Radhika Vidyadhar Kulkarni (born 1956) is a retired Indian and American operations researcher, and the 2022 president of INFORMS. The Bechhofer–Kulkarni selection procedure or Bechhofer–Kulkarni stopping rule, a

stopping rule In probability theory, in particular in the study of stochastic processes, a stopping time (also Markov time, Markov moment, optional stopping time or optional time ) is a specific type of “random time”: a random variable whose value is inter ...

for maximization in

Bernoulli process In probability and statistics, a Bernoulli process (named after Jacob Bernoulli) is a finite or infinite sequence of binary random variables, so it is a discrete-time stochastic process that takes only two values, canonically 0 and 1. Th ...

es, is named after her work with her doctoral advisor, Robert E. Bechhofer.

Education and career

After earning a master's degree in mathematics at

IIT Delhi The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is a public institute of technology located in New Delhi, India. It is one of the 23 IITs created to be Centres of Excellence for training, research and development in science, engineering and technolo ...

, Kulkarni went to Cornell University intending to do doctoral research in pure mathematics, but switched to operations research after taking a mathematical programming course in her first year. She earned a second master's degree in 1979 and completed her Ph.D. in 1981. Her doctoral supervisor was Robert E. Bechhofer. She worked for 35 years at the SAS Institute, including ten years as Vice President of Advanced Analytics R&D. She is the 2022 president of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

Recognition

Kulkarni was the 2006 winner of the WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS of INFORMS. In 2014 she was named a Fellow of INFORMS.

Personal life

Kulkarni married Vidyadhar Kulkarni, another student of operations research at Cornell and later the chair of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of North Carolina.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kulkarni, Radhika 1956 births Living people IIT Delhi alumni Cornell University alumni American mathematicians American women mathematicians American operations researchers Indian mathematicians Indian women mathematicians Indian operations researchers Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences