“I am honored to be appointed as the Anderson-Interface Chair and to be positioned to play a role in continuing Ray C. Anderson's rich legacy of promoting environmental sustainability,” said Ahmed. “I am very grateful for the generous support from the Anderson family, the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, and Interface, Inc., as it will enhance my work on optimization under risk and uncertainty, and its applications in reliable and efficient operations of renewable power systems.”

The Anderson-Interface Chair was created to support an eminent teacher-scholar in a position of academic leadership in the field of sustainability, energy, climate, and natural systems.

“Over the years, Shabbir's research activities have made significant impacts on the Stewart School and his field,” said Edwin Romeijn, ISyE’s H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair. “This well-deserved appointment as Anderson-Interface Chair will provide him with opportunities to enhance his position as a leader in the societally important area of energy systems.”

Ahmed’s research interests are in developing methods for large-scale optimization problems and their applications in energy and other networked systems. His research in these areas has been supported by federal agencies such as the Advanced Research Program Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research; as well as by industrial organizations such as ExxonMobil, IBM, and Samsung.

Ahmed has served as the chair of the Stochastic Programming Society (2007-2010), and as a vice-chair (Stochastic Programming) of the INFORMS Optimization Society (2006-2008). His honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER award, two IBM Faculty Awards, the Coca-Cola Junior Professorship from ISyE, and the INFORMS Dantzig Dissertation award. He is an associate editor for Mathematical Programming, Operations Research, and Operations Research Letters, and was an area editor for Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science and a department editor for IISE Transactions (Operations Engineering and Analysis).