Alexandra Mary Newman is an Americanoperations researcher andindustrial engineer whose research concerns the application of operations research to mining, mine planning, andlogistics. She is a professor ofmechanical engineering and director of the Operations Research with Engineering Program at theColorado School of Mines,[1] and editor-in-chief of theINFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics.[2]
Newman is the daughter of two classics scholars at theUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,[3] J. Kevin Newman and Frances Stickney Newman.[4] She has a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from theUniversity of Chicago.[1] As across country running athlete at the University of Chicago, she was a 1993 recipient of the Gertrude Dudley Medal as an outstanding senior athlete.[5] She graduated in 1993.[6]
At the encouragement of R. Kipp Martin,[3] she studied industrial engineering and operations research at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where she received a master's degree in 1994 and completed her Ph.D. in 1998.[6] Her 1998 doctoral dissertation,Optimizing Intermodal Rail Operations, was supervised byCandace Arai Yano;[7][6] she also citesIlan Adler as a mentor for her teaching at Berkeley.[3]
She became a research assistant professor of operations research at theNaval Postgraduate School.[8] She intended to continue as a research professor, but Yano instead persuaded her to take a tenure-track position at the Colorado School of Mines,[3] where she continues to work as a full professor.[1]
Newman was aFulbright Fellow in 2010, funding a visit to theUniversity of Chile.[8]
She was the 2013 recipient of theInstitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Prize for the Teaching of the OR/MS Practice. She was named as a Fellow of INFORMS in the 2024 class of fellows.[9]
The Colorado School of Mines gave Newman its W. M. Keck Mentorship Award for mentoring graduate students in 2023.[10]
Newman continues to run cross country as part of the Impala Racing team, and took second place in her age division at the 2025USATF Cross Country Championships in January 2025 inLubbock, Texas.[11]