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Election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is one of the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer — its members are senior engineering professionals who have made significant contributions to their fields. Over the years, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) has had 10 faculty members in the NAE — nine of whom were elected while at Georgia Tech.

“Our faculty are innovators and leaders in their fields, and their elections into the NAE further confirms this,” said ISyE School Chair Edwin Romeijn. “They have all made — and many continue to make — tremendous contributions to their fields of study, ISyE, and Georgia Tech.”

George Nemhauser
A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Institute Professor
Election year: 1986

Election Citation: For fundamental operations-research contributions in scheduling methodology and for contributions to large-scale combinatorial optimization problems.

George Nemhauser joined the ISyE faculty in 1985 as the recipient of the first endowed chair position at Georgia Tech. Just a year later he was elected to the NAE, making him the second member of the Georgia Tech community to join the prestigious organization (the other was then–Georgia Tech President Joseph Pettit). For a time, Nemhauser was the only NAE member at Georgia Tech and in the state of Georgia.

Nemhauser’s research interests are in solving large-scale mixed-integer programming problems. He has done significant work in airline optimization and is a partner in the Sports Scheduling Group, which provides schedules for Major League Baseball and university athletic conferences.

Donald Ratliff
Regents Professor Emeritus and Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center
Election year: 1996

Election Citation: For research, education, and leadership in the development and implementation of interactive network optimization methods for logic systems.

Donald Ratliff joined ISyE in 1978 as the UPS Professor of Logistics. He was founding executive director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech, which under his leadership became the largest research program of its kind in the world. In this role he also managed research centers in Panama and Singapore.

He helped pioneer the development of software tools to design supply chain networks and optimize last mile delivery processes. He has worked with a wide variety of companies and organizations during his career to improve their supply chains.

In 2012, Ratliff became professor emeritus at ISyE and currently serves as co-director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center. He also serves as founder and CEO of Delivery Dynamics.

Jeff Wu
Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor
Election year: 2004

Election Citation: For conceiving and building modern systems of experimental design based on contemporary methods for parameter estimating to provide quality improvements.

Jeff Wu joined ISyE in 2003. Throughout his career, he has made fundamental contributions to the methodological and theoretical developments of a wide variety of statistical and application areas. In his 1997 inaugural lecture for the Carver Chair, he coined the term “data science” and advocated that statistics be renamed data science and statistician become data scientist.

Wu’s work is widely cited in professional journals and magazines. He has served as editor or associate editor for several major statistical journals and has published more than 180 research articles in peer review journals.

Arkadi Nemirovski
John Hunter Chair and Professor
Election year: 2017

Election Citation: For the development of efficient algorithms for large-scale optimization problems.

Arkadi Nemirovski joined ISyE in 2005, and he has made many fundamental contributions to the field of continuous optimization theory and algorithms during his impressive career. These include the invention, at just 27 years old, of the ellipsoid method— one of the most fundamental developments in optimization — and developing the interior point method with Yurii Nesterov.

He made significant contributions in almost all aspects of continuous optimization, including complexity, numerical methods, and stochastic optimization, and in non-parametric statistics.

Jianjun “Jan” Shi
Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor
Election year: 2018

Election Citation: For development of data fusion–based quality methods and their implementation in multistage manufacturing systems.

Jianjun “Jan” Shi joined ISyE in 2008. His research covers the development and application of data-enabled manufacturing. Shi’s methodologies integrate system informatics, advanced statistics, and control theory for design and operational improvements of manufacturing and service systems by fusing engineering systems models with data science methods.

Shi is a pioneer in his field, and the technologies developed in his group have been widely implemented in various production systems with significant economic impacts. 

Alexander Shapiro
A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor
Election year: 2020

Election Citation: For contributions to the theory, computation, and application of stochastic programming.

Alexander Shapiro joined ISyE in 1991. He has made extensive contributions to the field of optimization, including simulation-based optimization, stochastic programming, and non-smooth analysis. He has used stochastic programming — a technique useful for modeling complex systems under conditions of uncertainty — to optimize power systems and ensure that electricity generation meets demand at the lowest possible cost.

Shapiro's research interests also focus on risk analysis, sensitivity analysis of nonlinear programs, and multivariate statistical analysis.

In addition to the faculty listed above, four additional NAE members have been part of the ISyE community: John White, Ellis Johnson, William Rouse, and William Cook.

John White joined the ISyE faculty in 1975 and was elected to the NAE in 1987 “for the creative development of engineering principles and computational procedures used in the design and analysis of material handling systems.” From 1991 to 1997, White served as dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. In 1997 he left Georgia Tech to become chancellor at the University of Arkansas.

Ellis Johnson was elected to the NAE in 1988 for “fundamental contributions to discrete optimization and software design and its practical applications to distribution and manufacturing systems.” He came to Georgia Tech in 1989 and served as Coca-Cola Chair and professor at ISyE from 1993 until his retirement in 2012, when he became professor emeritus. Johnson is a world leader in integer programming and airline optimization and made many significant contributions during his time at ISyE.

William Rouse was a member of the ISyE faculty from 1981 to 1987 and became an adjunct professor in 1988. He served as School Chair from 2001 to 2004. In 1991 he was elected to the NAE “for pioneering development of models of human-system interaction for applications in complex engineering systems.” He holds professor emeritus status at ISyE and is currently on the faculty at Georgetown University.

William Cook was a member of the ISyE faculty from 2002 to 2013 and served as Chandler Family Chair and professor. He was elected to the NAE in 2011 “for theoretical and computational contributions to discrete optimization.” He is currently on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University.