Two more CEAT faculty members recognized with NSF CAREER Awards
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Two more faculty members of Oklahoma State University’s (OSU) College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT) have been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program award (CAREER).
Austin Buchanan and Farzad Yousefian, both assistant professors in the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM), are the latest CEAT faculty members to receive the NSF’s most prestigious award for early-career faculty members.
Buchanan joined OSU IEM as an assistant professor in August 2015. Prior to that, he earned a BS in IEM from OSU and a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Texas A&M University. He works in operations research, and is particularly interested in network optimization problems that have connectivity or distance constraints. He currently serves as an associate editor for the academic journals Networks and Optimization Letters. He is an active member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and has served in leadership roles in the Optimization Society, the Subdivisions Council, and the Section on Telecommunications & Network Analytics. His research is funded by the NSF and private industry.
Beginning in June 2020, Dr. Buchanan will lead a 5-year research project funded by the NSF entitled "CAREER: Parsimonious Models for Redistricting." As part of this project, the research team will develop new integer programming models and methods for designing political redistricting plans. These models will be able to answer questions such as: (1) what is the most compact redistricting plan for a given state? (2) How many counties can be kept whole? (3) How might a redistricting plan ensure minority-opportunity districts? This work will lead to a better understanding of the trade-offs encountered when designing districts and establish politically neutral baselines for comparison.
“Winning the CAREER award is a big honor for me,” Buchanan said. “It will provide a stable, longer-term source of funding for me and my students, allowing us to focus on the research and outreach.”
Yousefian has been an assistant professor in IEM at OSU since August 2015, as well. Before joining IEM, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. His research focus is on the design and analysis of algorithms for addressing large-scale optimization and equilibrium problems arising from machine learning and multi-agent systems. His research has appeared in leading journals in optimization and control, such as Mathematical Programming, Automatica, and several IEEE journals and conference proceedings. He is a member of Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and INFORMS.
Yousefian has received an NSF CAREER award for his proposal "Advancing Mathematical Models and Algorithms for Decentralized Optimization in Complex Multi-agent Networks". With support from this 5-year NSF grant, Yousefian and his research group aim to advance the state-of-the-art in distributed optimization by development of new models, mathematical tools, and computational methods to address emerging complex multi-agent applications. Examples of such applications include distributed remote sensing, decentralized economic dispatch models with renewable energy, and distributed efficiency estimation in transportation networks. This award will also support increasing awareness and interest among high school students in Stillwater, formal and informal educators, and college students in STEM fields through several fully integrated educational and outreach activities.
“It is truly an honor to receive this prestigious award and to see my work recognized by the NSF,” Yousefian said. “I am thrilled to be advising young and talented researchers including Ph.D., masters and undergraduate students on this important research topic.”
The CAREER program was developed to support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in both research and education, as well as lead advances in their departments or organizations.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jeff Hopper | CEAT Marketing | 405-744-2745 | jeff.hopper@okstate.edu