Dartmouth engineering professor Vikrant Vaze has been named The Stata Family Career Development Professor, a title bestowed upon him by Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees at their recent meeting. The endowment supports a member of the Thayer School faculty by creating a “career development fellowship” to leverage growth in teaching, research, or scholarship.

The professorship was created from an existing multi-purpose use endowment fund established in 1987 by Raymond Stata and the Ray and Maria Stata Charitable Trust. Vaze’s new position took effect on March 1 of this year.

Vikrant Vaze, Dartmouth's new Stata Family Career Development Professor

“I feel really humbled to be receiving this honor, especially since it is named after a family of such inspirational technology innovators and entrepreneurs,” said Vaze.

Vaze joined Dartmouth as an assistant professor of engineering in 2014. He received his PhD in transportation systems from MIT in 2011. Prior to that, he received his MS in operations research and an MS in transportation, both from MIT, as well as a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His research interests are in solving large-scale resource allocation problems frequently arising in complex systems such as transportation and healthcare. He uses game theoretic and optimization models to solve these decision-making problems; statistics and machine learning to mimic stakeholder behavior; and simulation modeling to test the performance of the proposed solutions.

He is the recipient of a number of academic and research honors including the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, as well as awards from the U.S. Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, National Institutes of Health, World Wildlife Fund, and other industry-sponsored awards. Vaze’s work and joint work have also been honored with best paper awards from AGIFORS in 2010, 2017, and 2019, as well as best paper awards from FAA/Eurocontrol in 2011 and 2017, and from INFORMS TSL in 2019.

Vaze is a co-founder of PatientRules, which aims to enhance patients’ access to primary care by providing data-driven analytical tools for patient classification, demand estimation, capacity enhancements, and scheduling optimization, as well as Multivariate Systems, Inc., which develops multiplex systems and machine learning approaches that incorporate multiple physiological signals and biometric sensors to outperform single sensor systems.

Vaze, who has been an associate editor at Transportation Science since 2018, has also co-authored chapters in two books: The Global Airline Industry, Second Edition (Wiley, 2015) and Game Theoretic Analysis of Congestion, Safety and Security (Springer, 2015).