Faculty

Taha Choukhmane, Albert F. (1942) & Jeanne P. Clear Career Development Assistant Professor in Global Management and Assistant Professor of Finance, has won the 2025 TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security from the TIAA Institute.

Choukhmane’s winning paper, co-authored with Lucas Goodman (U.S. Department of the Treasury) and Cormac O’Dea (Yale University), is titled “Efficiency in Household Decision-Making: Evidence from the Retirement Savings of US Couples” (American Economic Review, 115 (5):1485-1519, May 2025). Professor Antoinette Schoar, one of the award judges, said, “This paper offers novel evidence that many couples leave substantial retirement savings unclaimed simply because they fail to coordinate contributions. This is a great example of how careful analysis combined with great data can shed light on important inefficiencies in household financial decisions — with practical implications for policy makers and individuals.” 

The award was announced and presented in January 2026, in Philadelphia, at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations held by the American Economic Association in conjunction with 66 other associations.

Dimitris Bertsimas (Boeing Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management; Professor of Operations Research; Associate Dean, Online Education & Artificial Intelligence; and Vice Provost for Open Learning) has received an honorary doctorate from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he graduated 40 years ago before obtaining his SM and PhD degrees at MIT.

This honor was formally bestowed in a ceremony in December 2025, in Athens, and was announced online (the linked page is in Greek but may be translated and includes a video of Bertsimas’s presentation, “A Journey from Operations Research to AI and to the Future,” with slides in English at 40:12 of the video). Attendees included representatives from the academic, scientific, and business communities, reflecting the broad scope and impact of Bertsimas’s work. The event’s opening address noted his international scientific renown and his decisive contributions to business research, artificial intelligence, and data science.

Georgia Perakis, William F. Pounds Professor of Management and Professor of Operations Management and of Operations Research and Statistics, has recently received three honors:

First, Perakis received the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Distinguished Service Award from the INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) MSOM Society. This honor recognizes exceptional leadership and distinguished service, exemplified in Perakis’s serving over four years as editor-in-chief of the society’s flagship journal, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. The citation notes that “she has been an extraordinary leader in not just managing the day-to-day operations of the journal but also in introducing several innovations that strengthen the journal.” The award was presented in October 2025, during the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA.

Second, Perakis received the Salzburg Medallion from the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. The award honors Perakis’s “outstanding leadership and innovation in the field of supply chain management” and “efforts in solving complex problems and educating others.” The certificate citation states that the Medallion is “in honor of her visionary leadership in supply chain management ... as one of the preeminent academics in the field ... recognized as a leader in solving complex problems in analytics, optimization, and dynamic pricing.” Also, “[Her] groundbreaking work in operations research and machine learning has led to transformative advances in how organizations leverage analytics to make better operational decisions. [Her] research in revenue management, supply chain optimization and healthcare operations has inspired students and enabled leaders across industries to improve efficiency, responsiveness, and profitability in the face of uncertainty and change.”

This award was announced in December 2025, after being presented in November at the 76th Annual Harry E. Salzberg Memorial Lecture Program in Syracuse, NY.

Third, Perakis’s co-authored case with Angela Lin (her PhD student) and Dessislava Pachamanova (MIT Operations Research Center graduate and current research affiliate; now faculty at Babson College), titled “Reinforcement Learning for Clinical Decision Support,” was a finalist in the INFORMS Case Competition last fall.

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.

Vivek Farias, Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor and Professor of Operations Management, has been named a 2025 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Fellow, “one of the highest professional honors in operations research, analytics and AI,” according to the recent announcement.

INFORMS Executive Director Elena Gerstmann stated, “Our INFORMS Fellows embody the highest level of achievement in operations research and analytics … Through their pioneering research, leadership, and service, they have strengthened our profession and demonstrated the transformative power of data-driven decision making.” Farias was specifically recognized “for his algorithmic contributions to dynamic optimization with sustained impact on practice.”

The award was presented at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

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.