. Leghorn (1939) Career Development Associate Professor of Operations Research at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Vielma said he had aspired to become either a professor or a researcher since attending the University of Chile, where hereceived a B.S. and M.S. in mathematical engineering. He joined the MIT faculty in 2012 after serving as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a Herman Goldstine Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

His decision to obtain a doctorate at Georgia Tech was based on his examination of the Stewart School’s courses, professors, and students. “I did consider ISyE’s top ranking, but more important was learning from friends who were already studying at ISyE that this ranking was not just a number,” he noted.

In terms of his academic career, one of the important takeaways from his Tech experience was “learning how important it is to work hard on research you enjoy,” Vielma said. “I learned this both from the professors and my classmates.”

Vielma’s research interests include theory and technology for linear, nonlinear, and stochastic mixed integer programming; and optimization models in sustainable natural resource management, marketing, and statistics.

His work has earned for him numerous awards including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, an NSF CAREER Award, and first prize in the INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group Paper Competition.

At Tech, Vielma received valuable encouragement and support from “pretty much all professors I interacted with, particularly my advisors, Shabbir Ahmed and George Nemhauser,” he said. “It would take forever to go over the different ways they inspired and influenced me.

However, I think Professor Emeritus Gary Parker deserves a special mention. He was associate chair for graduate studies while I was at ISyE, and he was crucial in creating an academic environment that facilitated the strong positive influence I received from my professors and classmates."