INFORMS Career FAQ: Patrick Harker

Patrick Harker's career has been one of building bridges - some of concrete and steel, some of bits and bytes, and perhaps the most important ones, spanning disciplines.

Harker entered college intent on becoming a civil engineer. But as his studies progressed, it became more and more apparent that the solutions to many major problems - especially in transportation and water resource management - lay in the intelligent use of information and economic incentives.

Thus, he began studying transportation systems analysis and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he discovered operations research and realized the value of "both sides of the OR coin": its applied math and engineering aspects, as well as its roots in mathematical concepts.

Armed with a Ph.D. in civil engineering, an M.A. in Economics, and a bag of OR tools, Harker began teaching in the Geography Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1983, then a year later, accepted a faculty position at Penn's prestigious Wharton School.

His work over the next few years in operations research and its applictions to transportation proved so successful that in 1991, he was promoted to Full Professor - the youngest person in the school's history to achieve that rank. And in that same year, he was named a White House Fellow by President Bush and Special Assistant to the Director of the F.B.I.

Recently, he returned to his engineering roots as Chairman of Systems Engineering at Penn - more evidence of the many hats operations researchers can wear. As Harker puts it,

"Where else can you go from teaching engineering to geography to business in three short years? OR is an extremely flexible field!"