I completed my PhD in Operations Research from MIT in 2017. My thesis, entitled “From Data to Decisions in Healthcare: An Optimization Perspective,” was supervised by Professor Dimitris Bertsimas. My research explored applications of optimization and machine learning to data-driven problems in the design and analysis of clinical trials and personalized diabetes management. After graduating in June 2017, I moved to Seattle to work as a Data Scientist at Zillow Group, a platform for real estate and home-related brands.
I was born and raised in the Boston area so was close to home and family during my time at MIT. I received my B.A. in Economics and American Studies from Yale University in 2009. Before I came to MIT, I worked for two years in a quantitative research center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
When I decided to apply to grad school, I thought I wanted to study public policy because of my interest in areas like education, healthcare, and the environment. I soon realized that by pursuing a PhD in a methods-oriented field, I could potentially have an impact in all of these areas. Ultimately, I was deciding between an economics program and the ORC (the only OR program I had applied to). Four factors made my decision easy and turned out to have a huge positive influence on my experience in the program.
First, as an engineering field, OR has a prescriptive focus (i.e. modeling for the purpose of making actual decisions) unlike the largely descriptive focus of economics. Through my research and classes at the ORC, I was able to work on problems in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, revenue management, sports, and inventory management. I was constantly amazed at the breadth of problems that ORC students and faculty work on and the creativity with which they approach these problems.
Second, the track record of the ORC and the quality of its faculty and students is superior to other programs in its field. Any time you can go to the “best ________ of its kind,” that’s a hard thing to turn down. I truly believe the ORC graduate program is the cream of the crop in the field of OR. This fact leads to both a great student experience while in the program and amazing career opportunities after graduating – whether in academia or industry.
Third, and most important, the ORC student community was such a warm, welcoming place. The spirit was collaborative and fun, not competitive like so many other graduate programs. Having supportive classmates made a huge difference while taking challenging coursework during my first two years and navigating the ups and downs of a five-year PhD program.
Finally, as a native Bostonian I am certainly biased, but I think Boston/Cambridge is an amazing place to live. The concentration of so many graduate students and young professionals from all of the universities and important industries in the area makes for a culture full of interesting people to meet and fun things to do. Boston has everything you would want in a city while still being small enough to walk around and feel like you could see everything in one day.
As I look back on my five years at the ORC, the PhD program truly exceeded my expectations. Not only was I able to pursue challenging coursework and an impactful program of research in healthcare analytics leading to my thesis, but I also had many diverse experiences that I had not anticipated. To name a few:
• I engaged directly with doctors via a poster presentation on personalized medicine at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in New Orleans.
• I analyzed cost-saving measures as a summer research scientist on Amazon’s fulfillment optimization team.
• As part of a 2-year industry partnership with a large, global consulting firm, I presented regularly to senior executives and the firm’s financial planning team, and took a leading role on our internal team of 3 PhD students and 1 undergrad to meet client objectives and timelines for delivery.
• I presented at academic conferences in Seattle, Nashville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Fontainebleau, France!
• I served as a teaching assistant for multiple MBA and Executive MBA courses in supply chain planning and business analytics. I tutored Executive MBA students in operations and analytics, including advising on projects with direct impact for their businesses.
• I administered a MITx business analytics MOOC with over 4,000 active students. I learned how to write code for data analysis in Matlab, R, Julia, Perl, and Python – something I had never done before – and then developed content for and taught a session on data wrangling in R for the ORC’s student-led software tools course.
• I served as a peer counselor for my department and leader of the department’s student social group.
• I played on the ORC’s intramural soccer and Ultimate Frisbee teams.
• Favorite memory: Attending the ORC retreat each September, an annual tradition in which the whole ORC takes a weekend retreat to Maine.
What a five years it was! As I begin my next career chapter, I take great comfort in knowing how well my experience at the ORC has prepared me for whatever comes next.
