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J Bickel

Professor

Department:     Information, Risk & Operations Management

Additional Titles:     Professor in Cockrell School of Engineering

ETC 5.128C

J. Eric Bickel teaches courses in decision analysis and its application to major business and public policy decisions for the University of Texas McCombs School of Business’ Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management. He is professor in UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering and director of UT’s Graduate Program in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. His work has addressed the modeling of probabilistic dependence, value of information, scoring rules, calibration, risk preference, decision-making in sports, and climate engineering as a response to climate change.

His research has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Sports Illustrated, the MLB Network and elsewhere. He and his research were featured in the documentary “Cool It.” His research into climate engineering was selected by a panel of economists, including three Nobel laureates, as the best approach to climate change.

At UT, Bickel is also the director and graduate adviser of the Engineering Management program and holds a courtesy appointment in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum Engineering and Geosystems Engineering.

Bickel is a partner and director at Strategic Decisions Group, which is focused on corporate strategy. He has consulted around the world in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, electricity generation/transmission/delivery, energy trading and marketing, commodity and specialty chemicals, life sciences, financial services, and metals and mining.

Bickel holds a master’s degree and doctoral degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, with a minor in economics, from New Mexico State University.

ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP & AWARDS

2021

Fawn & Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence Award for Executive Education

2018

Franklin Award for Outstanding Research, Teaching, and Service by an Assistant/Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

2010

NSF CAREER Award

2006

INFORMS Decision Analysis Society Practice Award

Publications

Imran A. Khan, Eric Bickel, and Robert K. Hammond. Determining the Accuracy of the Triangular and PERT Distributions. Decision Analysis. Forthcoming. 

Colin Small and J. Eric Bickel. July 2022. Model Complexity and Accuracy: A COVID-19 Case Study. To appear at Decision Analysis.

Zachary Smith and J. Eric Bickel. January 2022. Weighted Scoring Rules and Convex Risk Measures. To appear at Operations Research.

Zachary Smith and J. Eric Bickel. June 2020. Additive Scoring Rules for Discrete Sample Spaces. Decision Analysis 17 (2), 115-133.

Christopher Hadlock and J. Eric Bickel. March 2017. Johnson Quantile-Parameterized Distributions. Decision Analysis 14 (1), 21-34.

J. Eric Bickel and Shubham Agrawal. August 2013. Reexamining the Economics of Aerosol Geoengineering. Climatic Change 119 (3) 993-1006.

Robert K. Hammond and J. Eric Bickel. March 2013. Reexamining Discrete Approximations to Continuous Distributions. Decision Analysis 10 (1), 6-25.

Luis V. Montiel and J. Eric Bickel. December 2012. A Simulation-Based Approach to Decision Making with Partial Information. Decision Analysis 9 (4), 329-347.

J. Eric Bickel, Eric Floehr, and Seong Dae Kim. October 2011. Comparing NWS PoP Forecasts to Third-Party Providers. Monthly Weather Review 139 (10), 3304-3321.

J. Eric Bickel. April 2007. Some Comparisons among Quadratic, Spherical, and Logarithmic Scoring Rules. Decision Analysis 4 (2), 49-65.

J. Eric Bickel. October 2006. Some Determinants of Corporate Risk Aversion. Decision Analysis 3 (4), 233-251.