The impact of faculty launch funds
The generosity of the MS&E community allows us to jumpstart promising new faculty research careers through faculty launch funds. These funds are a crucial way MS&E supports rising academic stars as they begin their Stanford careers.
Launch funds also allow faculty to pursue emerging and theoretical research, for which there are typically fewer external funding opportunities than more mature and applied research areas. This basic research can set the stage for innovation and applications that wouldn't otherwise have been discovered.
Hear about the impact of these startup funds directly from some of our faculty below, with links to examples of research that was supported by launch funds.
Vasilis Syrgkanis, Assistant Professor of MS&E
Professor Syrgkanis came to MS&E in 2022, after beginning his career at Microsoft Research. His work explores the areas of machine learning, causal inference, econometrics, game theory, mechanism design, algorithms, and complexity.
"Having access to startup funds was instrumental. When you start as a junior faculty, there are so many things to take care of and worry about. It’s great that in the first couple years there is some relief in getting funding to get your research group started.
The first step in your career is hiring PhD students and working with those students, and my startup funds allowed me to immediately jumpstart my research group and hire students.
Also, later on, I was able to work on topics that wouldn't be easily funded by government agencies or organizations with other priorities. Projects that are more on the theoretical side or have less immediate applicability tend to have fewer funding opportunities available. My startup funds allowed me to dive into more fundamental theoretical work with students without having to worry about whether it could be funded externally."
Melissa Valentine, Associate Professor of MS&E
Professor Valentine started in MS&E in 2013. She studies flash teams, coordination among groups and teams, and how AI is influencing organizational design.
"When I gave my job talk at Stanford, I was coming from Harvard Business School, where I was studying temporary teams. A PhD student heard my talk and realized that it would be relevant to a project that she was working on with Michael Bernstein, who is on the faculty in Computer Science. She connected us, and because of my startup funds, I was able to start doing research with Michael and that team of interdisciplinary researchers as soon as I got to Stanford.
This kind of research might have been hard to fund externally, because it's interdisciplinary and innovative; it was exploring new ways of thinking about things that didn't exist outside of our small research group. But because of my startup funds, I was able to see this really promising idea and get started on it right away.
That research stream led to award winning papers and a book, and it really defined a research area. I think it was very specific to Stanford Engineering at the time, and very specific to this interdisciplinary project."
Note: Links to papers, above, may require logins and/or subscriptions.
Markus Pelger, Associate Professor of MS&E
Professor Pelger started in MS&E in 2015. His research aims to perfect machine learning techniques to help finance professionals make better investments.
"The startup funds I received were crucial in getting my research group off the ground quickly at Stanford and starting work on important projects. These funds were essential for gaining access to advanced computational resources and supporting travel to present our research at key conferences.
My startup funds also allowed me to support excellent PhD students who are now key members of my research team, several of whom have become faculty themselves. They enabled us to take on innovative and risky projects that might have been too difficult to start without this initial support.
One of our major projects uses machine learning to improve how we predict stock market returns and make better investment decisions. By applying domain knowledge, like a "no-arbitrage" constraint, our models have become three times more effective at making profitable investments compared to standard methods.
Startup funds not only sped up my research but also had a big impact on my students. They have been able to work on advanced, data-driven projects from the start, which has greatly enhanced their learning and allowed them to contribute to important advancements in financial technology."
Madeleine Udell, Assistant Professor of MS&E
Professor Udell came to MS&E in 2022, after holding a faculty position at Cornell University. Her research helps put the power of advanced optimization modeling tools into the hands of everyday decision makers.
"My startup funds are a wonderful security blanket. They guarantee I'll be able to provide for my PhD students and get them to the impactful careers they'll have in industry and education after Stanford. My startup backs up the promise I make to them to support their research as long as they’re making progress, no matter the vagaries of federal funding.
Startup funds also allow me to take risks on new areas that aren't ready for the intense competition of external funding yet. They let me pursue academia as it should be: Researching the problems I think will make the biggest impact, rather than the problems I've already solved—and therefore can write a compelling proposal for—in well-funded areas."