About Me

I am the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Assistant Professor of Data Science at Bucknell University, a joint appointment between the departments of Computer Science and of Mathematics & Statistics.  In May 2020, I completed my Ph.D. at the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, where I was advised by David Williamson and Karola Mészáros.  Prior to Cornell, I completed my BS in math at Harvey Mudd College in 2014 and my MASt in math (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) at Cambridge in 2015.  If you’d like to learn more about me, here is a short article on the work I’ve done at Bucknell.  Some of my recent work has been funded by an NSF CRII grant, which helps support a small army of extraordinary undergraduate research students in theoretical CS and data science!

Operations Research is an interdisciplinary field that applies mathematical tools to real-world problems.  It boasts rich connections to math, data science, and computer science, and can broadly be construed as data-driven decision making.  Much of my current research is motivated by The Traveling Salesman Problem, one of the most famous problems in math and CS.  I also work in enumerative combinatorics and on several applied projects involving modeling, simulation, and data analytics. 

For instance, my work with Bucknell undergraduates spans from forecasting NFL Scorigamis (discussed in The Atlantic) to analyzing the profitability of Broadway Musicals, and from developing algorithms for famous problems in theoretical computer science to building open-source tools for exam scheduling (featured in Inside Higher Ed). More details and the underlying papers can be found here.  If you’d like to hear nonsense about my research, here is a video of Colin Mochrie (of Whose Line is it Anyway? fame) talking about my Ph.D. thesis.

Teaching energizes research, and information about my past teaching is available on this page.  Outside of academia, I’m an avid reader and climber.  If you want to trade recommendations about books or climbing gyms, I’m all ears!

Contact

s < dot> gutekunst <at> bucknell <dot> edu