Plenaries & Keynotes

Plenaries

Sunday, November 8

12:15-1:15pm

Operations Research and Public Policy: Making a Difference

Our nation and the world have undergone an enormous number of societal changes in 2020 that will impact our lives well into the future. This has created an even greater need for data-driven analysis and modeling to address a growing list of new challenges. Operations research has a long history of impacting public policy, in such diverse areas as the military, homeland security, government, and public health. Several of these issues have been central themes throughout my academic career, including risk-based aviation security, election forecasting, and computational redistricting. This talk discusses a number of these research problems, focusing on how operations research has made a difference, and how the operations research community can provide valuable service to our nation by using our expertise to address emerging opportunities in this new world.

Sheldon Jacobson

Omega Rho Distinguished Lecturer

Founder Professor of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Bio

Sheldon H. Jacobson is a Founder Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a B.Sc (Mathematics) from McGill University and a Ph.D. (Operations Research) from Cornell University.

Sheldon research interests focus on using Operations Research to address public sector problems and to inform public policy. His research on risk-based aviation security provided the foundational concepts that informed the design of TSA Precheck. His research on computational redistricting demonstrates how optimization-based AI can be used to address gerrymandering (http://redistricting.cs.illinois.edu). His research on NCAA basketball March Madness analytics is a STEM Learning Laboratory for high school and undergraduate students, http://bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu, attracting over 800,000 page views since its launch in 2012.

His research has been reported in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, and featured on CNBC’s Street Signs and The Closing Bell, MSNBC’s Weekends with Alex Witt, Washington Post Radio, CBS This Morning, CBC Canada News, and BBC World News.

Sheldon has provided services to both government agencies and professional societies. He has briefed personnel within the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice. He has served on committees for the National Research Council and the National Academy of Medicine, and led the NSF-Funded workshop, Setting a Broader Impacts Innovation Roadmap. He has served as a NSF Program Director (2012-2014), the INFORMS Treasurer (2015-2016), and as a panelist at the 2019 INFORMS Government & Analytics Summit.

Sheldon’s research has been recognized with several awards, including the INFORMS Impact Prize, the Aviation Security Research Award (Aviation Security International), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is an elected Fellow of INFORMS, the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Monday, November 9

11am-12pm

Panel Discussion

Forecasting Models for the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the early days of the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, advanced analytics have been applied to forecast the outbreak of infections, deaths, and hospitalizations. This distinguished panel includes four leading researchers in the areas of modeling the disease, and they will discuss different modeling approaches, how these approaches quickly evolved, the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, and a retrospective of how the models and their results have been communicated outside the profession. The panel will also touch on opportunities for future modeling to support decision making.

Moderator

Anne Robinson

Chief Strategy Officer
Kinaxis

Bio

As Chief Strategy Officer, Anne is responsible for accelerating Kinaxis strategy development to add continued value to customers. Her team drives the strategic roadmap, delivers thought leadership and identifies emerging trends. A proven leader in analytics and digital transformation, Anne has extensive experience in managing supply chains for global organizations. As Executive Director, Global Supply Chain Strategy at Verizon, Anne was responsible for the strategic vision of the global supply chain, driving excellence through analytics and process innovation. Previously, Anne worked at Cisco where she managed advanced analytics and business performance teams. Anne is a past president of INFORMS, a seasoned industry speaker and serves on several advisory boards. She is the founding editor of INFORMS Editor’s Cut. Anne has a BScH from Acadia University, MASc from the University of Waterloo and MSc and PhD from Stanford University.

Panelists

Julie Swann

North Carolina State University

Bio

Julie Swann is the A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professor and Department Head of the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University. She is an affiliate faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, which is joint with NC State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining NC State, she was the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she co-founded and co-directed the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS), one of the first interdisciplinary research centers on the Georgia Tech campus. In her work with CHHS and following, Dr. Swann has conducted research, outreach, and education to improve the way that health and humanitarian systems operate, domestically in the US and internationally. She has been conducting analysis of the epidemiology and public health impacts of the disease spread of a pandemic including influenza (2007 to current) and Covid-19 (2020 to current), with colleagues from Georgia Tech and NC State. In 2009-2010, she was on loan to the CDC as a Senior Science Advisor for the H1N1 pandemic response. Currently she is leading a team selected by the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop forecasts and decision models to support state decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.

Nicoleta Serban

Georgia Tech

Bio

Nicoleta Serban is Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Serban’s education and research trajectory makes her unique in the pursuit of data-driven discovery endeavors. Her research record is quite diverse, from mathematical statistics to modeling to data analysis to statistical learning, with recent contributions on drawing principled inferences on healthcare delivery and health policy. She has also been involved in broad impact research activities; the most noteworthy is the leadership of the Health Analytics initiative (http://www.healthanalytics.gatech.edu). This is a collaborative effort anchored in partnership with a varied network of clinicians, healthcare providers, and public health entities. To date, she has published more than 60 journal articles, and a collaborative (with Dr. William B. Rouse) book titled Understanding and Managing the Complexity of Healthcare published by MIT Press and single-authored book titled Healthcare System Access: Measurement, Inference and Intervention published by Wiley. She is the editor for physical sciences, engineering, and the environment for the Annals of Applied Statistics Journal. She has reviewed for multiple funding agencies and she has served in multiple workshops and meetings organized by the National Academies.

