The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics is excited to congratulate Steven Parks and Austin Saragih on the successful completion of their PhDs. Their dissertations represent innovative contributions to supply chain and transportation research, each tackling fundamental challenges in their respective fields with rigor, creativity, and real-world impact.
For his doctoral work, Steven Parks developed a methodological framework for understanding how road network structure influences transportation system performance. By creating methods to generate synthetic road networks with user-specified properties, Parks established a new paradigm for experimental transportation research. Rather than treating network characteristics as fixed constraints, his work enables researchers to systematically isolate how road topology, connectivity, and speed distributions shape vehicle routing outcomes and system efficiency. His approach provides both a theoretical foundation and practical tools for the transportation research community. Parks received the 2024-2025 UPS Fellowship from CTL for outstanding academic merit and completed a transportation policy fellowship at the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, DC.
Of his educational journey, Parks reflected, "Earning my PhD is the culmination of years of hard work and curiosity. This milestone would not have been possible without the support of my family, my supervisors Matthias Winkenbach and Selene Silvestri, and my colleagues in the Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab. I am grateful to CTL for the opportunity to apply rigorous research to transportation problems with real human impact. My time at MIT challenged me as a researcher and helped me become a more tenacious and confident scientist."
Austin Saragih addressed one of supply chain management's most pressing challenges: designing resilient networks under pervasive uncertainty. His research proposes three integrated methodologies: uncertainty resolution through strategic information gathering, estimation of endogenous factors in circular economy systems, and adaptive capacity planning through real options analysis. Saragih's research has garnered recognition in receiving First Place in the INFORMS Location Analysis Best Student Paper Competition and finalist honors in the DSI Doctoral Research Showcase. He is also a dedicated educator, having received the 2025 Maseeh Award for Excellence as a Teaching Assistant. This fall, Saragih will begin his tenure-track position at Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg with a passion for deep learning, knowledge-sharing, and inspiring the next generation of supply chain professionals.
Of his next steps, Saragih shared, "Ever since I started in the MIT SCM Blended Master's degree program and then the PhD program, I have wanted to become a professor in supply chain management. Now, it has actually materialized six years later. I love learning, sharing knowledge, and understanding something at a very deep level. When doing research and teaching, it makes me feel like this is what I want to do for life."
Both graduates exemplify the excellence and innovation that define MIT CTL's supply chain research community. We wish Steven and Austin tremendous success in their future careers.
