Industrial and systems engineering alumnus receives Pritzker Best Doctoral Dissertation Award

Industrial and systems engineering doctoral alumnus Mark M. Nejad has received the prestigious Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Pritzker Best Doctoral Dissertation Award. The award, sponsored by the Pritzker Corporation, recognizes outstanding research in industrial engineering and carries with it a $1,000 cash prize. Nejad will be presented with the award at the 2016 IIE Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.

Nejad's dissertation, "Frontiers in Operations Research for Overcoming Barriers to Vehicle Electrification," focuses on network optimization and game theory to increase the electric driving range of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and also increase the efficiency of charging mechanisms for electric vehicles. Ratna Babu Chinam, professor of industrial and systems engineering at Wayne State University, served as Nejad's dissertation supervisor.

"We are extremely proud of the dissertation research that Mark has done and all the prestigious awards he has received from several key professional societies in recognition," said professor Chinam. "He has set the bar very high for future students."

Over the course of his Ph.D. studies, Nejad has published over twenty peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Transportation Science, IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, and IEEE Big Data.

Nejad has received several prestigious publication awards and recognition from INFORMS, POMS, IIE and IEEE, including the 2014 INFORMS ENRE Best Student Paper Award and the 2014 INFORMS Service Science Best Paper Award. He also was a finalist for the 2015 IBM Service Science Best Student Paper Award. Nejad earned his degree in 2015 and is now an assistant professor at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Oklahoma.