Update on INFORMS initiatives

In previous columns I have talked about our plans and goals for 2021, the financial health of INFORMS, and the development and deployment of a new strategic plan for INFORMS. In each case, the realities and uncertainties of our present state, namely the ongoing and evolving pandemic, have colored the discussion. This current state has created constraints on many aspects of INFORMS’ operations (e.g., in-person events), reduced revenues and increased costs. At the same time, it has allowed for experimentation of new ways to operate, new ways for the community to connect and collaborate, as well as disseminate and share information. We are learning a lot and should be able to capture and apply these lessons to improve our operations, as we get beyond the pandemic, consistent with the strategic goal of “Ensure our operational excellence and long-term financial health.” 

In this column, I will provide an update on how we have continued to invest in three important initiatives that should advance INFORMS’ strategic plans and benefit our community and profession. As discussed in my June OR/MS Today column [1], we experienced an operating deficit in 2020, and will run a similar deficit in 2021 and 2022. Fortunately, due to our healthy reserves at the start of the pandemic, as well as strong market returns, we remain in good financial shape. As a result, we have been able to continue to make progress on these initiatives. 

Advocacy Initiative 

INFORMS launched its advocacy program in 2018 with a singular aspiration: 

Raise Washington’s awareness and interest in the application of O.R. and analytics and how these tools can be used to serve the public’s interest in policymaking, governmental operations or returns on research investment in these fields. 

The overall intent was to create a virtuous cycle. As policymakers become more aware about our impact, they will want to learn more; and as they learn more, this will create more opportunities for the INFORMS community to apply O.R. and analytics to save lives, save money and solve problems. 

Since 2018, INFORMS has made consistent and solid progress increasing the visibility and awareness of O.R. and analytics and the expertise of our members with policymakers in Washington, D.C., and in the media. In that short time, INFORMS staff, consultants and our members have conducted more than 300 briefings with members of Congress and congressional staff members, federal agencies and the White House in the current and previous administrations. On top of that, our team’s hard work has resulted in INFORMS members appearing in more than 1,000 media stories in local, national and international newspapers, television and radio news programs, and podcasts. In all, nearly 100 INFORMS members have been involved in our advocacy activities. 

Beyond the metrics themselves, the work of the advocacy team has resulted in productive relationships with key members of the U.S. policy community and media around the globe. It has given our community a platform to lend our voice in discussions about key policy issues, including COVID-19, supply chain, artificial intelligence and much more. In particular, the advocacy initiative is helping to bring key parts of INFORMS’ strategic plan to life, specifically the goals, “Advance the science and technology of decision making and elevate its impact” and “Champion our profession and our brand.” 

Jeff Cohen, INFORMS chief strategy and innovation officer, and Beril Toktay, vice president, Marketing Communication and Outreach, lead the advocacy initiative for INFORMS. For more information, please be sure to read the Advocacy in D.C. column in this and past issues of ORMS Today [2, 3]. To learn more about how you can contribute to these important efforts please contact Jeff at [email protected]. 

AI Initiative 

Ramayya Krishnan launched the INFORMS Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiative (summarized in [4]) in 2019 during his term as president of INFORMS. The objective was to develop a strategy for INFORMS to guide how to increase our collaboration and engagement with the AI community and increase the visibility of INFORMS’ impact on AI. The effort began with the appointment of an ad hoc AI Strategy Advisory Committee (AISAC), which resulted in the publication of an INFORMS Whitepaper on AI [5], a plenary presentation on INFORMS AI Strategy [6] (https://youtu.be/5beyzv3Mjfg) at the 2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting, the creation of a vision document submitted to the CCC (Computing Community Consortium), and the launch of the new INFORMS Journal on Data Science (IJDS) [7]. 

At the beginning of 2021, we revived and reconstituted the AISAC as an ad hoc AI Strategy Workgroup, chaired by INFORMS President-elect Radhika Kulkarni. Its charge is to continue and expand the AISAC efforts, including: 

• Organizing a series of AI-OR Workshops on Artificial Intelligence in conjunction with the CCC, INFORMS and ACM SIGAI to promote increased collaboration across multiple communities at the research forefront of AI. The first workshop [8] is scheduled on Sept. 23-24, 2021. 
• Exploring how to align the INFORMS AI initiative with the increased emphasis on AI at the federal level, including the establishment of the National AI Initiative (https://www.ai.gov/). The Workgroup is striving to inform INFORMS members of various RFIs and to nominate members for other activities related to this national initiative, such as the plans to implement a National AI Research Resource Task Force [9] and an AI Risk Management Framework [10]. In addition, NSF recently announced two large grants ($20 million) for AI and optimization: AI4OPT [11] (includes several INFORMS members) and TILOS (http://tilos.ai/); these research centers should provide further opportunities to highlight the interconnections between O.R. and AI.   
• Engaging with the Stochastic Programming Society (https://stoprog.org/) and INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research Section (https://connect.informs.org/public-sector-operations-research/home) to gather examples that integrate O.R. and AI for societal impact. The intent is to then work with the INFORMS advocacy team to showcase these examples through various channels, including sharing them with key policymakers as well as leaders in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and NSF.    

