This year, after the official virtual MIT commencement ceremonies, the LGO program held another virtual celebration for the class of 2020. The LGO programming celebrated each member of the class, shared some special LGO congratulatory remarks and announced the winner of the LGO Best Thesis 2020 prize. This year there were two winners: Audrey Bazerghi and Bidusha Poudyal.
Audrey Bazerghi developed Inventory Modeling for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Supply Chains at AstraZeneca. One alumni thesis reader described Bazerghi’s project as “a perfect example of the delicate balance of engineering, business, and academia. Copies of this thesis should be handed to potential partner companies for an example of how the LGO toolkit can have immediate positive real benefits.” Bazerghi earned her MBA and SM in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and completed her six-month LGO internship project at AstraZeneca in Manchester, United Kingdom. In her project, Bazerghi demonstrated with a multi-echelon inventory optimization (MEIO) that a fully integrated supply chain would yield significant savings compared to a purely external supply chain. After LGO, Audrey will earn her PhD at Northwestern University.
The other best thesis winner was Bidusha Poudyal who developed a predictive analysis of Installation Quality vs. Process Severity Events. An alumni thesis reader described Poudyal’s project as “a very clearly-written thesis, that outlines a specific challenge, proposed methodology to research, and outlines valuable and actionable insights for the partner company.” Poudyal’s project uncovered fulfillment center installation issues that led to costly problems during the start-up phase after FCs went live, reducing operational efficiency. Her programmatic data-driven method allowed teams to leverage a preset metric for installation quality to compel vendors to improve the pre-handover processes. Poudyal, who earned her MBA and SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has accepted a position at Google. Congratulations to both of these outstanding best thesis winners!