Impact Prize, Annual Meeting, IAAA deadline, CAP update and more

MIT Professor Simchi-Levi Awarded INFORMS Impact Prize

MIT professor David Simchi-Levi was recently awarded the prestigious Impact Prize from INFORMS, the leading international association of operations research and analytics professionals. Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering systems and director of the Data Science Lab at MIT, is the editor-in-chief of the INFORMS journal Management Science.

The Impact Prize is presented every two years to an INFORMS member who has played an integral part in the widespread impact of their work in the practice of operations research.

This recognition highlights Simchi-Levi’s leading role in developing and disseminating a new highly impactful paradigm for the identification and mitigation of risks in global supply chains. The new approach is meant to handle disruptions associated with unforeseen, low-probability, high-impact events. The new Risk Exposure Index (REI) approach analyzes supply chain resiliency, identifies hidden risks, and suggests mitigation strategies to address these risks. The tool has been made accessible to a wide audience in academia, industry and government.

Inaugural Virtual INFORMS Annual Meeting set for Nov. 7-13

The inaugural Virtual INFORMS Annual Meeting, featuring more than 4,000 synchronous and asynchronous presentations from O.R. and analytics professionals across the globe, will be held Nov. 7-13. With five full meeting days featuring live and on-demand presentations each day, this year’s meeting provides a unique virtual experience that allows participants to interact with the content they want, whenever and wherever they want to access it. Attendees will gain access to a global community of operations research and analytics professionals, students, educators, exhibitors and more.

The meeting program will include downloadable presentations with real-time Q&A opportunities, along with thousands of other on-demand sessions. The format not only allows participants to view talks they otherwise would not have been able to attend, but also allows participants to present their ideas to a wider audience and will give attendees greater opportunities for exposure.

The cutting-edge plenary sessions will address such topics as elections polling and gerrymandering, data challenges for the 2020 U.S. Census, and COVID-19 modeling and policy. The keynote speakers will cover state-of-the-art advancements in a broad range of timely topics, including social distancing models, disaster relief, supply chains, machine learning, simulation for big data, quantum computing, artificial intelligence and more. TutORials will cover a wide spectrum of topics, such as analytics-based issues of diversity, algorithmic bias, healthcare analytics, public education, entrepreneurship, wine analytics (!) and more. A new highlight of the conference is a specialized cluster of practice-curated sessions. The full speaker and presentation program is now available for attendees to view here: http://meetings2.informs.org/wordpress/annual2020/schedule/.

Deadline nears for Innovative Applications in Analytics Award submissions

The deadline for submissions for the prestigious 2021 Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA), brought to you by the Analytics Society of INFORMS, Kinaxis and Adelphi University, has been extended to Nov. 15, 2020. The competition recognizes organizations for applications that combine multiple types of analytics – descriptive, predictive and prescriptive – in novel ways to achieve meaningful results. To enter, provide a 500 to 1,000-word summary of your work to prize chair Pallav Chhaochhria ([email protected]).

The IAAA judging panel will select up to six finalists to present their applications on April 13 during the 2021 INFORMS Business Analytics Conference. First, second and third prize teams will receive cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. Apply now to receive the recognition you deserve within and outside of your organization for your analytics success story.

Detailed instructions are available here. Note that analytics applications being considered in parallel for other INFORMS prizes will not be considered. Direct any questions you have about the competition to Pallav ([email protected]).

CAP News: Boot camp, Exams and ACE Coaching

INFORMS will offer a three-day Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) preparation virtual boot camp on Dec. 8-10 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Designed so that participants are able to balance work, life and preparation for the industry-leading CAP credential, the boot camp/workshop will be presented virtually using the INFORMS online classroom and a Zoom video meeting. The sessions will be live and interactive, and led by experienced CAP Prep instructor Freeman Marvin of Innovative Decisions, Inc. A digital copy of the INFORMS Analytics Body of Knowledge (ABOK) will be included in the registration fee, and participants will be granted six months of access to the online classroom to review materials and discussions as they prepare to become a CAP. This will be the last chance to prep for the CAP in 2020 so click here to register now.

INFORMS also announced the new CAP and aCAP exams will officially launch on Jan. 1, 2021. The new exams will be available at all open Kryterion Test Centers, as well as through online proctoring, which allows for safe, at-home testing. The foundational elements of the CAP exam will remain the same (100 multiple-choice questions taken in a three-hour time frame), and while some questions will be updated and some removed, the concepts necessary to pass the exam have not changed. Contact Heather Trusty ([email protected]) with any questions and visit the certification webpage to submit your application.

INFORMS will hold its third Analytics Capability Evaluation (ACE) Coaching class – a virtual, online, four-day event – from 1-5 p.m. EST on Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Dec. 1 and Dec. 2. The ACE Coaching class achieves for organizations what the INFORMS CAP does for individual analysts – a means for companies to develop and enhance their analytics capabilities with the help of specially trained coaching experts. For more information or to attend the ACE class, contact Norm Reitter ([email protected]) or Dave Saranchak ([email protected]).

INFORMS sponsors COMAP’s MCM and HiICM contests

The Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications’ (COMAP) Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM), an international contest open to undergraduate students of all disciplines, is now accepting entries for its 2021 event. The contest provides students the opportunity to engage in and improve their math modeling, problem-solving and writing skills. During the contest, student teams build and analyze a model to address a problem, and then write a paper to showcase their work. In 2020, students formed more than 13,700 teams to address one of three open-ended problems (A-Continuous, B-Discrete, C-Data Insights). The Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) runs parallel to the MCM with the same requirements. In 2020, students formed more than 7,200 teams to address one of three open-ended problems (D-Operations Research/Network Science, E-Environmental Science, F-Policy).

Each team can have up to three students, and there is no limit on the number of teams a school can register for the contest. Scholarship prizes are awarded to top teams. Team members may work virtually. For more information and to register, visit: https://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/.

COMAP’s High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM) is an international contest designed to provide students with the opportunity to work as team members to engage in and improve their modeling, problem-solving and writing skills. Teams apply mathematics to model and develop a solution to a real-world problem. Each team can have up to four students from the same school, and there is no limit on the number of teams a school can register for the contest. Team members may work virtually. See www.himcmcontest.com for more information and on Twitter @COMAPMath for up-to-date contest information.

INFORMS is a sponsor of both contests.