In addition, Ramayya Krishnan and Pascal Van Hentenryck co-edited a recent volume of the INFORMS Analytics Collections (formerly Editor’s Cut), titled “Advances in Integrating AI & O.R.” [12]. The volume is a curated collection of papers from the INFORMS community that demonstrates the complementarity between AI and O.R. and highlights the synergistic value from the integration of AI and O.R. for both methodological advances as well as applications.  

To learn more about how you can contribute to the AI initiative, contact Radhika at [email protected]. 

DEI Initiative 

In 2017, we implemented a strategic initiative to examine diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within INFORMS and our field, and the INFORMS Board of Directors approved a new DEI Committee (DEIC). This committee was structured to include members from Women in OR/MS, Minority Issues Forum and the Junior Faculty Interest Group, as well as members of the INFORMS Board and members-at-large. The charge for the committee is to monitor the diversity of INFORMS membership and identify and implement best practices in DEI for INFORMS. As such, the committee offers guidance on the new strategic goal, “Advance diversity, equity and inclusion in all that we do.” 

It is not possible to capture all that is underway related to this initiative, so I would encourage you to look at the Diversity community homepage on INFORMS Connect (https://connect.informs.org/diversity/home). Some highlights of the DEIC include:  

• A summer DEI research webinar series [13] that featured operations researchers directly incorporating DEI considerations into their OR/MS research. 
• The second year of the DEI Ambassadors Program, which provides seed funding to INFORMS members to conduct DEI-related projects, webinars and workshops that contribute to advancing DEI across our community [14]. 
• Continuing to increase the DEI content at INFORMS meetings. In coordination with WORMS and MIF, the DEIC is organizing a number of sessions and events at the 2021 Annual Meeting, including a screening of the 2020 documentary, “Coded Bias.” The DEIC has invited Dr. Rediet Abebe (UC Berkeley) as a plenary speaker to discuss her work on algorithms and social service provisions.  
• The DEIC has met with Cole Smith, VP Publications, and Matt Walls, INFORMS director of publications, to understand efforts to promote more diverse editorial boards and a more equitable review process. At the suggestion of the DEIC, a diversity dashboard was created for each INFORMS journal showing the demographic distribution along several axes of each journals’ editorial board members. 

• The DEIC has discussed with the Professional Recognition Committee the consideration of more inclusive practices in its processes. 

The DEIC will play a role in planned efforts to survey the INFORMS membership on any issues or occurrences of discrimination, exclusion or harassment at events sponsored by INFORMS.    

Susan Martonosi is the current chair of the DEI Committee; contact her at [email protected] to learn more about these activities. 

Needless to say, there is a lot going on, with good progress on each initiative, and each well aligned with our strategic goals. Everyone at INFORMS should be grateful to Jeff Cohen, Beril Toktay, Radhika Kulkarni and Susan Martonosi, for their leadership and service to our community. Thank you. I am also particularly grateful as each effectively wrote their piece of this column, making my life very easy! 

References and Notes 

1. Graves, S., 2021, “Financial impact of COVID-19,” OR/MS Today, June, https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2021.03.11. 
2. Cohen, J., 2021, “Join INFORMS advocacy efforts as a trusted decision-making resource,” OR/MS Today, October, pp. 14-15. 
3. For past “Advocacy in D.C.” columns, visit https://pubsonline.informs.org/action/doSearch?target=digital-object-search&content=digitalObjects&Keywords=Advocacy+in+D.C.&sortBy=Ppub. 
4. Krishnan, R., 2019, “O.R., analytics and AI woven into fabric of INFORMS,” OR/MS Today, Dec. 10, https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2019.06.14.   
5. INFORMS Artificial Intelligence Internal White Paper, 2019, https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/3449182/INFORMS_AI_Whitepaper.pdf, Dec. 2.  
6. Krishnan, R. and Van Hentenryck, P., 2019, “INFORMS Artificial Intelligence Strategy: Opportunities at the intersection of AI and O.R.,” Keynote presentation, INFORMS Annual Meeting, Nov. 6, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5beyzv3Mjfg.  
7. Smith, A., 2020, “INFORMS launches new journal on data science to fill critical gap for data science researchers, professionals and decision-makers,” INFORMS, Dec. 18, https://www.informs.org/About-INFORMS/News-Room/Press-Releases/INFORMS-Launches-New-Journal-on-Data-Science-to-Fill-Critical-Gap-for-Data-Science-Researchers-Professionals-and-Decision-makers.  
8. https://cra.org/ccc/events/artifical-intelligence-operations-research-workshop/  
9. “The Biden administration launches the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force,” 2021, White House Press Release, June 10, https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2021/06/10/the-biden-administration-launches-the-national-artificial-intelligence-research-resource-task-force/.  
10. NIST, 2021, “Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework,” Federal Register, July 29, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/29/2021-16176/artificial-intelligence-risk-management-framework.   
11. “Team led by INFORMS members receives $20M NSF grant for AI research,” 2021, OR/MS Today, Aug. 11, https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2021.04.33n.  
12. https://pubsonline.informs.org/editorscut/ai-ml  
13. https://connect.informs.org/diversity/webinars   
14. https://connect.informs.org/diversity/ambassador-program