Technology Review highlights 3D Purple America election map

By On November 15, 2012 · In Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Uncategorized


MIT Tech­nol­ogy Review this week high­lights Robert Van­der­bei’s 3D Pur­ple Amer­ica map, a nuanced visu­al­iza­tion of the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion show­ing the pro­por­tion of peo­ple who voted Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can, county by county, as a gra­di­ent between blue and red. The height of the hor­i­zon­tal bars indi­cates how many […]

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Holmes, Massey named inaugural AMS fellows

By On November 12, 2012 · In mechanical and aerospace, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science

Prince­ton Engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sors Philip Holmes and William Massey have been named to the inau­gural class of Fel­lows of the Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Soci­ety, the world’s largest and most influ­en­tial soci­ety ded­i­cated to math­e­mat­i­cal research, schol­ar­ship, and education.

Holmes is the Eugene Hig­gins Pro­fes­sor of Mechan­i­cal […]

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Vanderbei maps a global look at local climate change

By On September 17, 2012 · In Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Robert Van­der­bei has pub­lished a new paper describ­ing a com­puter pro­gram that allows one to ana­lyze data from a spe­cific weather sta­tion to detect whether the local cli­mate has changed. First he applied the model to data from a local New Jer­sey weather sta­tion, which showed that tem­per­a­tures have gone […]

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Solving the problem of the traveling politician

By On December 28, 2011 · In Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Mitt Rom­ney begins his three-day tour of Iowa today in antic­i­pa­tion of next week’s cau­cuses. What is the opti­mal path for him to travel in order to hit all 99 counties?

This is a ver­sion of some­thing known as “the trav­el­ing sales­man prob­lem,” one of the great unsolved […]

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Robert J. Moore ’06 on the power of data

By On November 16, 2011 · In innovation, Keller Center, Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Last week­end Robert J. Moore, co-founder of R.J. Met­rics and a 2006 Prince­ton Engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate, was in town to be a judge at a startup net­work­ing event orga­nized by students

Mom­chil Tomov, Ryan Shea, and Vivian Qu.

If you missed the event, you may want to take in this TEDx […]

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Jamol Pender wins INFORMS student competition

By On October 10, 2011 · In Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Fourth-year grad­u­ate stu­dent Jamol Pen­der (at right in photo) last week was named the win­ner of the INFORMS 2011 New Jer­sey chap­ter stu­dent con­test. Pen­der, who is in the depart­ment of oper­a­tions research and finan­cial engi­neer­ing, is research­ing queue­ing the­ory inspired by prob­lems in com­mu­ni­ca­tions centers.

[…]

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Powell Lab algorithms help Schneider National save millions

By On August 26, 2011 · In innovation, Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Forbes magazine’s Sep­tem­ber 12 issue has a nice piece by Helen Coster on how truck­ing com­pany Schnei­der National decided to invest in a fleet-wide “tac­ti­cal plan­ning sim­u­la­tor” that used algo­rithms devel­oped by Prince­ton Engineering’s War­ren Pow­ell to “mimic the deci­sion mak­ing of human dis­patch­ers on an inhu­manly large scale.”

“What inter­ested Schneider, […]

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Wired’s AI issue features Warren Powell’s research

By On January 19, 2011 · In innovation, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton Engineering alumni

The cover story in the Jan­u­ary issue of Wired is devoted to research at the fore­front of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. “Today’s AI doesn’t try to re-create the brain,” Wired writes. “Instead, it uses machine learn­ing, mas­sive data sets, sophis­ti­cated sen­sors, and clever algo­rithms to mas­ter discrete tasks.”

The piece fea­tures trans­porta­tion algo­rithms devel­oped by Prince­ton researchers to […]

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Flock on! Dancers and engineers collaborate to explore collective motion

By On November 15, 2010 · In computer science, mechanical and aerospace, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton Engineering alumni, School of Engineering and Applied Science

What hap­pens when humans behave as if they were school­ing fish or swarm­ing insects or flocking birds?

Well, we are about to find out. Engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor Naomi Ehrich Leonard ’85 and chore­o­g­ra­pher Susan Mar­shall are con­spir­ing with a cre­ative group of under­grad­u­ates to host

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New book sizes up the Universe

By On October 15, 2010 · In Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Prince­ton Engineering’s Robert Van­der­bei’s new book on the cos­mos, Siz­ing Up the Uni­verse, hasn’t hit book­stores yet but astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­ium, is call­ing it “a feast for the eyes and a ban­quet for the mind.”

The highly illus­trated book, pub­lished by National Geographic […]

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