Five assistant professors at Georgia Tech who also won the CAREER Award over the last four years (from left)—Yajun Mei, Ming Yuan, Nicoleta Serban, Roshan Joseph Vengazihiyil, and Nagi Gebraeel—gather around Jeff Wu, a professor at Georgia Tech.

Five assistant professors in the statistics program of the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech have earned the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award throughout the last four years.

The five winners—Nagi Gebraeel, Yajun Mei, Nicoleta Serban, Roshan Joseph Vengazihiyil, and Ming Yuan—were recruited by Jeff Wu, an ISyE professor. Former head of the statistics program at the University of Michigan, Wu joined Georgia Tech in 2003 as the Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics.

As Wu explained, his mandate when coming to ISyE was to try something no one had tried before, namely building a strong statistics and quality program within engineering that would allow for interaction and collaboration with engineers and scientists. According to Wu, the goal of an interface between statistics and engineering has clearly been achieved, as reflected in the programs through which these awards were given: Mei and Yuan from the statistics program of the math division, Gebraeel and Vengazihiyil from the Manufacturing Enterprise System program of the engineering division, and Serban from the Service Enterprise System program of the engineering division.

Wu’s selection of these faculty members for the ISyE statistics group and their earning the prestigious award were a bit serendipitous, he said. Their selection for the group was not based on work he consciously thought would be considered for this recognition of junior faculty. “We simply wanted to hire the best people and groom them,” he said. “Winning a CAREER Award is one measure—though not the only one—of success.”