Faculty

Alexandre Jacquillat, Maurice F. Strong Career Development Associate Professor and Associate Professor of Operations Research/Statistics, has received the 2025 Donald P. Gaver, Jr. Early Career Award for Excellence in Operations Research from INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences). This INFORMS-wide award recognizes early-career scholars (within 10 years of receiving their PhD) for “creative and diverse work in operations research.”

The award citation notes Jacquillat’s “outstanding contributions to operations research in the development of innovative models and algorithms for data-driven optimization and decision making in diverse applications ranging from air transportation and urban mobility, to logistics and supply chains, especially those affecting social good; and … outstanding contributions to educate and mentor students.”

The award was announced online and at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Stuart Madnick, John Norris Maguire (1960) Professor of Information Technology and founding director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS), and Angelica Marotta, CAMS research affiliate, have won the 2025 Best Conference Paper Award, recognizing outstanding research, from the International Association for Computer Information Systems (IACIS).

Their winning paper is titled The UN Cybercrime Treaty and AI: Navigating the Intersection of Technology and Global Policy (Issues in Information Systems, 26(4), 1-16, 2025).

The award was presented at the 2025 IACIS Annual Conference in Clearwater Beach, FL.

Emil Verner (Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Financial Economics; Professor of Finance) has won the John W. Ryan Award for Most Significant Contribution to Community Banking Research from the 2025 Community Banking Research Conference. The conference, which “encourages more data and research on community banks for better informed policy decisions,” is co-sponsored by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Verner’s winning paper, titled “Supervising Failing Banks,” is co-authored with Sergio Correia (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond) and Stephan Luck (Federal Reserve Bank of New York).  The award announcement notes that the paper “shows that supervisors anticipate most bank failures with a high degree of accuracy,” and its “findings underscore that adequate supervisory oversight can hasten the closure of troubled banks, which lowers the cost of bank failures.”

The award was presented St. Louis at the 2025 Community Banking Research Conference.

Jackson Lu, General Motors Associate Professor of Management and associate professor of Work and Organization Studies, has recently received four honors:

First, Lu received the 2025 Cummings Early to Mid-Career Scholarly Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management (AOM). This award places a high value on rigor (scientific quality and methodological soundness of work), relevance (impact of work on the field and society), and relationships (collaborative efforts, leadership, and involvement within the field and community). The award committee noted Lu’s thought leadership and service and described his work as “rigorous, highly impactful, well-rounded and multidisciplinary, crossing wider topics of organizational behavior with culture and diversity.” The full award citation includes: “He exemplifies early-career excellence through groundbreaking research that has fundamentally challenged conventional understanding of workplace diversity and organizational behavior. Professor Lu's research on the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ has revolutionized understanding of Asian American workplace experiences. His work has revealed why East Asians face leadership underrepresentation despite educational success, identifying cultural assertiveness rather than discrimination as the primary mechanism. This work has been featured in over 300 media outlets … demonstrating exceptional translation of academic insights to public discourse.” 

Second, Lu won the 2025 Best Paper in Management Education and Development Award from the AOM MED (Management Education and Development) Division. His winning paper, “Breaking Ceilings: Debate Training Promotes Leadership Emergence by Increasing Assertiveness” (published recently in Journal of Applied Psychology, 110(9), 1225-1239), is co-authored with Michelle X. Zhao (Washington University in St. Louis), Hui Liao (University of Maryland), and Lu Doris Zhang (MIT Sloan PhD student).

The two awards above were presented in July at the AOM 2025 Annual Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Third, Lu received the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR) 2025 Best Conference Micro Paper Award, which recognizes an outstanding paper “that deals with individual and group level issues within the organizational setting, including topics such as leadership, motivation, conflict, group dynamics, individual attitudes and performance, as well as cross-cultural issues at the individual or group levels.” Lu’s winning paper, “Artificial Intelligence Quotient (AIQ),” which introduces the novel concept of AIQ, is co-authored with Xin Qin, Chen Chen, Xiang Zhou, and Yuqing Gan (all from Sun Yat-sen University); Wanlu Li (Guangdong University of Finance & Economics); and Lesley Luyang Song (Tsinghua University). The award was presented in June at the IACMR Biennial Conference in Xi’an, China.

