Faculty

Maryam Farboodi (Jon D. Gruber Career Development Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Finance) has received a 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is “dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge” and whose grantmaking helped create the MIT Sloan School of Management. This honor recognizes outstanding creativity, innovation, and impactful research; the achievements and potential of awarded Sloan Research Fellows “place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.”

Farboodi is one of eight MIT faculty members among the 126 Sloan Research Fellows chosen this year from over 1,000 nominations of early-career scholars by fellow scientists across seven fields—chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics (Farboodi’s awarded area), mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. This prestigious honor has not been bestowed on an MIT Sloan faculty member for over two decades (and the one prior was over 30 years ago).

The award was announced recently.

Rahul Mazumder, Nanyang Technological University Associate Professor of Operations Research and Statistics, has won the 2023 International Indian Statistical Association (IISA) Early Career Award in Statistics and Data Sciences in the Theory category. This honor recognizes IISA members in early stages of their careers “for outstanding contributions in the development of theoretical foundations in statistics and data sciences, including but not limited to research in topics of mathematics related to statistics and data sciences, theoretical statistics and theory of machine learning, theoretical computer sciences, probability theory and mathematical studies of algorithms.”

Winners are typically celebrated at the annual IISA Conference, held in Kochi, India.

Mark Kritzman, Senior Lecturer in Finance, has won the 2023 Harry M. Markowitz Award from the Journal of Investment Management (JOIM). In addition, Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor; Professor of Finance; and Director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, was a finalist winning a 2023 Special Distinction Award. These awards honor Markowitz’s legacy and the seminal impact of his work as a financial economist and mathematician on both theoretical finance and the practice of asset management, by recognizing and supporting future research and innovation in practical asset management. Award candidates from among JOIM papers published in the past year are chosen by JOIM editors, and winners are selected by Nobel Prize laureate members of the JOIM Advisory Board.

Kritzman’s winning paper, “The Determinants of Inflation,” is co-authored with William Kinlaw (State Street Global Markets), Michael Metcalfe (State Street Global Markets), and David Turkington (State Street Associates).

Lo’s awarded paper, “Financing Fusion Energy,” is co-authored with Abdullah Alhamdan (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia; MIT Sloan MBA ’21), Zachery M. Halem (Lazard; MIT SM ’21 in Operations Research), Irene Hernandez (Gataca; MIT Sloan MBA ’18), Manish Singh (Cubist Systematic Strategies; MIT Sloan Research Affiliate; MIT EECS PhD ’23), and Dennis Whyte (MIT Hitachi America Professor of Engineering and Director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center). This MIT Sloan article provides more information on the paper.

Tom Malone (Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management and Professor of Information Technology), MIT Center for Collective Intelligence postdoctoral associates Jennifer Heyman and Steven Rick, and first-author Alice Cai have won the Best Paper Award at CI 2023, the Association for Computing Machinery Collective Intelligence Conference (ACM), sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction.

Their winning paper with Toyota Research Institute co-authors Yanxia Zhang, Alexandre Filipowicz, Matthew Hong, and Matt Klenk Is entitled, “DesignAID:  Using Generative AI and Semantic Diversity for Design Inspiration.”

Nikos Trichakis has received four honors from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), including one shared with Dimitris Bertsimas:

First, Trichakis won the 2023 Sanjay and Panna Mehrotra Research Excellence Award from the INFORMS Health Applications Society. This award recognizes a mid-career researcher for significant contributions to the practice of health applications through operations research and management science modeling and methodologies. This honor is specifically in recognition of Trichakis’s body of theoretical and practical work on affecting the national transplantation policy in the United States.

He also had 3 other paper honors:

Trichakis, along with MIT Sloan colleague Dimitris Bertsimas, was runner-up for the 2023 INFORMS Pierskalla Best Paper Award, which recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science. The honored paper, co-authored with Bertsimas, Theodore Papalexopoulos (2022 MIT PhD in Operations Research), Darren Stewart (NYU Langone Health), and James Alcorn and Rebecca Goff (both of United Network for Organ Sharing), is entitled “Reshaping National Organ Allocation Policy.”

Trichakis also was a finalist for the 2023 Management Science Best Paper Award in Operations Management, which recognizes outstanding contributions to operations management among all operations papers published in Management Science over the past three years. “On the Financing Benefits of Supply Chain Transparency and Blockchain Adoption,” co-authored with Jiri Chod (Boston College), Gerry Tsoukalas (University of Pennsylvania; Boston University), Henry Aspegren (Meta; 2018 MIT MEng), and Mark Weber (IBM Research; MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab), was a finalist for this award the past two years in a row.

