The Ronald J. and Carol T. Beerman Presidential Fellowship plays a vital role in advancing the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering’s ability to attract and retain top graduate students. The 2025 class of Fellows recently shared their perspectives on their research, the impact of the Fellowship, and their experiences within ISyE at Georgia Tech.

Jingye Xu, Fourth-year Ph.D. 
Focus Area: Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization 

How has the Beerman Presidential Fellowship impacted your academic journey or research opportunities?
The Beerman Fellowship provides me with both financial flexibility and academic confidence. It helps me to conduct ambitious research where pursuing some research questions that are high‐risk but potentially high reward. It also signals recognition of my potential and help me to build my confidence.

Could you share more about your research focus area? Is there a problem you hope your research will solve or a system you would like to improve?
My research focuses on integer programming, a core area of operations research that deals with optimization problems involving discrete decisions. Many real-world systems—such as supply chain design, scheduling, and network planning—depend on solving large and complex integer programs efficiently. I hope my work contributes to developing methods that not only improve computational performance but also make optimization more accessible for practical, large-scale decision-making.

Georgia Tech’s ISyE program is consistently ranked No. 1 nationally. In your experience, what makes ISyE such a strong environment for success?
ISyE is unique in both technical depth and breadth. The faculty like Arkadi Nemirovski and Alexander Shapiro are leaders in their optimization. The program’s breadth—spanning optimization, statistics, machine learning, and applied domains—creates an environment where interdisciplinary ideas thrive. Students are constantly exposed to real-world problems, ensuring that research is both theoretically strong and practically relevant.

What factors influenced your decision to continue your education at Georgia Tech?
During my undergraduate studies, I first encountered Arkadi Nemirovski’s textbook on optimization, which deeply shaped how I viewed the field and inspired me to pursue research in integer programming. When I later discovered that Georgia Tech’s ISyE program is home to Professor Nemirovski and other leading scholars in optimization, it became clear that this was the ideal place to continue my education. The chance to learn directly from faculty whose work had already influenced me, combined with ISyE’s unmatched reputation in operations research, made Georgia Tech the natural choice.

How have ISyE faculty or resources shaped your learning or research so far?
My research is shaped by many ISye faculties. For example, taking Professor Arkadi Nemirovski’s convex optimization class was a formative experience for me. His lectures not only deepened my understanding of fundamental optimization theory but also showed me how mathematical rigor can be combined with practical insight. That experience has strongly influenced how I now approach research in integer programming, by focusing on both the theoretical foundations and their real-world relevance. Beyond coursework, ISyE’s research seminars and collaborative environment have further broadened my perspective and sharpened my research skills.

Rui Gong, Third-year Ph.D.
Focus Area: Operations Research 

How has the support of the Beerman Presidential Fellowship enabled you to pursue your research goals and growth at ISyE? The Beerman Fellowship has given me meaningful flexibility in my research. In my first year, it allowed me to serve as a research assistant rather than a teaching assistant, which freed sustained time to develop ideas and build momentum. The support also let me explore collaborations with multiple professors without worrying about their immediate funding, so I could try different topics and ultimately commit to a direction I’m excited about. Just as important, the fellowship reduces financial pressure, so I can focus fully on my studies and research.

How does your research aim to make a difference, whether by solving a problem or improving a system? 
My work sits at the intersection of combinatorial optimization, dynamic programming, and convex relaxations. I design semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for complex combinatorial and dynamic decision problems. For example, in stochastic scheduling—where customers requested schedules or job characteristics are random—exact solutions are often intractable. Carefully crafted relaxations preserve essential structure while yielding tractable approximations and performance guarantees. My goal is to provide tools that not only solve these problems faster and more reliably in practice but also offer insights other researchers can adapt to related problems.

What do you think makes ISyE such a unique and supportive environment for students? 
ISyE combines depth in optimization, statistics, machine learning, healthcare and stochastic processes with a collaborative, intellectually open culture. Students benefit from rigorous coursework, active seminars, and mentoring from faculty who span theory and high-impact applications—so you can do first-rate theory while staying close to real systems. I’ve also found the faculty and staff exceptionally professional and responsive; whether it’s research, coursework, or logistics, there’s always someone prepared to help, which keeps projects moving.

What drew you to Georgia Tech when you were considering your next step in education? 
Fit and focus. My interests align closely with ISyE faculty, offering both strong mathematical training and opportunities to test ideas on meaningful applications. I was also drawn to the program’s support for industry engagement and internships. Finally, the BeermanFellowship was a major factor—it reduces teaching obligations and gives me the time needed to pursue ambitious research early in my PhD.

What role have ISyE faculty played in shaping your experience as a student and researcher? 
Faculty mentorship has influenced how I pose questions as much as how I answer them. Regular meetings and reading groups refined my problem formulations and helped connect ideas across optimization, probability, and computation. Seminars and visiting speakers have introduced techniques that directly informed my current projects, accelerating both the depth and the scope of my work.

Jyotishka Ray Choudhury, First-year Ph.D.
Focus Area: Machine Learning 

How has the Beerman Presidential Fellowship shaped your journey as a graduate student at ISyE? 
The Fellowship has been a tremendous support for me. Of course, it eases financial pressures during my Ph.D., but more importantly, it is a great honor that motivates me to pursue ambitious research directions with confidence. This recognition encourages me to push my work in theoretical statistics and machine learning to the highest standards.

How does your research aim to make a difference, whether by solving a problem or improving a system? 
My research lies in theoretical statistics and machine learning, with a focus on problems in high-dimensional settings. I study two types of problems: statistical inference when data is (a) incomplete and (b) evolving over time. For example, when parts of a dataset are missing completely at random, or when there is an abrupt change in the underlying data distribution (a “change-point”). These situations arise naturally in large-scale applications such as medical monitoring, finance, and modern data science pipelines. A central goal of my work is to design principled methods that are both statistically reliable and computationally efficient, so that practitioners can detect changes or handle missing data, reinforced with strong theoretical guarantees.

ISyE is consistently ranked the top program in the country. What do you feel contributes to that success? 
What makes ISyE unique is its remarkable scope combined with rigor. If we combine the research interests of all the faculty, the department spans an extraordinary range -- from optimization, statistics, and probability theory to operations management and machine learning. This creates an environment where one can explore both deep theoretical questions and impactful applications. As a first-year student, I’ve already found ISyE to be highly collaborative. I was always encouraged to think broadly, ask difficult questions, and connect ideas across disciplines. The culture is both challenging and supportive, which I think is key to its sustained excellence.

What drew you to Georgia Tech when you were considering your next step in education? 
I chose Georgia Tech, ISyE in particular, because it offers the right balance between theory and applications. My research is strongly theoretical, but I wanted to be in a place where theory is closely connected to real-world systems and impactful research. The faculty members at ISyE have outstanding research profiles, spanning both rigorous statistical foundations and meaningful applications in data science, engineering, and operations. Combined with a collaborative research culture and Atlanta’s vibrant academic community, this made Georgia Tech the ideal choice for my Ph.D. journey. Discussions with my thesis advisors (both of whom are in ISyE) have been central in shaping my academic direction, encouraging me to approach problems with both rigor and creativity. Weekly seminars, courses taught by faculty members, and talks by invited researchers from leading universities and labs have further broadened my perspective. Together, these opportunities motivate me to frame my work in ways that are both deep and impactful.