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AWARDS AND HONORS
William A. Massey ‘77, Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, has been awarded the 2006 Blackwell-Tapia Prize. This prize is awarded every other year in honor of the legacy of David H. Blackwell and Richard A. Tapia, two distinguished mathematical scientists who have been inspirations to more than a generation of African American, Latino/Latina, and Native American students and professionals in the mathematical sciences. “William Massey is a leader in the field of queueing theory,” Douglas N. Arnold, director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, a leading interdisciplinary mathematical research institute based in Minneapolis. Queueing theory is the mathematical analysis of systems involving customers waiting for services or resources (a call center where impatient customers are on hold for an operator is an example). Mathematical models of such systems allow managers to predict key performance variables like expected response times, the likelihood that “all circuits are busy” when making a telephone call, and backlogs of too many customers waiting in a single line. Quality of service metrics such as these can be used to enhance system performance. Making such predictions accurately is critical to the efficient design and profitability of communication systems, transportation networks, computer operating systems, and many other business operations. “Even simple queueing theory involves a lot of complex mathematics and statistics, and understanding the type of queueing systems that arise in modern communication systems requires new mathematics and new analysis,” said Arnold. “This is where Bill Massey has made outstanding contributions. For example, a much cited paper of his showed how to model wireless networks where calls are being placed and received from moving vehicles.” Massey also has a patent on an optimal server staffing algorithm for call centers that is based on his research in queueing. The award recognizes a mathematical scientist who has contributed significantly to research in his or her field of expertise, and who has served as a role model for mathematical scientists and students from under-represented minority groups or contributed in other significant ways to addressing the problem of the under-representation of minorities in mathematics. “Professor Massey has had a long and outstanding record of research both in industry when he worked for Bell Labs and now, in academia, at Princeton University -- but he also has been a wonderful example of someone who gives back to the community,” Arnold said. In particular Arnold noted Massey's founding and continued leadership in the annual Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences (CAARMS), now in its twelfth year. Minority and women Princeton alumni he has mentored in the past are Andrea L. Bertozzi ’87 *91, who is currently a full professor in mathematics (and director of applied mathematics) at the University of California at Los Angeles; Arlie O. Petters *91, a full professor of mathematics and physics at Duke University; and Otis B. Jennings ’94, an assistant professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. In 2005, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education named Massey the second most frequently cited Black mathematician in the world. He also has given invited hour-long addresses for sectional and national meetings of the Mathematical Association of America, the American Mathematical Society, and the National Association of Mathematicians. Massey’s newest publication is “Fluid and Diffusion Limits for Transient Sojourn Times of Processor Sharing Queues with Time Varying Rates.” It will appear in a special issue of QUESTA, Volume 53, Issue 1-2, June 2006. Massey co-authored the paper with Robert Hampshire, a graduate student at Princeton, and Mor Harchol-Balter, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. The prize will be presented at the Fourth Blackwell-Tapia Conference, to be held at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) in Minneapolis on November 3-4, 2006. The one-and-a-half day meeting will include a mix of activities designed to inform the next generation of students about career opportunities in mathematics and to provide a chance for them to network with other students and with mathematical scientists who play a leadership role in their communities. |
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