Let’s see how far we’ve come: Looking back at 2023 with our INFORMS President

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s a great time to reflect on the past year with our 2023 INFORMS President Laura Albert, professor and department chair of industrial & systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Exploring global health security and healthcare supply chains at #INFORMS2022

Special series featuring in-person interviews from #INFORMS2022 in Indianapolis! I was delighted to be joined in person in Indianapolis at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting by Prashant Yadav with INSEAD. He was a keynote presenter at this year’s Annual Meeting, “Global Health Security and Healthcare Supply Chains: Perspectives and Opportunities for Operations Research,” and he kindly took some time out of his busy meeting schedule to sit down with me and explore the topic of his presentation.

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We’re gonna need a bigger … data set: Shark attacks and wicked problems

Today’s episode will be a little different than most, we’re going to take a bit of a detour but stick with me and I promise, I’ll bring us back around to data science. I’m going to take us back in time a little, back to the first time I watched what was to become my favorite movie, Jaws. It was the summer between 4th and 5th grade (probably way too young to be watching a movie about a killer shark) and I was at a sleepover where the next day, after being thoroughly terrified by this movie, we went to…

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Stochastic optimization provides key to combatting increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires

When you take a look back, even just over the past couple of years, the devastation caused by the seemingly growing threat of large-scale wildfires has made headlines around the world. From the unprecedented brushfires in Australia in 2019-2020, to California’s record setting wildfire season later that same year, and most recently the Colorado prairie grass fires which occurred well outside of the traditional fire season, the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfire incidents are a growing global concern. Not only are these fires capable of causing billions of dollars in damage each year, but contribute to the deaths of…

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What is … an interview with Sam Buttrey, winner of Jeopardy! Tournament of Professors!

Good Luck in the FINALS of the 2022 Tournament of Champions, Dr. Buttrey!! In this week’s episode I’m thrilled to be joined by a very special guest, Sam Buttrey, an associate professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School and winner of the first-ever Jeopardy! Tournament of Professors. Sam competed against professors from across the country and in a variety of disciplines to win not only the $100,000 grand prize, but an opportunity to further compete in the 2022 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.

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Approaching COVID-19 reopening as an O.R. problem

As the country begins to reopen, we are seeing restrictions put in place to counteract the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic begin to loosen. I think many of us are battling conflicting emotions: excitement at the idea of a return to something closer to normal as well as uncertainty and anxiety, with each state reopening at a different rates and even inconsistencies in requirements regarding the use of face masks. And with some states seeing new spikes in infection rates, it begs the question, in a desire to return to normal are we moving too quickly, or perhaps simply going…

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From products to people: The growing impact of supply chain interruptions during the coronavirus pandemic

Throwback to March 18, 2020. In the past week alone, much has occurred in regard to the growing impact of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, in the U.S. As the number of confirmed cases of the virus across the country continues to increase, travel to the U.S. from Europe has been significantly restricted and state and local governments are taking equally assertive precautions. In the INFORMS home state of Maryland alone, the governor has issued a state of emergency that includes closing schools and other public institutions, banning large gatherings, and instructing people to isolate themselves from others.  As these restrictions…

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A look inside the rapid spread of the coronavirus, what are we missing?

In December 2019, the first cases of the coronavirus were identified in Wuhan, China. As the number of infections and subsequent patient deaths has continued to rise, the struggle to treat and contain the spread of the virus has become a worldwide concern for both medical professionals and world leaders. For this episode I am joined by Richard Larson, post-tenure professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose recently published article with the INFORMS magazine OR/MS Today, “The 2019-nCoV Coronavirus: Are there two routes to infection?” looks at the possible reasons this…

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Online shopping and fast shipping, what happens when things go south?

With online retailers like Amazon delivering nearly everything we could possibly need or want, often within a day or two of ordering it, we’ve become accustomed to and even reliant on the instant gratification that comes from shopping online. But what happens if access to expedited shipping were to suddenly and unexpectedly stop? Well for one online retail platform it did. Alibaba, an international online marketplace with nearly twice as many available products than Amazon, lost access to its shipping service for nearly 48 hours. To provide more insight on what happened, what the fallout was for Alibaba, and what…

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The Daily Impact of AI

Artificial Intelligence and Automation. For some, these garner images of a future filled with exciting advances that will impact important industries and services, such as transportation, healthcare, national security and more. For others, it raises concerns across a spectrum that can stretch from a fear of employment opportunities lost to machines to militant robots taking over the world. Joining me is Ramayya Krishnan, INFORMS 2019 President and the William W. and Ruth F. Cooper professor of management science and information systems and dean of the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, to shed some light on…

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