Social
Operations research and optimization

2023 SCOT INFORMS scholarship recipients announced

Program is aimed at expanding participation in operations research, management science, and analytics research for those from underrepresented backgrounds.

By Staff writer
October 13, 2023
3 min read
Share

In 2021, Amazon’s Supply Chain Optimization Technologies (SCOT) organization announced the establishment of the SCOT/INFORMS scholarships program to help expand the pipeline of operations research, management science, and analytics talent from underrepresented backgrounds.

Today Amazon SCOT is announcing the newest INFORMS cohort. This year’s class comprises 15 recipients who are pursuing degrees or possible careers in industrial and systems engineering, systems science, statistics and operations research, supply chain analytics, transportation supply chain management, civil engineering, and computer science.

“I am profoundly grateful to the Amazon SCOT science team for the support to attend and participate in the INFORMS annual meeting,” said Vivian Nwadiaru, a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “As a beneficiary of the program, I get to have access to mentors and resources within the Amazon Science team, which to me is a rare and delightful networking opportunity.”

To ensure inclusivity, the recipients include those who are either already actively engaged in operations research (OR) and management science (MS) studies as well as those who have had little to no training in traditional OR/MS courses but are considering graduate studies or careers in these fields.

"Being able to attend INFORMS is a tremendous opportunity,” noted Ryan Rodriguez, an undergrad at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “I am very grateful to have the chance to attend high-impact sessions on research I am interested in, network with peers, and explore exciting potential collaborations with those in similar fields. This scholarship has accelerated my path towards a PhD.”

Members of this year's class — comprising undergrad juniors and seniors as well as graduate students — receive free conference registration and stipends to cover hotel accommodations and transportation expenses for those who attend in person.

"I'm thrilled for the chance to attend INFORMS through the Amazon SCOT scholarship,” said Ayesha Farooq, a graduate student at Kansas State University. “It's a fantastic opportunity to learn, network, and contribute."

This year’s cohort will also be provided opportunities to connect with Amazon SCOT scientists to explore mentorship and networking opportunities; to meet with members of the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum, ambassador graduate students, and INFORMS staff; and to attend INFORMS society meetings and university-sponsored receptions, as well as plenaries, selected talks/posters, and tutorials.

2023 SCOT INFORMS recipients: Fernando Acosta-Perez, Adeola Adegbemijo, Nathan Adeyemi, Grace Babalola, Ayesha Farooq, Henry Ivuawuogu, Caroline Johnston, Jiayue-Sylvia Li, Ogechi Vivian Nwadiaru, Paula Penagos, Anastasia Rivera, Ryan Rodriguez, Austin Iglesias Saragih, Jessica Shi, and Morgan Wood
Top row, left to right, Fernando Acosta-Perez, Adeola Adegbemijo, Nathan Adeyemi, Grace Babalola, Ayesha Farooq; second row, left to right, Henry Ivuawuogu, Caroline Johnston, Jiayue-Sylvia Li, Ogechi Vivian Nwadiaru, Paula Penagos; bottom row, left to right, Anastasia Rivera, Ryan Rodriguez, Austin Iglesias Saragih, Jessica Shi, and Morgan Wood.

Below is the list of the 2023 recipients, along with their universities and majors.

Fernando Acosta-Perez

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Industrial and systems engineering

Adeola Adegbemijo

Binghamton University

Systems science and industrial engineering

Nathan Adeyemi

Northeastern University

Industrial engineering

Grace Babalola

Binghamton University

Industrial and systems engineering

Ayesha Farooq

Kansas State University

Industrial engineering

Henry Ivuawuogu

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Industrial and systems engineering

Caroline Johnston

University of Southern California

Industrial and systems engineering

Jiayue-Sylvia Li

University of California, Berkeley

Industrial engineering and operations research

Ogechi Vivian Nwadiaru

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Industrial engineering and operations research

