Princeton Weekly Bulletin April 26, 1999

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Trustees vote to split CEOR

The trustees voted on April 9 to form two departments from the current Department of Civil Engineering and Operations Research (CEOR). One will be called Civil and Environmental Engineering; the other will be Operations Research and Financial Engineering.

Erhan Cinlar, Norman Sollenberger Professor in Engineering, who currently chairs CEOR, will chair the new Operations Research and Financial Engineering Department.

Operations research uses the mathematical techniques of engineering to solve problems in business and industry, he explains. The independent designation should make the program more attractive to graduate and undergraduate students and allow it to recruit more specialized faculty. He notes that this department is the first of its kind to have "financial engineering" as part of its title, reflecting the special focus of the Princeton program on the problems of financial and insurance industries.

Faculty and students alike are happy with the reorganization, according to Cinlar. CEOR, he says, has lacked cohesion, because the different groups in it have disjoint interests, publish in different journals and attend different conferences. "We were like two college roommates with different majors," he says. Now "we've begun to see opportunities in different towns and move on."

 

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