Message from the Chair

I am honored to be Chair of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

The department's students, faculty, and alumni have a rich tradition of making significant contributions to the profession and continue to be recognized at the national level. A few noteworthy accomplishments during the past year include Professor Berok Khoshnevis being elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his work in 3D printing, Professor Jong-Shi Pang receiving the INFORMS John von Neumann Theory Prize for his research in equilibrium programming and multi-agent optimization, and alumna, Lt. General Stayce Harris, being honored with the IISE Captains of Industry Award for her leadership in the United States Air Force.

In 2002, we became the first named department at the University of Southern California - The Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The founder and CEO of ConAm Management Corporation, Daniel Epstein, used his ISE education to become a leading real estate developer. Mr. Epstein donated $11 million to the department, enabling us to recruit the best faculty members our field has to offer, naming two Chair Professorships currently held by Jong-Shi Pang and Sheldon Ross, and to support our students in many ways -- some of which are described below.

We are pleased to announce two new faculty hires during the past year: Andres Gomez and Renyuan Xu. During the past two years, Andres was a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and is working at the interface between discrete optimization and data science. Renyuan Xu received her PhD from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research area is in stochastic control and game theory, with primary applications in social networks. Renyuan is currently doing a Post-doc at Oxford University before joining our department in the Fall of 2020.

Like USC as a whole, our commitment to excellence is evident in our state-of-the-art curriculum, distinguished faculty, and exceptional students. We invite you to explore some of our "greatest hits" from the past year, highlighted in this newsletter.

Maged Dessouky, Dean's Professor and Chair