Paula Penagos

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Supply chain and analytics

Anastasia Rivera

Huston-Tillotson University

Computer science

Ryan Rodriguez

Georgia Institute of Technology

Industrial engineering

Austin Iglesias Saragih

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Transportation–supply chain management

Jessica Shi

Columbia University

Operations research

Morgan Wood

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Statistics and operations research
Research areas
Tags
About the Author
Staff writer

Related content

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Member of Technical Staff, Artificial General Intelligence
US, CA, Sunnyvale
The Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Member of Technical Staff with a strong deep learning background, to build industry-leading Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems. Key job responsibilities As a Member of Technical Staff with the AGI team, you will lead the development of algorithms and modeling techniques, to advance the state of the art with LLMs. You will lead the foundational model development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of products and services that make use of GenAI technology. You will leverage Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in LLMs. About the team The AGI team has a mission to push the envelope in GenAI with LLMs and multimodal systems, in order to provide the best-possible experience for our customers.
Flight Dynamics Engineer, Amazon Leo Flight Dynamics
US, WA, Redmond
We are searching for a talented candidate with experience in orbital mechanics, orbit determination, launch vehicle trajectories, and launch vehicle mission planning. In this position, a successful candidate would serve as a Research Scientist in support of Amazon Leo’s constellation with particular focus on Launch Vehicle support. Strong analysis skills are required to develop engineering studies of complex large-scale dynamical systems. This position requires demonstrated expertise in computational analysis automation and tool development. Export Control Requirement: Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Key job responsibilities Working with the Leo GNC team, you will: • Perform spacecraft maneuver or navigation analysis in support of multi-disciplinary trades within the Amazon Leo team. • Contribute to prototype software development of flight algorithms. • Test and assess navigation software for integration into flight systems. • Assess and trouble-shoot the performance of Leo on-board GNSS hardware and software systems. • Work closely with GNC engineers to manage on-orbit performance and develop flight dynamics operations processes. • Manage engineering trades as needed for various launch vehicle mission designs. • Support Leo’s Launch Vehicle Mission Management team with technical expertise in Launch Vehicle trajectory requirements specification • Evaluate Launch Vehicle performance and compliance with mission requirements • Develop tools to support Mission Management planning for over 80 launches! • Work collaboratively with launch vehicle system technical teams About the team The Flight Dynamics team is responsible for the guidance, navigation, control and safety of the spaceflight of the Amazon Leo constellation. This team provides solutions to spaceflight challenges in constellation design, orbit selection, launch vehicle insertion requirements, navigation, trajectory design, space situational awareness, and space traffic coordination.
Principal Applied Scientist, Real-Time Conversational AI , AGI
US, WA, Seattle
We are looking for a Principal Applied Scientist to drive the research and development of real-time multimodal conversational AI. You will operate across two focus areas: advancing foundation models for speech and audio, and building the post-training systems (reward modeling, reinforcement learning) that shape natural, human-like conversational behavior. You will be the expert in your area while contributing across the full model lifecycle — from pre-training and architecture design through post-training alignment and real-time deployment. You will work at the frontier of what's possible in conversational AI, with the compute, data, and runway to pursue problems that few teams in the world have the resources to tackle. As a Principal Scientist, you will set the technical direction for your research area, influence the broader roadmap, and work closely with inference engineers to ensure your models are designed for real-time production deployment from inception. Key job responsibilities Foundation Model Scaling - Build and train large-scale multimodal foundation models for real-time speech and audio generation, from architecture design through production-scale training - Advance the scaling and efficiency of conversational modes, including the relationship between data, model size, and real time performance. - Design model architectures informed by hardware constraints and inference requirements, working with inference engineers to ensure models are servable from inception - Develop training methodologies for multimodal models that jointly process and generate speech, language, and audio in real-time streaming contexts Post-Training & Reinforcement Learning - Design and build reward models and reward functions for speech systems — capturing naturalness, fluency, conversational quality, and real-time responsiveness - Develop and apply reinforcement learning methods to shape conversational behavior — teaching models natural timing, responsiveness, and fluid interaction - Build the post-training pipeline from SFT through RL alignment, optimized for real-time multimodal outputs rather than text-only generation - Design evaluation frameworks that capture the quality dimensions unique to real-time conversation Real-Time Perception & Generation - Advance the team's capabilities in real-time perception - Work at the intersection of model architecture and production constraints to ensure multimodal capabilities function within hard real-time latency budgets
