Industrial Engineering: Research Guide

BALTIMORE, MD, November 18, 2024 – One of the most common assumptions tax policymakers make is that by raising taxes, they will raise revenue for the government. However, a new study that centers on a soda tax in Washington state has reinforced alternative presumptions about tax impacts on consumer behaviors.

BALTIMORE, MD, November 18, 2024 – One of the most common assumptions tax policymakers make is that by raising taxes, they will raise revenue for the government. However, a new study that centers on a soda tax in Washington state has reinforced alternative presumptions about tax impacts on consumer behaviors.

BALTIMORE, MD, November 12, 2024 – New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management is guiding the development of more inclusive and efficient electricity markets. The work demonstrates how aggregating small-scale, distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar panels can effectively balance the power of large utility companies.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 31, 2024 – INFORMS, the largest association for decision and data sciences, announced Theresa Roeder has been named the vice president of Sections and Societies at INFORMS. A renowned expert with significant expertise in the semiconductor industry, Roeder works primarily in the field of discrete-event computer simulation. She is the department chair in the Lam Family College of Business at San Francisco State University.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 31, 2024 – INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in operations research, analytics, management science, economics, behavioral science, statistics, artificial intelligence, data science, applied mathematics and other relevant fields, announced that Mark E. Lewis, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, has been elected the 2026 INFORMS president.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 15, 2024 – The opioid epidemic is a crisis that has plagued the United States for decades. One central issue of the epidemic is inequitable access to treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), which puts certain populations at a higher risk of opioid overdose.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 8, 2024 – New findings from a team of renowned researchers calls for transparency and rigorous oversight of the U.S. Medicare Advantage (MA) program, the United States’ largest healthcare capitation program.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 8, 2024 – Local craft beer consumers don’t seem to like it when their favorite brands are acquired, showing displeasure through spending habits, according to a new study on brand loyalty and craft beers.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 2, 2024 – INFORMS Executive Director Elena Gerstmann, Ph.D., FASAE, CAE, has been elected secretary/treasurer of CESSE, The Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives. CESSE is an association that convenes senior staff leaders from STEM membership organizations. Through CESSE, these leaders exchange best practices, innovative ideas and strategies for leading their respective organizations to success.

BALTIMORE, MD, September 26, 2024 – In overwhelming bipartisan fashion, the U.S. House of Representatives just passed the “Mathematical and Statistical Modeling Education Act,” (H.R. 1735) which, if enacted, would modernize STEM education in the United States. The bill passed by unanimous consent.

BALTIMORE, MD, September 11, 2024 – Online dating sites have become one of the more popular means for people to meet each other and explore the potential for a romantic relationship. But did you know that it’s the size of the online dating pool that could make or break your own quest for love?

BALTIMORE, MD, August 5, 2024 – In spring 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of Germany’s 16 federal states instituted an ad ban, forcing retailers to stop all print advertising in that state for three weeks. The state did so under the assumption that such a ban would limit contacts during the pandemic. However, banning print advertising is also being discussed as a way to conserve natural resources, including the paper and water required to produce printed advertising materials, and a way to help reduce carbon emissions.

BALTIMORE, MD, July 29, 2024 – Generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as Open AI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 have provided many new ways for researchers to better understand consumer behaviors and preferences, but one question that has yet to be answered is whether these large language models (LLMs) can accurately mimic human responses on matters of consumer preference.

BALTIMORE, MD, June 18, 2024 – Advertising has long been known to depict a virtual reality of life leading some people to expect more out of life than is practical. This is driven by idyllic imagery and storytelling, among other techniques such as an emphasis on materialism.

BALTIMORE, MD, May 8, 2024 – Because public health experts have determined that menthol-flavored cigarettes pose higher health risks to smokers than non-menthol varieties, policymakers for years have considered banning menthol. Most of the measures taken to date have been at the state level, but new research suggests that this approach has backfired. The better alternative, researchers suggest, is a higher tax on menthol cigarettes, or a national ban at the federal level.

