Invisible but Essential
Operations researchers are little known but indispensable experts who use math and science to improve decision-making, management, and operations. They work throughout business, government, and academia.
Impressively, operations researchers make sense of millions of details. For example, operations research is responsible for the math models used to book the complex web of passenger reservations and discount tickets at busy airlines. Operations research is also used to save lives, for example, developing systems to help patients in need of organ transplants.
The convention will include sessions on topics applied to numerous fields, including commuter transit, e-commerce, health care, information technology, energy, transportation, marketing, telecommunications, and sports. More than 1,300 papers are scheduled to be delivered.
The General Chair is Professor David Rogers of the University of Cincinnati. The convention is underwritten, in part, by a generous grant of $125,000 from Procter & Gamble.
The following presentations may interest reporters -
How Do I Make Better Decisions?
- Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions, Monday 1-2:30pm, with Ralph Keeney, University of Southern California, and Howard Raiffa, Harvard Business School, two co-authors of the popular new business book. Available for interview.
Commuter Transit
- Traffic Incidents: Intelligent Traffic Systems Battle Gridlock, Tuesday, 8-9:30am, with speakers from Northwestern University and the University of California at Berkeley.
Race & Gender Issues
- When Race Matters: Implications for Ethnic Salespersons in the US, Sunday, 12:30-2pm, with Oscar DeShields, Jr., California State University. When the spokesperson's race, rather than credibility, dominates the effectiveness of the advertisement.
- Financial Decision Making: Are Women Really More Risk Averse? Wednesday, 9:45-11:15am, with speakers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who debunk a myth.
Baseball
- A Sports Time Machine, Wednesday, 9:45-11:15am, with Scott Berry; Texas A&M University, and Patrick D. Larkey; Carnegie Mellon University. Want to compare apples to apples when examining sports heroes of yesterday and today? Here’s how.
Information Technology
- Procter & Gamble: The Global Impact of Information Technology on Organizations in the Networked Era, Sunday 4-5pm, with Todd Garrett, Chief Information Officer, P&G. The CIO shares P&G’s insights on dealing with rapid changes in technology. Local angle.
Teaching Our Children Math
- Workshop for Cincinnati Math and Science Teachers, Monday 8am - 4pm. "Math you can use" is the focus of this training session for dozens of local teachers. Local angle.
Health
- Hold Everything! Evaluating Policies for Protecting Blood & Plasma Supplies, Monday 1:00 -2:30pm, with Edward Kaplan, Yale University, and Glen Satten, National Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention, Centers for Disease Control.
Operations Research in the News
- OR/MS in the News, Sunday 12:30-2pm, with researchers from Harvard, Yale, Virginia Tech, and University of North Carolina discussing their research, which has been covered by US News & World Report, Washington Post, and ABC.com.
The organizing committee includes representatives of the University of Cincinnati, Procter & Gamble, Wright State University, Air Force Institute of Technology, Miami University, University of Dayton, and Ohio State University. For additional information on the conference, including a full list of workshops, visit http://www2.informs.org/Conf/Cincinnati99/.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international scientific society with 12,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work primarily in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, the stock market, and telecommunications.