Srinagesh Gavirneni, Professor of Operations, Technology, and Information Management (OTIM) in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, part of the SC Johnson College of Business, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 56. He is survived by his wife, Ramadevi, his children, Siddharth and Meghana, his parents Surendranath and Rajyalakshmi Gavirneni, and his siblings Srinivas Gavirneni and Sridevi Paleti.
Nagesh was born in 1967 and grew up in Andhra Pradesh, India. He attended Rishi Valley School, completed his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1989, and received Masters degrees from Iowa State University and Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1994, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in Manufacturing and Operations Systems at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1997.
Prior to arriving at Cornell in 2004, Nagesh was an assistant professor in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and a research scientist at Schlumberger in Austin, Texas. At Cornell, he taught and conducted research in supply chain management, inventory control, production scheduling, simulation, and optimization. Nagesh made seminal academic contributions to supply chain information sharing, and he was highly regarded for his passion for practical impact, applying his research to problems in healthcare, agriculture, and humanitarian logistics in developing countries. For many years, Nagesh taught the Semester in Strategic Operations immersion course, a critical component of the Cornell MBA curriculum, for which he built a network of local companies across industries.
Nagesh published many papers with peers from around the world and received numerous awards. He was a finalist for the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Best Paper Award in 2016. In 2017, he received an award for the Best Theory-Driven Empirical Paper at the Decision Sciences Institute Annual Conference, and won the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research Industry Relevance Award that same year. And in 2018, he won the Outstanding Associate Editor Award from the Journal of Decision Sciences.
Deeply caring about the people around him, Nagesh befriended everyone he met and remembered their life stories in detail. His office in Sage Hall was never locked, and all were welcome to stop by at any time. He was well known in the neighborhood for his long daily walks, which he took without fail even in pouring rain or deep snow. He was a familiar sight among the neighbors, talking with everyone he passed. He will be missed by many.
Visitation will be held on Monday, July 24, 2023 from 2:30 - 3:30 At Perkins Funeral Home, Dryden. Hindu funeral rites will follow the visitation from 3:30 - 4:30.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Nagesh's memory can be made to any of the following causes:
Uplift a Child: https://upliftachild.org/
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research: https://www.michaeljfox.org/
American Cancer Society: https://www.cancer.org/
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