Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology
Graduate Program: Ph.D., Operations Research
Education: B.S., Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University; M.S., Operations Research, Georgia Institute of Technology
Mentors: Dr. Alan Erera and Dr. Alejandro Toriello, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Dr. Damon Williams, College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Dr. Karen Smilowitz and Dr. Jill Wilson, Northwestern University
Dipayan Banerjee, a fifth-year doctoral student at Georgia Institute of Technology with a passion for teaching, is pursuing research that can have a societal impact regarding logistics and supply chain management as well as equity and fairness in the context of transportation.
Banerjee excels at both teaching and research, according to Dr. Damon P. Williams, associate dean for inclusive excellence in the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Williams said some faculty members become such experts in their field that they forget what it is like to learn as novices. “Dipayan never wants to become so smart, so erudite that he can’t relate to an 18- or 19-year-old student who is trying to learn the material,” Williams said. “He is really interested in learning how he stays connected — boots on the ground — with the students he will be teaching.”
That resonates with Banerjee, who acknowledges that when he got to college at Northwestern University, he didn’t know what he wanted to pursue as a career even though he declared an industrial engineering major. Sophomore year, he took a course in which he began modeling production, power generation and transportation problems, and that proved life changing.
“It’s not something I knew even existed before, and I realized what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” said Banerjee.