Fourth, the paper above, “Artificial Intelligence Quotient (AIQ),” was also a finalist for the AOM’s Managerial and Organizational Cognition (MOC) Division’s 2025 Best Paper with Practical Implications for Organizations.

Roberto Rigobon, Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and Professor of Applied Economics, has won the Best Paper Award from the Miami University Finance and Real Estate Conference 2025.

Rigobon’s winning paper, titled “Timing Sustainable Shareholder Proposals in Real Asset Investments,” is co-authored with Bram van der Kroft (MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium Impact Fellow), Juan Palacios (Visiting Faculty at MIT Center for Real Estate; Maastricht University), and Siqi Zheng (Faculty Director of MIT Center for Real Estate; STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability).

The award was presented at the Finance and Real Estate Conference 2025, held at the Miami University Farmer School of Business in Oxford, Ohio.

The En-ROADS climate solutions simulator team has won the 2025 System Dynamics Applications Award from the System Dynamics Society. This award recognizes the best “real world” application of System Dynamics within the past decade, “based primarily on demonstrated measurable benefit to an organization through the use of System Dynamics.”

The team contributing to developing En-ROADS includes: John Sterman (Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and professor of System Dynamics; co-faculty director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; senior advisor of Climate Interactive), Andrew Jones (executive director and co-founder of Climate Interactive; research affiliate), Bethany Patten (executive director of MIT Climate Policy Center; senior lecturer), Jason Jay (director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; senior lecturer), Krystal Noiseux (senior associate director of MIT Climate Pathways Project), Michael Sonnenfeldt (Climate Pathways Project leadership team; founder and chairman of MUUS & Company), Travis Franck (Tufts Climate Policy Lab; Climate Interactive climate ambassador; research affiliate); Jack Homer (Homer Consulting; Climate Interactive technical and modeling partner; research affiliate), and Florian Kapmeier (ESB Business School; Climate Interactive climate ambassador and technical and modeling partner; research affiliate).

En-ROADS is an interactive online simulation tool co-developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan and used in the Climate Pathways Project (CPP), a collaboration of the MIT Climate Policy Center, MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and Climate Interactive, to test and visualize global impacts of policies and advance the adoption of evidence-based climate policy through public- and private-sector leaders—almost 20,000 of whom have used the climate solutions simulator to date. 

“[En-ROADS] goes beyond, far beyond, exceptional climate science, and rigorous climate modeling … It exemplifies the use of system dynamics to make a difference … It finds numerous ways to make the modeling and insight accessible and understandable. It is a truly unique specimen of system dynamics for the masses” (Brad Morrison, award selection committee chair).

Contributing team members currently or formerly with Climate Interactive include: Bindu Bhandari (United Nations), Chris Campbell, Janet Chikofsky, Ava De Leon, Kaveh Dianati, Sibel Eker (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis—IIASA), Khaled Gaafar, Clara Iglesias, Ellie Johnston, Charles (Skuk) Jones, Joshua Loughman (Arizona State Univ.), Katherine Markova, Stephanie McCauley (Multisolving Institute); Caroline Reed, Philip Rice, Danielle San Filippo, Elizabeth Sawin (Multisolving Institute); Lori Siegel, Sam Wellington, and Yasmeen Zahar. Additional team members include Lucia Cheney (UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative), Adem Delibas (Ventana Systems), Tom Fiddaman (Ventana Systems), Todd Fincannon (Energy Innovation), Elizabeth Keating (MIT PhD ’99), Ken Rath (Rath Educational Evaluation and Research), Juliette Rooney-Varga (UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative), and Chris Soderquist (Pontifex Consulting).

The award was presented at the 2025 International System Dynamics Conference in Boston. More information can be found in this article.