Finally, Trichakis was a finalist for the 2023 MSOM (Manufacturing and Service Operations Management section of INFORMS) iFORM (Interface of Finance, Operations, and Risk Management) Special Interest Group Best Paper award, which considers publications in all INFORMS journals in the prior three years, for “Platform Tokenization: Financing, Governance, and Moral Hazard” (Management Science), co-authored with Jiri Chod (Boston College) and S. Alex Yang (London Business School).

Alex Jacquillat has received two honors from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS): First, Jacquillat won the 2023 Transportation Science Paper of the Year Award from the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society, for “Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics Toward Passenger-Centric Ground Delay Programs.”

Second, Jacquillat won the INFORMS Computing Society Harvey J. Greenberg Research Award, which recognizes outstanding research in the area of computation and operations research applications, especially in emerging application fields. His winning paper, co-authored with Wei Zhang and Kai Wang (both at Tsinghua University) as well as Shuaian Wang (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), is entitled “Routing Optimization with Vehicle-Customer Coordination.”

John Sterman (Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and Professor of System Dynamics) and Bobby Milstein (MIT Sloan Visiting Scientist; ReThink Health and Rippel Foundation), along with the rest of the team behind the nonprofit ReThink Health initiative, have won the 2023 System Dynamics Applications Award from the System Dynamics Society. This honor recognizes the best real-world application of System Dynamics, based primarily on demonstrated measurable benefit through the use of System Dynamics within the past decade.

ReThink Health, an initiative of the Rippel Foundation, works "with national and regional stewards to discover what it takes to design and execute transformative change and produce better health and well-being for all.” ReThink Health uses system dynamics models and interactive management flight simulators to enable community leaders at all scales and from every part of society to design high-leverage policies that can help all people thrive, beginning with those who are struggling and suffering. The broad application impact spanning health care, philanthropy, government, business, and academia has ranged from local (e.g., 18 initiatives launched involving over 2,500 individuals to enhance health and well-being across Atlanta) to national (e.g., 52 federal agencies collaborating on long-term plans for equitable recovery and resilience).

The winning team, many of whom have strong MIT Sloan connections (degrees listed are for MIT Sloan alumni who studied system dynamics), consists of Milstein, Sterman, Jack Homer (Homer Consulting; PhD ’83), Gary Hirsch (independent consultant; SB ’69 & SM ’71), Dr. Elliott Fisher (Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine), Rebecca Niles (Iceberg Partners, SB ’93 & MBA ’93), Kris Wile (Systems Thinking Collaborative, SM ’94), and Chris Soderquist (Pontifex Consulting).

The award was announced at the 2023 International System Dynamics Conference (annual conference of the System Dynamics Society) in late July in Chicago. A photo is online at the conference awards blog post, and the award presentation video contains more details in remarks and a slide presentation about the winning work and the many contributions and extensive real-world impact of ReThink Health.  A transcript is also available at the video page.

The Journal of the International Ombuds Association announced last May a special issue dedicated to essays in honor of Mary Rowe—adjunct professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management in the Work and Organization Studies Group at MIT Sloan and a member of the faculty of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research —to celebrate her contributions to the ombuds profession and “wide-ranging influence on scholars and practitioners” in the field.

The JIOA editorial board writes: “We invite authors to submit essays that reflect on how Mary Rowe’s scholarship may have influenced their own work; how it might benefit future practitioners, scholars, and students; or any topic that involves the work of this major figure in the ombuds field.”

Details about Rowe’s career contributions and the special issue can be found in the JIOA special issue announcement, which links to author guidelines at the journal website.

Professor Stephen Graves and Jonathan Owen of General Motors have both been awarded the 2023 George E. Kimball Medal for their distinguished service to the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), as well as to the profession of operations research and management sciences.

According to an INFORMS press release, both recipients have been "standout members of INFORMS" and are INFORMS Fellows.

Graves was the 2021 INFORMS President and served as the editor-in-chief of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. He was also the functional area editor and editor of the Edelman Special Issues of INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics.

“INFORMS is extremely appreciative of the contributions of Owen and Graves, and their dedication to our organization and the profession of operations research and the management sciences,” said Elena Gerstmann, INFORMS executive director, in the press release.

Visit the INFORMS website for more information.

Professor Roberto Rigobon, research scientist Florian Berg, and research affiliate Julian Kölbel, have won the 2023 Pagano and Zechner Prize for the best non-investment paper published in the Review of Finance, the journal of the European Finance Association.

Their winning paper is entitled “Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings” (Review of Finance, Vol. 26, Issue 6, November 2022).

Berg and Kölbel  are co-founders of the Aggregate Confusion Project.