Faculty

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.

Catherine Tucker and Duncan Simester have won the 2020 Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award from the American Marketing Association. This award recognizes a Journal of Marketing Research article published five years earlier that has made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice. Their winning paper, “Harbingers of Failure” (Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 52, No. 5, October 2015), was co-authored with Song Lin (HKUST Business School), who was an MIT Sloan PhD student when the paper was written (PhD 2015), and Eric Anderson (Kellogg School of Management), who also obtained his PhD at MIT Sloan (in 1995).

Rodrigo Verdi has won a 2020 Teaching with Digital Technology Award from MIT for his work teaching on campus and/or remotely. Verdi won the award along with fellow Sloan faculty members Kara Blackburn, Vivek Farias, Michelle Hanlon, Alexandre Jacquillat, Miro Kazakoff, and Ben Shields. These student-nominated awards recognize faculty and instructors who have used digital technology to improve teaching and learning for MIT students. This recognition also gives the MIT community the opportunity to learn from their innovative practices. The awards were co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. This year, students submitted a total of 487 nominations for 232 faculty and instructors, and 30 winners were selected by Dean of Digital Learning Krishna Rajagopal and Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz, with help from MIT Open Learning staff. 

Miro Kazakoff has won a 2020 Teaching with Digital Technology Award from MIT for his work teaching on campus and/or remotely. Kazakoff won the award along with fellow Sloan faculty members Kara Blackburn, Vivek Farias, Michelle Hanlon, Alexandre Jacquillat, Ben Shields, and Rodrigo Verdi. These student-nominated awards recognize faculty and instructors who have used digital technology to improve teaching and learning for MIT students. This recognition also gives the MIT community the opportunity to learn from their innovative practices. The awards were co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. This year, students submitted a total of 487 nominations for 232 faculty and instructors, and 30 winners were selected by Dean of Digital Learning Krishna Rajagopal and Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz, with help from MIT Open Learning staff.