Data Scientist, Alexa AI
IN, KA, Bengaluru
Amazon is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Data Scientist with machine learning background to help build industry-leading Speech and Language technology. Our mission is to provide a delightful experience to Amazon’s customers by pushing the envelope in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML). Key job responsibilities Key job responsibilities Amazon is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Data Scientist with machine learning background to help build industry-leading Speech and Language technology. Our mission is to provide a delightful experience to Amazon’s customers by pushing the envelope in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML) and Computer Vision (CV). As part of our AI team in Amazon AWS, you will work alongside internationally recognized experts to develop data experiments, novel algorithms and data techniques to advance the state-of-the-art in human language technology. Your work will directly impact millions of our customers in the form of products and services that make use of speech and language technology. You will gain hands on experience with Amazon’s heterogeneous speech, text, and structured data sources, and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in spoken language understanding.
PhD Econ Intern, Store Economics and Science
US, WA, Seattle
We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to apply their causal inference / structural econometrics skillsets to solve real world problems. The intern will work in the area of Store Economics and Science (SEAS) and develop models to SEAS. Our PhD Economist Internship Program offers hands-on experience in applied economics, supported by mentorship, structured feedback, and professional development. Interns work on real business and research problems, building skills that prepare them for full-time economist roles at Amazon and beyond. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis collaborating with economists, scientists, and product managers. These skills will translate well into writing applied chapters in your dissertation and provide you with work experience that may help you with placement. About the team The Stores Economics and Science Team (SEAS) is a Stores-wide interdisciplinary team at Amazon with a "peak jumping" mission focused on disruptive innovation. The team applies science, economics, and engineering expertise to tackle the business's most critical problems, working to move from local to global optima across Amazon Stores operations. SEAS builds partnerships with organizations throughout Amazon Stores to pursue this mission, exploring frontier science while learning from the experience and perspective of others. Their approach involves testing solutions first at a small scale, then aligning more broadly to build scalable solutions that can be implemented across the organization. The team works backwards from customers using their unique scientific expertise to add value, takes on long-run and high-risk projects that business teams typically wouldn't pursue, helps teams with kickstart problems by building practical prototypes, raises the scientific bar at Amazon, and builds and shares software that makes Amazon more productive.
Applied Scientist , Prime Video Personalization and Discovery
US, WA, Seattle
Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! We are looking for a self-motivated, passionate and resourceful Applied Scientist to bring diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. You will spend your time as a hands-on machine learning practitioner and a research leader. You will play a key role on the team, building and guiding machine learning models from the ground up. At the end of the day, you will have the reward of seeing your contributions benefit millions of Amazon.com customers worldwide. Key job responsibilities Develop AI solutions for various Prime Video Personalization systems using Deep learning, GenAI, Reinforcement Learning, and optimization methods; Work closely with engineers and product managers to design, implement and launch AI solutions end-to-end; Design and conduct offline and online (A/B) experiments to evaluate proposed solutions based on in-depth data analyses; Effectively communicate technical and non-technical ideas with teammates and stakeholders; Stay up-to-date with advancements and the latest modeling techniques in the field; Publish your research findings in top conferences and journals. About the team Prime Video Personalization and Discovery team owns science solution to power personalized experience on various devices, from sourcing, relevance, ranking, to name a few. We work closely with the engineering and product teams to launch our solutions in production.
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social