Faculty

Haihao Lu (Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor and assistant professor of Operations Research and Statistics) has received a 2026 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which is “dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge.” This honor recognizes outstanding creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments; the achievements and potential of awarded Sloan Research Fellows “place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.”

Lu is one of eight MIT faculty members among the 126 Sloan Research Fellows chosen this year from over 1,000 nominations of early-career scholars by fellow scientists across seven fields — chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics (Lu's awarded area), neuroscience, and physics.  

The award was announced in February, and an MIT News article includes a profile of Lu and his research contributions.

S.P. Kothari (Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance, Emeritus) has received the American Accounting Association (AAA) Financial Accounting and Reporting Section (FARS) 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. FARS president Shana Clor-Proell wrote that this honor recognizes Kothari’s “exceptional and sustained contributions to financial accounting research” and his “leadership in shaping thought within our discipline.” 

The award was presented during the 2026 FARS Midyear Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Fiona Murray (William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management) has received an honorary degree of science from the University of Exeter (UK) “for her contribution to public service,” as “an expert in the formation and scaling of deep tech ventures that solve global challenges – most notably in defense, security, and resilience.”

This honor was announced online and formally bestowed in the university’s winter graduation ceremonies in December 2025 in Exeter.

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.

Sinan Aral, Emilio Castilla, Andy McAfee, Zeynep Ton, Geoff Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne have each received Thinkers50 honors in 2025. Since 2001, Thinkers50 has recognized leading business and management ideas every two years with their Top 50 global rankings of the most influential business thinkers, emerging Radar ones to watch, and Distinguished Achievement Awards in specific management categories—“the Oscars of Management Thinking” (Financial Times). 

The top 50 honorees on the Thinkers50 2025 Ranking of Management Thinkers include:

Sinan Aral (David Austin Professor of Management; Professor of Information Technology and Marketing; Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy—IDE), who “forensically and persuasively gets to the reality inside social media and tech”; 

Andy McAfee (Principal Research Scientist and Co-Director of the MIT IDE), who with Erik Brynjolfsson (former IDE Director) “launched into the thought leadership stratosphere in 2014 with ‘The Second Machine Age’”; 

Zeynep Ton (Professor of the Practice, Operations Management), “a leading voice on the case for good jobs,” who “explores how companies can satisfy customers, employees, and investors simultaneously”;

Marshall Van Alstyne & Geoffrey Parker (Digital Fellows at MIT IDE), who “developed the concept of two-sided markets, which is used extensively in platform business models, and delivered the first comprehensive analysis of platform technology.”

Emilio Castilla (NTU Professor of Management; Professor of Work and Organization Studies) is on the Thinkers50 2025 Talent Award Shortlist, recognizing “thought leaders who have illuminated the complexities and opportunities of the dynamic talent marketplace,” for his book entitled, “The Meritocracy Paradox: Where Talent Management Strategies Go Wrong and How to Fix Them.”

Andy McAfee is also on the Thinkers50 2025 Future Readiness Award Shortlist, celebrating “a visionary thinker who has profoundly advanced our understanding of what it means to be future ready,” for his books with Erik Brynjolfsson “exploring how digital technologies are transforming the economy, workforce, and society.”

The honors above were celebrated at the Thinkers50 London Summit & Awards Gala in November 2025.

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.