The 2025 Financial Times Responsible Business Awards has recognized the following MIT Sloan-affiliated faculty and staff:  Florian Berg (principal research scientist; lecturer; Aggregate Confusion project co-founder), Julian Koelbel (research affiliate; Aggregate Confusion project co-founder), Roberto Rigobon (Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management and professor of Applied Economics; faculty director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative), Jason Jay (director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; senior lecturer), John Sterman (Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and professor of System Dynamics; co-faculty director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative), Andrew Jones (executive director and co-founder of Climate Interactive; research affiliate), Bethany Patten (executive director of MIT Climate Policy Center; senior lecturer), Krystal Noiseux (senior associate director of MIT Climate Pathways Project), and Michael Sonnenfeldt (Climate Pathways Project Leadership team; founder and chairman of MUUS & Company). These awards recognize faculty, researchers, and students for positive societal and environmental impact achieved at business schools in three categories: academic projects which impact policy or practice, teaching based on innovative research, and student start-up or non-profit projects.

MIT Sloan’s Aggregate Confusion Project (led by Berg, Jay, Koelbel, and Rigobon) was a winner in the “Academic research with impact” category. The Aggregate Confusion Project is addressing problematic inconsistency in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) ratings by advocating for more transparency and better methodologies to improve the quality of ESG measurement in the financial sector. Their research has had significant impact on policymakers, rating agencies, investors, and regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the same category for impactful academic research, the MIT Climate Policy Center’s Climate Pathways Project a “Highly Commended” designation (recognizing Sterman, Jones, Patten, Sonnenfeldt, Jay, and Noiseux). The CPP leverages interactive simulations C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support) and En-ROADS, co-developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan, to test and visualize global impacts of policies and advance the adoption of evidence-based climate policy through public- and private-sector leaders.

Also “Highly Commended,” in the category for teaching based on innovative research, were Jay and Sterman for integrating the Sustainability Initiative’s transition risk assignment using the En-ROADS climate solutions simulator into the curriculum of both MBA and executive-education students, enabling them to assess climate change transition risks for businesses in real-world contexts.

The awards were announced (for research and teaching above) in January 2025.

Negin Golrezaei, Theresa Seley Associate Professor in Management Science and Associate Professor of Operations Management, has received two honors:

First, Golrezaei won the 2025 Best Operations Management Paper in Operations Research Award from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society. This biennial award recognizes “the most significant contribution to the theory and practice of operations management” published in the journal in the preceding four years.

Golrezaei’s winning paper, “Learning Product Rankings Robust to Fake Users” (Operations Research 71(4):1171-1196, 2022), was co-authored with Vahideh Manshadi (Yale University), Jon Schneider (Google Research New York), and Shreyas Sekar (University of Toronto Scarborough). The paper addresses a growing challenge in digital platforms: how to learn product rankings when the platform is manipulated by fake users — such as those generated by click farms.

The award was presented in June at the 2025 INFORMS MSOM Conference in London.

Second, Golrezaei was selected for the Poets & Quants 2025 Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors list.

Steven Spear’s book, “Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness Through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification” (2023, IT Revolution), which was co-authored with Gene Kim (founder and former CTO of Tripwire), has received two honors.

First, “Wiring the Winning Organization” won the Shingo Publication Award from the Shingo Institute at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. This award, which is particularly interested in recognizing thought leadership, “recognizes and promotes writing that has had a significant impact and advances the body of knowledge regarding organizational excellence.” This is the sixth time one of Spear’s publications has received this honor in the past 25 years. 

Second, the book received the 2025 Crosby Medal from the American Society for Quality, which recognizes a “distinguished book contributing significantly to the extension of the philosophy and application of the principles, methods, or techniques of quality management.” The citation notes “creating a groundbreaking approach to organizational management with “Wiring the Winning Organization,” bringing together modern ways of working [methodologies] like lean, DevOps, and agile into one universal approach that leaders of any size organization can use to enable their employees to excel and their organizations to thrive.” This is the second of Spear’s books to receive this award.

Retsef Levi has been chosen to serve on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. This committee provides advice and guidance to leaders of the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This appointment is for four years.