Meet our incoming PhD students: Autumn 2022
Management Science and Engineering is excited to welcome all incoming students as we begin the academic year!
As they arrived on campus, we had the pleasure of meeting some of our vibrant, diverse, and talented 2022 PhD cohort. The students come from specializations in a variety of fields, such as quantitative modeling, entrepreneurship, journalism, theoretical computer science, defense, non-profits, renewable energy, and more.
Get to know some of our newest PhD students below:

Meet Korina Arpášová
Hometown: Adelaide, Australia
"I am a quantitative researcher and modeler with extensive experience working in data analysis and modeling for defense and national security."

Meet Noah Benjamin-Pollak
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
"Through my work in journalism, I became fascinated by the qualities that differentiate how organizations respond to innovation and change within their industry."

Meet Jiale Chen
Hometown: Hangzhou, China
"I am motivated to observe and understand my surroundings, find the inefficiency, turn it into a theoretical problem, and design algorithms for improvements."

Meet Keertana Chidambaram
Hometown: Kochi, India
"I hope to contribute to the theoretical understanding of algorithms that have interesting applications in the real world."

Meet Zachary Dodge
Hometown: Seattle, Washington
"I am passionate about optimizing the many variables around satellite constellation replenishment. My work will contribute to the inevitable challenges that come with the new era of satellite proliferation."

Meet Morgan Knowlton
Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia
"My goal is to improve the well-being of children, especially those in foster care."

Meet Ervin L. McWilson II
Hometown: Pensacola, Florida
"I want to expand our knowledge of how African-American tech entrepreneurs succeed by developing a framework for characterizing their success."

Meet Nick Okafor
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
"I plan for my research to document the consequences of disruption and abolitionist business models toward innovation, as well as accelerate the responsible use of technology within the urban environment."

Meet Xueye Ping
Hometown: Wuxi, China
"I hope to leverage my expertise in quantitative modeling in finance to propose more efficient approaches to decision-making problems in the financial industry."

Meet Amanda Pratt
Hometown: Wisconsin
"I hope to contribute to a better understanding of how to facilitate technology change and adoption and provide practitioners with information that will enable successful transformations."

Meet Jarrod Shingleton
Hometown: Albuquerque, New Mexico
"I would like to provide the leaders of the Army with options based on empirical analysis and the available data."

Meet Mike Van Ness
Hometown: Connecticut
"I would love to be able to use my PhD to promote data science for positive social impact in industry, and/or to teach the next generation of data scientists through academia."

Meet Joyee Wang
Hometown: Suzhou, China
"I hope to utilize theories of mathematics and tools of computer science to solve challenges in areas including, but not limited to, energy, healthcare, and finance."

Meet Anders Wikum
Hometown: Green Bay, Wisconsin
"I want to be in a position where I can work on problems in operations research and computer science that are both theoretically interesting and have a direct impact on people’s lives."