David Woodruff

Research Expertise: Business analytics, operations and management science, planning and scheduling under uncertainty, optimization Professor David Woodruff’s research concerns computational aspects of optimal decision making. He is particularly interested in problems with a mix of discrete and continuous choices with multiple time stages when there is significant uncertainty. His research includes solution algorithms, problem representation and modeling language support. He has worked on applications in operations, logistics, science, and has been involved recently in a number of applications in electrical energy planning and scheduling. He is editor-in-chief of the INFORMS Journal on Computing, which is a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. His paper with Jean-Paul Watson titled “Progressive Hedging Innovations for a Class of Stochastic Mixed-integer Resource Allocation Problems” shared the best paper of 2011 award in the journal Computational Management Science. He was the UC Davis principal investigator for the ARPAe (Department of Energy) grant Improved Power System Operation Using Advanced Stochastic Optimization awarded in 2012. He is presently principal investigator for additional Department of Energy funded research on grid planning in the presence of uncertainty due to renewables. Woodruff teaches the core class in Managing for Operational Excellence. He has also taught the Management Science class. Woodruff previously served as associate dean for instructional programs and also as director of concurrent degree programs. Woodruff earned his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and management sciences from Northwestern University. He received both his M.S. and B.S. in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University.

Awards

Research Grant , Department of Energy Green Electricity Networks, “Improved Power System Operations Using Advanced Stochastic Optimization,” Co-Principal Investigator, 2012-14.

Electives Courses Teacher of the Year , UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 1994-95, 1996-97, 2000, 2001.  

Research Grant , National Science Foundation, “Identification of Outliers in Multivariate Data,” 1996.

Dissertation Competition Runner-up , Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), 1991.

JD Scaife Award , Institution of Manufacturing Engineers, “CONWIP: A Pull Alternative to Kanban,” 1990.

Doctoral Colloquium , Operations Research Society of America, 1988.