Portraits of Uday Shanbhag and Amelia Warden

U-M IOE welcomes new faculty

The University of Michigan Industrial and Operations Engineering department welcomes two outstanding faculty members; Drs. Uday Shanbhag and Amelia Warden.

We are excited to announce the addition of two outstanding faculty members to the University of Michigan Industrial and Operations Engineering (U-M IOE) department. Dr. Uday V. Shanbhag joins us as a Professor, and Dr. Amelia Warden joins us as an Assistant Professor. Their appointments began on August 26, 2024.


Uday Shanbhag

Uday Shanbhag Portrait, IOE faculty member
Uday Shanbhag

Uday V. Shanbhag joins U-M IOE as a full-time professor with a background in analysis of optimization and equilibrium problems, particularly addressing complex challenges like uncertainty, non-smoothness, hierarchy and nonconvexity. This research spans critical applications in power systems, markets and statistical learning.

Before joining Michigan Engineering, Shanbhag held the prestigious Gary and Sheila Chaired Professorship in Penn State’s Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering department, where he led numerous influential research projects. His career includes a tenured faculty appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He then went on to Penn State, where he became a full professor and established a prominent research portfolio supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE-ARPA-E) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Shanbhag has been recognized with multiple honors including:

  • An NSF Career Award
  • Best theoretical paper award in the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC). Won jointly with F. Yousefian and A. Nedich.
  • Computational Optimization and Applications (COAP) Best Paper award. Won with W. Murray
  • Triennial A.W. Tucker Prize from the Mathematical Optimization Society.

Uday began his academic journey with a BS in Aerospace Engineering from IIT Bombay. He then gained an SM from MIT in Operations Research and a PhD in Management Science and Engineering (Operations Research) from Stanford University.

Amelia Warden

Amelia Warden Portrait, IOE faculty member
Amelia Warden

Amelia C. Warden’s research centers on the interplay between human factors, theories of attention, and visual perception, exploring how these aspects affect the design of displays for emerging technologies, such as augmented reality. This work is crucial for improving user interaction and ensuring safety in diverse fields, including driving, medical, and military applications.

Dr. Warden earned a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Colorado State University and holds an MFA in Photography/Mixed Media, along with an MS degree in Experimental Psychology from the University of Idaho and a BS in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Kansas.