Skip to main content

more options


David B. Shmoys
Laibe/Acheson Professor
 of Business Management & Leadership Studies
School of Operations Research and Information Engineering
Department of Computer Science
Center for Data Science for Enterprise & Society

David B. Shmoys pic

david.shmoys "at" cornell.edu
(607) 255-9146

231 Rhodes Hall
136 Hoy Road
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853


Research

The primary focus of my research is on the design and analysis of effective data-driven models and efficient algorithms that leverage tools from discrete optimization problems, and in particular, on approximation algorithms for NP-hard and other computationally intractable problems. Linear programming relaxations have played a fundamental role in obtaining good solutions to hard optimization problems, and we continue to study their application to a range of problems in clustering, sequencing and scheduling, and inventory problems, in both deterministic and stochastic optimization settings. In addition to studying these problems with a theoretical lens, we have been involved in the practical application of these techniques in settings ranging from genomics to medical aircraft scheduling to the long-term planning for the preservation of the red-cockaded woodpecker to the operational logistics and design of bike-sharing systems. More recent application domains include COVID epidemiological modeling, congressional districting and IoT network design.

Research Areas


Brief Bio

David Shmoys obtained his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984, and held postdoctoral positions at MSRI in Berkeley and Harvard University, and a faculty position at MIT before joining the Cornell faculty. He was the Chair of the Provost's "radical collaboration" task force on data science and Associate Director of the Institute of Computational Sustainability at Cornell University.

He is a Fellow of the ACM, INFORMS, and of SIAM, was an NSF Presidential Young Investigator, and has served on numerous editorial boards, including Operations Research (for which he is currently co-Area Editor for Optimization), Mathematics of Operations Research (for which he is currently an Associate Editor), ORSA Journal on Computing, Mathematical Programming, Research in the Mathematical Sciences, and the SIAM Journals of both Computing and Discrete Mathematics, where for the latter he also served as Editor-in-Chief. He has been the advisor for 27 graduated Ph.D. students, and his former students are currently on the faculties of many leading universities and research labs, including MIT, Waterloo, Brown, Maryland, Georgetown, and D-Wave.

Shmoys' research has focused on the design and analysis of efficient algorithms for discrete optimization problems, with applications including scheduling, inventory theory, computational biology, and most recently, comptuational sustainability. His work has highlighted the central role that linear programming plays in the design of approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems; his recent book, co-authored with David Williamson, The Design of Approximation Algorithms, was awarded the 2013 Lanchester Prize by INFORMS. His paper, "Analytics and Bikes: Riding Tandem with Motivate to Improve Mobility", joint with Daniel Freund, Shane Henderson, and Eoin O'Mahony, was awarded the 2018 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize. He has been working on data-driven models in a broad cross-section of areas, including COVID epidemiological modeling, congressional districting and IoT network design.


Contact Information

David B. Shmoys
Cornell University
231 Rhodes Hall
136 Hoy Road
Ithaca, NY 14853

(607) 255-9146 - phone
(607) 255-9129 - fax