Jamol Pender has been awarded the 2026-2027 Claytor-Gilmer Fellowship by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Pender, who has been at Cornell since 2015, is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering.

Yuchen Wu has joined Cornell Engineering’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering as an assistant professor. Wu’s research sits at the intersection of statistics, applied probability, and artificial intelligence, focusing on establishing rigorous foundations for statistical and machine learning methods.

Jessica Rush Leeker has joined Cornell Engineering’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering as a professor of practice. “Ultimately, I want my students to understand that engineering is a tool for building more just and resilient communities,” she said. “That’s the kind of critical thinking the world needs.”

Nikita Doikov has joined Cornell Engineering’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering as an assistant professor, bringing with him a deep interest in the theoretical foundations of optimization and a curiosity about how those foundations shape modern artificial intelligence. His work focuses on designing and understanding optimization algorithms that lie at the core of machine learning systems and large-scale AI models.

Updated on December 3, 2024: Sean Sinclair earned his Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell in 2023. He is now an assistant professor of industrial engineering and management sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University in…

Operations Research and Information Engineering M.Eng. alum Irene Poh ’01 M.Eng. ’02 believes that one key to a successful and satisfying career is to avoid defining your job as simply what you do. “It’s so much better to always ask…

“Originally, I was thinking I might major in mechanical engineering, but then I saw how OR involved applying math, which had a lot of appeal. And I learned about modeling and simulations and game theory from Professor David Heath and it all resonated with me deeply,” Hintlian said. He declared his major and never looked back.

“The kindness of Cornell has made a real difference in my life,” Kulkarni said. “They were willing to waive the application fee and then when I switched departments, Mathematics was willing to fund my second year, even though by then I was in OR. And then they made it possible for me to complete the final year of my doctoral program after I had moved to Georgia with my husband.”