Sayanti Mukherjee recognized by IISE as Outstanding Young Investigator

Industrial engineer Sayanti Mukherjee was recognized by IISE with the Outstanding Young Investigator Award in Energy Systems.

By Nicole Capozziello

Published April 1, 2021

Sayanti Mukherjee was recently selected as the recipient of the 2021 Outstanding Young Investigator Award in Energy Systems from the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).

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“I am very pleased that IISE has acknowledged Sayanti with this prestigious award for her very important contributions to improving our nation’s energy systems. ”
Victor Paquet, professor and chair
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

The annual award recognizes an IISE Energy Systems Division member under the age of 35 for their technical contributions to the field.

“Sayanti is an outstanding scholar who is quickly becoming a leading expert on the use of data analytics to address important socially-relevant public infrastructure challenges around energy system resiliency and sustainability,” says Vic Paquet, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “I am very pleased that IISE has acknowledged Sayanti with this prestigious award for her very important contributions to improving our nation’s energy systems.”

Mukherjee is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and the director of the Operations Research for Advancing Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (OASIS) lab.

Her work is highly multidisciplinary and includes enhancing climate-resilience of energy infrastructure systems, modeling climate change and natural disasters’ impact on socio-technical systems, and investigating community safety and social justice issues.

“This award is an important recognition and encouragement for me to continue my ongoing research endeavors in the domain of climate resilience,” says Mukherjee. “Overall, I envision building a research program that addresses the various challenges of attaining resilient, sustainable energy infrastructure systems and expands the research boundaries beyond the electricity sector to include renewable energy and natural gas.” 

As a member of IISE, Mukherjee has given research talks on climate resilience of U.S. energy systems at previous IISE annual conferences. She was also nominated to participate in the New Faculty Colloquium and is currently serving as the co-advisor of UB's IISE student chapter.

In 2019, she received the Risk Analysis Journal’s Best Paper Award for her work on a data-driven approach to assess supply inadequacy risks due to climate-induced shifts in electricity demand.  She was also the recipient of the Jury Award for Best Paper, PMI Project Management Research & Academic Conference in 2017.

Mukherjee joined the University at Buffalo faculty in 2018. She received a BS in Construction Engineering and Management from Jadavpur University, an MS in Civil Engineering from Iowa State University, an MS in Economics from Purdue University, and a PhD in Civil Engineering from Purdue University. 

Founded in 1948, IISE is an international, nonprofit association and the world's largest professional society dedicated solely to the support of the industrial engineering profession.