We are extremely pleased to announce that four Lehigh faculty have won 2023 Lehigh University Faculty Awards: Prof. Curtis (Libsch Research Award), Prof. Shehadeh (Alfred Noble Robinson Faculty), Prof. Snyder (Christian & Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching), and Prof. Terlaky (Hillman Faculty).
Professor Frank E. Curtis has won the 2023 Lehigh University Libsch Research Award. This is one of the most prestigious senior faculty awards at Lehigh. Prof. Curtis fully deserves to be among those distinguished past awardees, some of the finest researchers Lehigh has ever had. We are grateful to him for continuously helping to raise the reputation of the department and being a great department citizen. The award citation says that “The objectives of this award are to recognize excellence in research, scholarship and/or artistic achievement, including the overall impact, as well as the quality and quantity of scholarly contributions; reward those who perform distinguished research; place research and scholarship on an equal footing with teaching and university service in the annual awarding of recognition.”
Frank E. Curtis is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Lehigh ISE Department. His research spans theory, algorithm design, and numerical computation in the field of continuous mathematical optimization. He won an Early Career Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy. He was a recipient of the 2021 Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization awarded by the Mathematical Programming Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of the 2018 Computing Society Prize awarded by INFORMS.
Professor Karmel S. Shehadeh has won the 2023 Lehigh University Alfred Noble Robinson Faculty Award. We are grateful to Prof. Shehadeh for having brought so much inspiration and visibility to Lehigh ISE in such a short time. This is one of the most prestigious junior faculty awards at Lehigh, always the first being listed, and a great recognition for the ISE Department. The award citation says that "The Alfred Noble Robinson Award is awarded to a faculty member, or in exceptional cases, divided between two members of the Lehigh faculty. Winners of this award have shown extraordinary enthusiasm for Lehigh’s goals and priorities, often working beyond their direct area on university-wide projects or committees."
Karmel S. Shehadeh is an Assistant Professor in the Lehigh ISE Department. Her research spans optimization under uncertainty, mixed-integer programming, and scheduling theory and algorithms, and its applications in healthcare operations and analytics, facility location, and transportation systems. She was elected as a Director of Operations Research Division of the IISE for 2021-2023. Professor Shehadeh won the 2022 INFORMS Minority Issues Forum Paper Competition. In addition, her work reached the finalist stage of the INFORMS Junior Faculty Forum Paper Competition and INFORMS Service Science Best Cluster Paper Award. Her work as a peer reviewer has been recognized by the prestigious journals INFORMS Journal on Computing and Transportation Science.
Professor Larry Snyder has won the 2023 Lehigh University Christian & Mary Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. This is one of the most prestigious teaching awards at Lehigh. ISE students use words like brilliant, caring, charismatic, fantastic, and passionate to describe Prof. Snyder's teaching style. We are grateful to him for touching the lives of our students. The award citation says that this prize is “Awarded to a tenured member of the faculty (professor or associate professor) for distinguished teaching performed during the academic year.”
Professor Lawrence V. Snyder is the Harvey E. Wagner Endowed Chair Professor in the Lehigh ISE Department and the Director of Lehigh’s Institute for Data, Intelligent Systems, and Computation. His research spans modeling in supply chain management and energy systems, transportation theory, facility location, and decision-making under uncertainty. He is co-author of the textbook Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory, published in 2011 by Wiley, which won the IIE/Joint Publishers Book-of-the-Year Award in 2012. He won the 2019 IISE Logistics and Supply Chain Division Teaching Award.
Professor Tamás Terlaky has won the 2023 Lehigh University Hillman Faculty Award. This is one of the most prestigious senior faculty awards at Lehigh. We are grateful to Prof. Terlaky for everything he did for Lehigh, from having chaired ISE for 9 years to now being at the forefront of quantum computing. Lehigh University has awarded one of its best ambassadors and finest leaders. The award citation says that this prize is “Awarded for excellence in teaching or research work, or for advancing the interests of the university in any way the Trustees may select, or for a special financial need requiring aid, of which the Trustees may become aware, or for any other reason which they may deem just and proper.”
Professor Tamás Terlaky is the George N. and Soteria Kledaras ’87 Endowed Chair Professor in the Lehigh ISE Department. He received the MITACS Mentorship Award, the Award of Merit of CORS, the Egerváry Award of HORS, the 2017 Wagner Prize of INFORMS, and the 2019 Outstanding Innovation in Service Science Engineering Award of IISE. He is a Fellow of The Fields Institute, IFORS, INFORMS, SIAM, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and served as Vice President of INFORMS. He is Founding Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the journal Optimization and Engineering and the current EiC of the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications.