Professor, Operations Research Center, MIT Sloan School of Management
Cynthia Barnhart is a professor in the Operations Research group in the MIT Sloan School of Management. She previously served as associate and acting dean of the School of Engineering and co-directed both the Operations Research Center, and the Center for Transportation and Logistics. Barnhart was Chancellor of MIT from 2014 until 2021. Her teaching and research are in developing models, optimization methods, and decision support systems for large-scale transportation problems and logistics systems. Barnhart came to MIT to pursue graduate work in transportation and operations research, earning her SM and PhD in transportation. An INFORMS Fellow, elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), she has received honorary doctorates from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the University of Toronto.