BALTIMORE, MD, April 09, 2024 – Do market researchers still need to conduct original research using human participants in their work? Not always, according to a new study, which found that thanks to the increasing sophistication of large language models (LLMs), human participants can be substituted with LLMs and still generate similar outputs as those generated from human surveys.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 25, 2024 – Four INFORMS members have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Antonio Conejo is a professor in integrated systems engineering at The Ohio State University. Martha Grabowski is the McDevitt Distinguished Chair in Information Systems, Information Systems Program Director and professor of information systems in the Madden College of Business and Economics at Le Moyne College. Patricia Mokhtarian is a Clifford and William Greene Jr. Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Stephen Wright is a George B. Dantzig Professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison..

BALTIMORE, MD, March 11, 2024 – In business and in life, the power of mentorship has long been understood, but how important is it that your mentor look like you? This question was at the center of a new study, which specifically found that mentor gender has a powerful impact on female entrepreneurs.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 5, 2024 – New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found that companies and brands that have aligned themselves with Black Lives Matter (BLM) suffered a negative impact at the hands of consumers.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 28, 2024 – Delivering childhood vaccines via drone could be a triple whammy – saving lives, saving money and improving health outcomes – according to new research in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. The authors developed optimization models to strategically design a distribution network for drones to deliver vaccines. Their proposed approach was evaluated using real-world data from the Vanuatu region, where vaccine delivery by drones was tested in a UNICEF-sponsored project.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 21, 2024 – Artificial intelligence (AI) has made great strides in the past few years, even months. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds that AI agents can build trust – like that of humans.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 12, 2024 – New research has found that women and minorities are more likely to pay higher premiums when they take out auto loans. A new study conducted by researchers at three leading universities found that women and minorities pay a statistically significant and greater dealer interest rate markup than men and non-minorities.

BALTIMORE, MD, January 3, 2024 – New research has found a way to leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to more efficiently screen out bad ideas to focus on only good ideas in the crowdsourcing process within ideation. More specifically, the research has arrived at a simple model for screening out ideas that experts might consider “bad.” Importantly, managers can adjust their model to determine how many bad ideas to screen out, without losing good ones. The research also found a single new predictor that screens out atypical ideas and preserves more inclusive and rich ideas.

BALTIMORE, MD, December 20, 2023 – It’s no secret: men and women work differently. They have different strengths and weaknesses and productivity levels depending on the task. Most men work in occupations where less than 20% of the employees are women, and a majority of women work in occupations where less than 30% of the employees are men.

BALTIMORE, MD, December 11, 2023 – Researchers have found that machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly reduce cost and time in the product design phase, not only in the actual generative design of the product, but also in the predictive analysis of whether consumers will be attracted to certain designs.

BALTIMORE, MD, November 27, 2023 – A new study has found that your online profile picture may play a key role in whether you get hired. The study also found that if your profile photo suggests you “look the part,” those hiring you as an employee or freelancer may be more likely to give that more weight than lower ratings, lack of certifications and a fewer number of reviews than your close competitors.

BALTIMORE, MD, November 2, 2023 – New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science is providing insights for business leaders on how work experience affects employees interacting with AI.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 17, 2023 – INFORMS, the largest association for decision and data sciences, announced Anahita Khojandi has been named the vice president of Membership and Professional Recognition at INFORMS.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 17, 2023 – INFORMS, the largest association for decision and data sciences, announced Tinglong Dai has been named the vice president of Marketing, Communication & Outreach at INFORMS.

BALTIMORE, MD, October 17, 2023 – INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, announced that David Hunt has been elected the 2025 INFORMS President. Hunt is the vice president at Oliver Wyman and focuses on transportation policy, operations and strategic planning. He will join the INFORMS Board of Directors as president-elect in January 2024 and will then serve as president and past president in 2025 and 2026, respectively.