Cynthia Barnhart, co-director of the Operations Research Center since 1999, has been named co-director of the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS).
As CTS co-director with Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Yossi Sheffi, who has led the center since 1991, Barnhart will supervise its educational programs: the nine-month Master of Engineering in Logistics program, the two-year Master of Science in Transportation program and the Ph.D. program in transportation. (Barnhart is herself an alumna of the last two.)
As an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE), Barnhart specializes in developing models, optimization methods and decision support systems for large-scale transportation problems. In 1997, she formed the Large-Scale Optimization Group, comprising graduate students and researchers who develop and apply optimization models and algorithms to large-scale problems arising in transportation, telecommunications and other problem domains.
Barnhart is also head of CEE's Engineering Systems Group, which deals with planning, analysis, design, construction, operation and management of large infrastructure-based systems such as telecommunications, water resource, power distribution and transportation systems. The group offers graduate education in construction engineering and management, information technology and transportation.
She will continue in her roles with the Engineering Systems Group and the Operations Research Center.
Barnhart holds the B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Vermont (1981), and the S.M. (1985) and Ph.D. (1988) in transportation from MIT.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 14, 2001.
