Cornell Business

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: Features

CBJ: Prof Frank always played music before start of class from his ipod I believe, do you have one? If yes, what's on constant rotation on your ipod? If not, what was the last CD you bought?

AF: I do not have an iPod. The last CD I bought was probably a Ladysmith Black Mambazo album after watching them perform at the State Theater a month or so ago.

CBJ: And the last book you read?

AF: The book I am reading now is The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. A friend recently commented that I read too much non-fiction and not enough fiction, and suggested some novels. I picked the one with the fewest pages.

CBJ: I have always wondered what do Professors do when they are not teaching i.e. when your course is over before the next class come in?

AF: The short answer is research. Lots of it!

CBJ: So, what research are you currently working on?

AF: I do Operations Research (OR). Currently, I am working on two research topics. One is large-scale optimization. Take, for instance, a major airline like United. It flies over 2000 domestic flights daily using over 600 planes of ten or so different fleet types and has to meet strict maintenance and crew union regulations. How do you optimize the airline's flight schedule, fleet assignments, and crew rotations to maximize profits? You cannot do that on the back of an envelope or even using Excel and expect to stay in business. So in OR we build optimization models and design efficient computer-based algorithms to solve these problems. The other area I am working on is pricing and competition in oligopolies and supply chains. So now consider the airline industry as a whole and ask questions about the nature of competition, how prices are determined, effects of code-sharing agreements etc. Again, I do this through mathematical modeling and analysis.

CBJ: Have there been days when you have had second thoughts about your career choice?

AF: Not since my freshman year as an engineering undergrad. Back then I had serious doubts whether mechanical engineering was a good fit for me. That got me looking more broadly and one day I accidentally stumbled across an issue of the journal Operations Research. By the sophomore year I knew that was what I wanted to do.

Continued...

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