Douglas M King

Douglas M King is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Grainger College of Engineering. He has been with the department since 2012, progressing from Visiting Lecturer to his current position as Teaching Assistant Professor. His work focuses on applying operations research and data analytics to practical problems including political redistricting, transportation systems, and public health applications.

Dr. King earned his educational degrees entirely from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

• Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (May 2012)
• M.S. in Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering (May 2006)
• B.S. in General Engineering (May 2002)

Dr. King's primary research interests lie at the intersection of operations research, data analytics, and real-world applications. His most significant contributions have been in developing optimization frameworks for political redistricting, where he has pioneered algorithms that create geographically compact and politically competitive districts. His work integrates geographic information systems with mathematical optimization to address the complex constraints of redistricting. Beyond redistricting, Dr. King has made notable contributions to understanding the relationship between transportation systems and public health outcomes, particularly examining how public transit usage relates to obesity rates. His methodological expertise spans stochastic modeling, graph partitioning, and multi-objective optimization.

Dr. King's publication record demonstrates a clear progression toward increasingly complex optimization problems in political redistricting. Starting with foundational work on geo-graph modeling for congressional district creation, he has advanced to developing sophisticated multi-stage optimization frameworks that address multiple constitutional criteria simultaneously. His recent work employs local search algorithms with recombination methods that significantly outperform traditional approaches. Beyond redistricting, his publications show interdisciplinary reach into sports analytics (NCAA tournament modeling) and public health research examining connections between transportation patterns and obesity.

Dr. King's research has been recognized with several prestigious awards:

• 2019 INFORMS Service Science Best Paper Award (First Place)
• 2018 INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research Best Paper Award (Finalist)
• 2013 IISE Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award (Second Place)
• 2012 INFORMS Innovation in Analytics Award (Semifinalist)
• 2012 INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Services and Needs Best Paper Competition (Finalist)

Dr. King serves as a faculty advisor for student organizations, having received the IISE Outstanding Faculty Advisor award for the North Central Region in 2013 and 2016. He was also honored with the Engineering Council Outstanding Advising Award in 2016 and 2017. His teaching portfolio includes core industrial engineering courses such as Analysis of Data (IE 300), Industrial Quality Control (IE 330), Design & Analysis of Experiments (IE 400), and OR Models for Manufacturing Systems (IE 412). He has developed innovative teaching methods, including using case studies to enhance critical thinking skills of industrial engineering students.

Dr. King collaborates extensively with Professor Sheldon H. Jacobson and other researchers including Kiera W. Dobbs, Ian G. Ludden, and Rahul Swamy. Together, they have developed the "Geo-Graph" framework and other computational approaches for redistricting that have been published in top journals. Their work has been covered in university news for developing new algorithms for congressional redistricting. They maintain an active research program that bridges theoretical optimization with practical applications in political science, transportation, and public health.