Dipayan Banerjee
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.
Banerjee said he asked one of his undergraduate advisors, Dr. Jill Wilson, if there were research opportunities for him in the department. And Wilson put Banerjee in touch with Dr. Karen Smilowitz, who needed an undergraduate student to work on a problem in public school transportation. Banerjee, having ridden the school bus throughout K-12, said he felt an immediate connection to the subject matter.
“We got to work with public school transportation planners and get their perspective on it, learning how to map,” Banerjee recalled. As they explored things such as changing school start times and bus schedules, he saw the equity issues that could arise. Working on this research made it clear to him that transportation was the subfield in which he would specialize as a graduate student.
