April 11, 2019 in What's Your StORy?
What's Your StORy? Patricia Neri
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https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2019.02.35
Name: Patricia Neri
Employer: SAS Institute Inc.
Job Title: Principal Analytical Consultant
INFORMS member for 23+ years
Tell us about your experience as the Wagner Prize Committee Chair, and what you hope the competition will achieve in the coming years.
In my two-year tenure there was a 50% increase on the number of entries submitted and we received more international entries. It was stimulating to have new entries related to artificial intelligence, big data, and text analytics. Personally, it is thrilling to see analytics applied to real-world problems, to know the world will be a better place because of the impact these entries have, and that students, professors, and practitioners will benefit from the Wagner videos and articles in INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics (formerly Interfaces).
For the coming years, I hope the number of innovative entries continues to increase, and that the Wagner resources are used more frequently.
How do you define “analytics”?
Broadly, given my background in applied mathematics, physics, and operations research. For me, analytics is to use data, find relevant patterns, and build useful models that help to make informed decisions.
Tell us about a memorable INFORMS experience.
I coached the 2010 Edelman Award-winning team INDEVAL that is the Mexican Central Securities Depository (CSD). Their O.R. system settled in real time the financial securities and reduced the intraday financing costs by more than $US 150 million annually.
I grew up in Mexico so it was exciting to work with this team knowing the impact that their work had in the Mexican economy, and to see my brothers closely following the Edelman competition.
How could we promote analytics careers to high school students?
By developing materials for high schoolers that show how analytics is all around us and how we benefit every day from its applications and showing them that a career in analytics is within their reach and well-paid. Some of those materials could be videos or blogs. Also, by working with high school teachers in summer camps providing them with use cases, videos, blogs, and curriculum materials.
Tell us something that not many people know about you.
My dog is a therapy dog. We go to public libraries where kids read to her, and to hospitals which allows kids to forget for a little bit that they are sick while playing with her.
If you could have dinner with one famous person from history who would it be?
Nelson Mandela–he was an exceptional human being who helped his country move in a new direction even though they were deeply divided. By the way, he wrote a supporting letter for the 1996 Edelman winner “Guns or Butter: Decision Support for Determining the Size and Shape of the South African National Defense Force.”
