Nikhil Garg wins INFORMS Dantzig award

Congratulations to Nikhil Garg (PhD '20 Electrical Engineering) for winning the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award from INFORMS!

Garg won the award for his dissertation titled "Designing Marketplaces and Civic Engagement Platforms: Learning, Incentives, and Pricing." The full text, as well as talks, are available on his website.

Garg was a student of Electrical Engineering at Stanford and was integrated into the MS&E community. His primary dissertation advisor was MS&E Professor Ashish Goel, and MS&E Prof. Ramesh Johari sat on his dissertation committee. Garg also teamed up with Prof. Johari for a study that tested a surprisingly simple alternative to number- and star-based rating systems: Get people to make evaluations in words.

The George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award is given for the best dissertation in any area of operations research and the management sciences that is innovative and relevant to practice. This award has been established to encourage academic research that combines theory and practice and stimulates greater interaction between doctoral students (and their advisors) and the world of practice. The award is given at the INFORMS Annual Meeting.

Dantzig, known as the creator of the field of linear programming, was a Professor of Operations Research at Stanford, which later merged with additional departments to form MS&E.