Faculty

Rodrigo Verdi and Nick Pudar (System Dynamics) were named co-winners of the MIT Sloan School Teacher of the Year for the 2020-2021 academic year. Each year, students nominate instructors for these teaching awards and the final recipients are chosen based on the quantity and quality of their nominations. Deputy Dean Michael Cusumano thanked the winners of this year's teaching awards for "exemplifying the dedication to pedagogical excellence that is so central to our mission at MIT Sloan."

Otto Scharmer is the inaugural recipient of the Elevating Humanity Award from the Organization Development (OD) Network. Scharmer is credited with directly inspiring this new annual award by championing the Organization Development “countermovement” against the traditional profit-centric management approach, “bringing humanity back into focus” with his book Theory U and, as co-founder of the Presencing Institute, “elevating humankind on a global scale through the Presencing Institute’s collective effort to help oppressed, marginalized, impoverished, and fractured populations” (Professor Bill Brendel, OD Network Board Trustee). More information on the impact of Scharmer’s work can be found in the award announcement in this OD Network News article. 

 

Bill Aulet was named the 2021 USASBE (United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year. This award recognizes distinguished leadership over a number of years within the field of entrepreneurship education, with winners having contributed substantive advancements to the way in which scholars think about and approach entrepreneurship teaching and learning.

The USABE tweet announcing Aulet’s award included: “He's changing the way entrepreneurship is understood, taught & practiced in the world.” Julienne Shields, USABE CEO, explains that Aulet is “unique … not only a beacon of inspiration for his own students, but also a luminary for his peers teaching and pushing educators to approach their classes and coursework with innovation and passion ... one of the most impactful thought-leaders in entrepreneurship education …”

See the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship (Trust Center) press release for further details about the award and about Aulet’s contributions to the field. Aulet has served as the managing director of the Trust Center since 2010.

Chris Knittel has won the 2020 International Journal of Industrial Organization (IJIO) Best Empirical Paper Award.  Knittel, along with co-authors Konstantinos Metaxoglou and André Trindade, won for the paper, “Environmental Implications of Market Structure: Shale Gas and Electricity Market.” Winners of the Best Paper Award are selected by the IJIO editors and announced in the last issue of each year.

Dimitris Bertsimas and Alex Jacquillat have won the 2020 Pierskalla Best Paper Award from the Health Applications Society of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). This award recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science.

Their winning paper, “From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19,” was co-authored with Léonard Boussioux, Ryan Cory-Wright, Arthur Delarue, Vassilis Digalakis Jr., Driss Lahlou Kitane, Michael Li, Agni Orfanoudaki, Theodore Papalexopoulos, Ivan Paskov, Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Holly Wiberg, and Cynthia Zeng (all MIT Operations Research Center PhD students advised by Bertsimas); Omar Skali Lami (ORC PhD student advised by Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis); Galit Lukin (Datadog, ORC SM ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Jean Pauphilet (London Business School, ORC PhD ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Luca Mingardi (Interpretable AI, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Hamza Tazi Bouardi (BCG GAMMA, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); and two of Bertsimas’s former postdocs, Omid Nohadani (Northwestern) and Bartolomeo Stellato (Princeton).

Dimitris Bertsimas and Alex Jacquillat have won the 2020 Pierskalla Best Paper Award from the Health Applications Society of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). This award recognizes research excellence in the field of health care management science.

Their winning paper, “From predictions to prescriptions: A data-driven response to COVID-19,” was co-authored with Léonard Boussioux, Ryan Cory-Wright, Arthur Delarue, Vassilis Digalakis Jr., Driss Lahlou Kitane, Michael Li, Agni Orfanoudaki, Theodore Papalexopoulos, Ivan Paskov, Kimberly Villalobos Carballo, Holly Wiberg, and Cynthia Zeng (all MIT Operations Research Center PhD students advised by Bertsimas); Omar Skali Lami (ORC PhD student advised by Bertsimas and Georgia Perakis); Galit Lukin (Datadog, ORC SM ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Jean Pauphilet (London Business School, ORC PhD ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Luca Mingardi (Interpretable AI, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); Hamza Tazi Bouardi (BCG GAMMA, MIT Sloan MBAn ’20, advised by Bertsimas); and two of Bertsimas’s former postdocs, Omid Nohadani (Northwestern) and Bartolomeo Stellato (Princeton).

Sinan Aral and Dean Eckles have won the 2020 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) eBusiness Section Best Paper Award. Their winning working paper, “Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from Large-Scale Field Experiments,” was co-authored with Jeremy Yang (their MIT Sloan PhD student) and Paramveer Dhillon (University of Michigan), who is a former MIT Sloan postdoc and research associate.

Sinan Aral and Dean Eckles have won the 2020 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) eBusiness Section Best Paper Award. Their winning working paper, “Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from Large-Scale Field Experiments,” was co-authored with Jeremy Yang (their MIT Sloan PhD student) and Paramveer Dhillon (University of Michigan), who is a former MIT Sloan postdoc and research associate.

Eric von Hippel has won the National Medal of Science from the Government of Portugal. This medal is the highest distinction the Portuguese Government awards to scientists and is intended “to reward national or foreign individuals who, for their high professional and duty-making qualities, have been distinguished by valuable and exceptional contributions to the development of science or scientific culture in Portugal.”  The four awardees were some of the founding members of the Patient Innovation Advisory Board. von Hippel’s award citation notes: “He is best known for developing the concept of user innovation, that end-users are responsible for a large amount of innovation, which motivated the work developed at Patient Innovation. This medal recognizes his continuous support to the Patient Innovation project from the very beginning.”

The Portuguese Government announced the winners November 3, 2020 in a ceremony in Lisbon, and this recently von Hippel gave a talk online at CIÊNCIA 2020 (National Science Summit 2020).  (An introduction of von Hippel begins at 7:38:58, and his talk (about 24.5 minutes) begins at 7:45:38.)

MIT Sloan Professor Roberto Rigobon and two MIT researchers – Florian Berg and Julian Koelbel – have won two awards from the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI): the 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize and the 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Standards. Their dual-winning paper is entitled “Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings.”
Videos of the award presentations (September 2020), including the authors discussing their winning paper, are at: 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize and 2020 GRASFI Best Paper Prize on ESG Standards.