Julie A Ward

Principal Scientist
Services Research Lab
Palo Alto

Biography

Julie is a Principal Scientist in the Business Optimization Lab, focused on developing software and services based on decision sciences and data mining that will bring personalized experiences to individuals and operational efficiencies to the enterprise. She has 15 years of research and practical experience applying operations research to improve business processes in areas including product portfolio management, IT infrastructure design, supply chain inventory management, forecasting, channel coordination, and service design and pricing.  Julie has co-authored more than 10 refereed papers in journals and conference proceedings and has over 25 patents granted or pending.  She received her Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford University and her Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University.

 

Research interests

  • Design and pricing of services
  • Product portfolio management
  • IT infrastructure design
  • Supply chain inventory optimization

Awards

Winner of the 2009 Franz Edelman Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice for the work "HP Transforms Product Portfolio Management Using Operations Research." Joint with Bin Zhang, Shelen Jain, Chris Fry, Thomas Olavson, Holger Mishal, Kathy Chou and others. 

Publications

Refereed Journal Papers and Conference Proceedings

  • Zhu, X., Santos, C. Beyer, D., Ward, J. and Singhal, S. (2008). Automated Application Component Placement in Data Centers using Mathematical Programming, International Journal of Network Management 18, 467-483.
  • Tarjan, R., Ward., J., Zhang, B., Zhou, Y., and Mao, J. (2006). Balancing Applied to Maximum Network Flow Problems.  Proceedings of ESA'06, September 11-13, 2006, Switzerland.
  • Singhal, S., Graupner, S., Sahai, A., Machiraju, V., Pruyne, J., Zhu, X., Rolia, J., Arlitt, M., Santos, C., Beyer, D. and Ward, J. (2005). QuartermasterA Resource Utility System. Proceedings of the 9th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, Nice, France, May 15-19, 2005.
  • Singhal, S., Graupner, S., Sahai, A., Machiraju, V., Pruyne, J., Zhu, X., Rolia, J., Arlitt, M., Santos, C., Beyer, D. and Ward, J. (2005). QuartermasterA Resource Utility. HP Tech Con 04, Orlando, Florida, June 2004.
  • Ward, J. Zhang, B., Feng, A., Beyer, D., and Jain, S. (2005). Managing Product Proliferation via Revenue Coverage Optimization. HP Tech Con 05, Phoenix, Arizona, March 2005.
  • Ward, J., O'Sullivan, M., Shahoumian, T., Wilkes, J., Wu, R., and Beyer, D.  (2003). Appia and the SAN Designer: automatic storage area network fabric design. HP Tech Con 03, Keystone, Colorado, April 2003.
  • Ward, J., O'Sullivan, M., Shahoumian, T., Wilkes, J., Wu, R., and Beyer, D. (2003). Appia: automatic storage area network fabric design. Conference on File And Storage Technology (FAST'02), pp. 203-217 (January 2002, Monterey, CA). Published by USENIX, Berkeley, CA.
  • Beyer, D. and Ward, J. (2000). Network Server Supply Chain at HP: A Case Study, in Supply Chain Structures: Coordination, Information and Optimization (International Series in Operations Research and Management Science), Jing-Sheng Song, David D. Yao (Eds) .
  • Ward, J. (1999). Minimum-Aggregate-Concave-Cost Multicommodity Flows in Strong-Series-Parallel Networks. Mathematics of Operations Research 24, 106-129.
  • Schulman, A., R. Vachani, J. Ward, and Kubat, P. (1996). Multicommodity Flows in Ring Networks, INFORMS Journal on Computing 8, 235-242.
HP Labs Technical Reports
  • Gallego, G., Hu, M., Ward, J., Beltran, J. L., Jain, S. (2008) Design and pricing of usage dependent extended warranties. HP Labs Tech Report 2008-207.
  • Gallego, G., Hu, M., Wang, R. Ward, J., Beltran, J. L., Balestrieri, F., Jain, S. (2008)  Residual value extended warranties: effective market segmentation with a single service product. HP Labs Tech Report 2008-208.
  • Shan, J.Z., Ward, J., Jain, S. Beltran, J. L. Amirjalayer, F., Kim, Y.-W. (2008). Spare Parts Forecasting: A Case Study at HP. HP Labs Tech Report 2008-150.
  • Zhang, B., Ward., J., Feng, A. (2005). Simultaneous Parametric Maximum Flow Algorithm with Vertex Balancing. HP Labs Tech Report 2005-121.
  • Zhang, B., Ward., J., Feng, A. (2005). A Simultaneous Maximum Flow Algorithm for the Selection Model. HP Labs Tech Report 2005-91.
  • Zhang, B., Ward., J., Feng, A. (2004). A Simultaneous Parametric Maximum Flow Algorithm for Finding the Complete Chain of Solutions. HP Labs Tech Report 2004-189.
  • Machiraju, V., Pruyne, J., Zhu, X., Rolia, J., Arlitt, M., Santos, C., Beyer, D., Ward, J. (2004). Quartermaster - A Resource Utility System. HP Labs Tech Report 2004-152.
  • Zhu, X., Santos, C., Ward, J., Beyer, D., Singhal, S. (2003). Resource Assignment for Large-Scale Computing Utilities using Mathematical Programming. HP Labs Tech Report 2004-243R1.
  • Zhang, A., Beyer, D., Ward, J., Liu, T., Karp, A., Guler, K., Jain, S., Tang, H-K. (2002). Modeling the Price-Demand Relationship Using Auction Bid Data. HP Labs Tech Report 2002-202.
  • Beyer, D. and Ward., J (2000). Network Server Supply Chain - A Case Study. HP Labs Tech Report 2002-84.

Patents

7

Professional activities

Consulting Assistant Professor, Stanford University Management Science and Engineering Department