When in college, I was drawn to mathematics by its elegance and simplicity. I was also intrigued by the many ways mathematics can be used to solve complicated and important real-world problems.

After I graduated from college, I worked for a small consulting company. One of my first projects was to implement a mathematical model to help the city of Boston better deploy its ambulances. We considered different home locations for the ambulances (the locations the ambulances return to when idle). For each combination of home locations, the model used a queuing analysis to determine the average time until an ambulance could respond to calls from different parts of the city, the workload of each ambulance, and other performance measures. This information helped city planners determine a good set of home locations for the ambulances.

After several years as a consultant, I went back to school for a PhD. I studied in a program called “Engineering-Economic Systems” that applies mathematical and economic analysis to business, government, and social systems.

Since 1985 I have been a Professor of Industrial Engineering at Stanford University. During that time, I have worked on a variety of research projects, all of which apply mathematical models to help make better decisions for complex problems.

One problem involved determining how to set up machines that insert components onto printed circuit boards. In a typical application, hundreds of boards are produced from thousands of components.