Alper Atamturk to be the next chair of UC Berkeley’s IEOR Department

The University of California, Berkeley Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (IEOR) is excited to announce that Professor Alper Atamturk will be the next chair of the IEOR department starting January 1st, 2021.

Alper joined the Berkeley faculty in 1998. His research spans optimization theory and methodologies broadly, including integer programming, sparse learning, network design, and optimization under uncertainty. He is the chair-elect of the INFORMS Optimization Society. Alper also serves as co-editor for Mathematical Programming, area editor for Mathematical Programming Computation, associate editor for Discrete Optimization and Journal of Risk; he served on the editorial boards of Networks, Operations Research, and Management Science. He is the director for the Berkeley Computational Optimization Lab. Alper is a Vannevar Bush Fellow of the US Department of Defense and a Fellow of INFORMS.

Alper will serve as the chair of IEOR during a period of growth due to the department’s new programs attracting undergraduate and graduate students with exciting career opportunities in academia, technology, and business.  “The demand for data-driven, automated decision-making is increasing rapidly across industries ranging from e-commerce to healthcare, from transportation to energy. With their expertise in optimization, stochastics, and data analytics, IEOR faculty and students are crafting innovative solutions for business and industry systems involving supply chains, logistics, energy, pricing, capacity planning, financing, and risk management. Student enrollments in our programs have more than doubled over the last five years and we expect this strong trend to continue,” says Alper. 

Alper is preceded by outgoing chair, Professor Max Shen, who served for two years in the position. During his tenure, the Department recruited two new tenure-track faculty members, worked with alum Terry Duryea to create the Duryea Family Fellowship to support Ph.D. students, and secured funding to support faculty research in emerging areas. Max oversaw the development of new educational programs, including the Master of Analytics degree, a new Engineering Analytics and Technology Management minor, and other undergraduate programs. Starting January 1st, 2021, Max Shen will serve as the Vice President for Research at the University of Hong Kong.