Jesse Winter Photography

Professor David Shmoys, left, and ORIE graduate student Eoin O'Mahony discuss "rebalancing" with Citi Bike worker Kelly McGowan in New York City.

Cornell Tech and the College of Engineering have announced a new Master of Engineering degree in Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE).

Based at Cornell Tech’s campus in New York City, the program will educate experts who thrive in environments that use computational tools, algorithms and large amounts of data to make business decisions for the technology industry.

Operations research is the science of decision-making in complex or uncertain environments. Online retailers, like Amazon, rely on cutting-edge algorithms and large-scale computation to make inventory and pricing decisions for millions of products and make recommendations to shoppers in real time. The computations must take into account a seemingly infinite amount of data that include customer preferences, location and timing of demand, and purchase histories of customers.

“Many other companies, including Apple, Google, Lyft and Netflix, face similar situations that require them to make decisions at massive scale and at rapid speeds. Making such decisions clearly defies human capabilities,” said Huseyin Topaloglu, professor of ORIE based at Cornell Tech. “Systems need to take in the huge amount of available data, figure out what is relevant and what is not, use the data to understand how the environment is likely to evolve in the future, create algorithms to make decisions, and monitor the system’s response to decisions.”

Cornell engineering offers an ORIE master’s degree on its Ithaca campus, but Lance Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, says the Cornell Tech degree is unique because of its entrepreneurial focus and project-based co-curriculum that involves students from across the university.

“ORIE students will be teamed up with business students, computer science students or possibly somebody from the Jacobs Institute,” said Collins.

“The teams are fundamentally multidisciplinary and they’re attacking real problems that come from industry. I think that interdisciplinary element just creates a unique environment for training the students.”

The curriculum will also cover the fundamentals of operations research through courses designed specifically for the tech industry, including optimization methods, modeling under uncertainty and machine learning. Electives include service systems and online markets, e-logistics, data science, business for tech and startup systems. The curriculum places emphasis on large-scale computation.

David Shmoys, director of the School of ORIE, understands big data in the Big Apple well. He’s been working with Citi Bike to develop a more efficient system to distribute and rebalance the bike-sharing service’s fleet around its many New York City hubs.

“The analytics viewpoint of OR is a key ingredient in leveraging a host of new technologies. This degree is specifically designed for entrepreneurial graduates looking to bring their talents to start-ups or established tech companies, so it makes sense to offer the program in a city where those companies exist in abundance, and on a campus that understands the industry well,” said Shmoys, who has played a number of roles in helping to build the campus.

The ORIE degree is Cornell Engineering’s first non-computer science offering at Cornell Tech and is accepting applications for its inaugural fall of 2016 class.

“This is a major step for the college and I’m really excited we’ve now planted the flag of engineering firmly on the Cornell Tech campus,” said Collins.

More information about the degree is available on the Cornell Tech and Cornell Engineering websites.

Syl Kacapyr is public relations and content manager for the College of Engineering.