Retsef Levi

MIT

Bio

Retsef Levi is the J. Spencer Standish (1945) Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a member of the Operations Management Group at MIT Sloan and affiliated with the MIT Operations Research Center. Levi also serves as the Faculty Co-Director of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO). Before coming to MIT, he spent a year in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center as the holder of the Goldstine Postdoctoral Fellowship. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Tel-Aviv University (Israel) in 2001, and a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University in 2005. Levi spent almost 12 years in the Israeli Defense Forces as an officer in the Intelligence Wing and was designated as an Extra Merit Officer. After leaving the Military, Levi joined an emerging new Israeli hi-tech company as a Business Development Consultant. Levi’s current research is focused on the design of analytical data-driven decision support models and tools addressing complex business and system design decisions under uncertainty in areas such as health and healthcare management, supply chain, procurement and inventory management, revenue management, pricing optimization and logistics.

Nicholas G. Reich

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Bio

Nicholas G Reich is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received a PhD in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. His research team at UMass has developed statistical methods and open-source tools for creating probabilistic, ensemble forecasts of infectious disease outbreaks in real-time. His team leads two international infectious disease forecasting consortia, including the FluSight Network and the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Dr. Reich is the director of an Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Read more about his research lab at https://reichlab.io

Tuesday, November 10

11am-12pm

The Future of Federal Statistics and the Role of the Chief Statistician

Technology and the availability of data has significantly changed inputs to federal statistical data. Users want reliable, timely, and more granular data but statistical agencies face ongoing budget limitations as they attempt to modernize. Maintaining data quality while achieving efficiencies in data collection, such as those built into the 2020 Census field operations, presents many challenges The Chief Statistician of the US is charged with coordinating the federal statistical system, setting quality standards, and leading change. Explore what change might look like with the former Chief Statistician, who presents a vision of how far we have come recently and what lies ahead.

Nancy Potok

former Deputy Director and COO
U.S. Census Bureau

Bio

Nancy Potok is the former Chief Statistician of the United States. She previously served as Deputy Director and COO of the U.S. Census Bureau; Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the US Department of Commerce; Senior VP for Economic, Labor, and Population Studies at NORC at the University of Chicago; and COO at McManis & Monsalve Associates, a business analytics firm. While at the Census Bureau, Dr. Potok was the driving force behind modernization of the 2020 Census, including using OR to optimize the productivity of the massive field operations, potentially saving billions of dollars in the costs of door-to-door interviewing. While Chief Statistician of the U.S., Dr. Potok co-chaired the development and implementation of the Federal Data Strategy, began modernizing the federal statistical system, and served as a Commissioner on the Evidence Based Policymaking Commission. In addition to representing the US at the UN Statistical Commission and Statistical Division of the OECD, she led US efforts to create and drive federal policies to realize the promise of the Foundations of Evidence-Based Policy Making Act around open data, improved data accessibility and management, linkage of sensitive microdata, AI, and other actions to enable better insights from federal data. She currently is President of NAPx Consulting, LLC. Dr. Potok is also an adjunct professor at The George Washington University and a Senior Fellow at its Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA, a contributing editor and advisory board member of the Harvard Data Science Review, on the Board of Visitors for the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and a board member of the Data Foundation. She is the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award, the Secretary of Commerce Gold Medal and Silver Medals for outstanding achievements, and the Arthur S. Flemming Award. She received her Ph.D. at The George Washington University.

Wednesday, November 11

11am-12pm

AI is the Right Term for Our INFORMS Profession

Ever since I went to grad school in the mid 90s, I’ve seen how this profession has had trouble describing what it is we studied and what we do. Around 2011 (or so), we slowly tried to fit into the term Analytics.

I’m now convinced we should proudly say that the INFORMS profession is part of the AI movement– we should say that we do AI.

In this talk, I’ll explain how we came to embrace the term Analytics, how the term AI has evolved, and why we can now lay claim to using AI. I’ll even give my opinion on why the term AI is better than the term Analytics for us.

A term like AI will never be clean. In this talk, I’ll try to give the right nuances and caveats. My goal is that you can explain your involvement with AI to someone at a cocktail party. Also, my goal is to explain it so that if that person at the cocktail party works on self-driving cars or works for OpenAI, you can confidently explain how you fit in to their definition of AI.

I might not convince you, but hopefully I’ll help you shape your own definition, and you’ll better understand how others are using the term.

Michael Watson

Co-founder
Opex Analytics

Bio

Michael Watson is a co-founder of Opex Analytics, now a LLamasoft company and adjunct professor at Northwestern. He has been in the optimization and analytics space since 1996, with companies such as LogicTools, ILOG, and IBM. At Northwestern, he teaches optimization in the Masters in Analytics program and Operational Excellence in the MEM program. He has written the books, Supply Chain Network Design and Managerial Analytics. He holds a PhD from Northwestern from the IEMS department.

Keynotes