ISyE’s Jeff Wu, Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor, has received the 2014 Sigma Xi Sustained Research Award for his outstanding and exceptional accomplishments in engineering statistics, quality engineering and practice, and other operations research methodologies. Each year since 1947, the Georgia Tech Chapter of Sigma Xi has honored Georgia Tech faculty and students for their research at the annual Spring Awards Banquet. The Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Research Awards are made possible by the support of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation and the Ferst Foundation.

Wu is a renowned scholar and active researcher and academic leader in engineering statistics. Over his 40 year career, he has made pivotal contributions in quality engineering through the design of experiments to improve products and processes. His theoretical breakthrough and algorithms have transformed some optimality criteria from obscurity to become the standard in software and textbooks. Wu has made fundamental contributions to numerous areas in statistics including survey sampling, statistical inference, nonlinear least squares, sensitivity testing, and quality improvement. He has published 160 journal papers and four books, among which 14 papers are cited more than 100 times. He was one of the “ISI highly cited researchers” in 2002.

After joining Georgia Tech in 2003, Wu has made significant and long lasting impacts to Georgia Tech. Wu was one of the key leaders that built strong interdisciplinary research programs on campus, which already led to numerous major funded research programs and initiatives. Wu works to produce the next-generation researchers and academic leaders for the profession. He rebuilt the ISyE Statistics Group by identifying and recruiting five junior faculty members from 2003 to 2007, all of whom have received National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards. Four former Ph.D. students of Wu’s have also received NSF CAREER Awards, and all four have continued to carry close connections with GT.

For his pioneering and path-breaking work, Wu has received many honors, including the National Academy of Engineering, Academician of Academia Sinica, COPSS Presidents Award, and numerous honorary professorships and best paper awards. His honors also include Pan Wenyuan Technology Award (Taiwan), Einstein chair professorship at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lifelong Achievement Award from the Chinese Statistical Association (Taiwan), and an honorary doctorate degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Wu has given several prestigious talks and 15 plenary talks at various national and international conferences and several prestigious named lectures.