Cynthia Barnhart is Provost, Professor of Operations Research, and Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering at MIT. Barnhart has served as MIT’s Chancellor, as the Associate and Acting Dean for the School of Engineering, and as co-director of the Operations Research Center and the Center for Transportation and Logistics.
Barnhart’s teaching and research are in the areas of large-scale optimization and analytics, with a focus on applications in transportation and logistics systems. She has supervised scores of graduate and undergraduate theses across a range of disciplines, and has published widely in the flagship journals of her field.
Barnhart is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). She has served as the President of INFORMS, the President of the INFORMS Women in Operations Research and Management Science, and the President of the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society. Barnhart’s awards include the INFORMS President’s Award, the INFORMS Franz Edelman Prize for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and honorary doctorates from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the University of Toronto.
Barnhart received her SM in transportation in 1986 and her PhD in 1988 from MIT.