INFORMS ICYMI

INFORMS Journal Highlights

2018

APRIL 2018 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

PARAM VIR SINGH

Co-author with Quan Wang and Beibei Li of
"Copycats vs. Original Mobile Apps: A Machine Learning Copycat-Detection Method and Empirical Analysis,"
in Information Systems Research

" A few years ago, my coauthors, Quan Wang and Beibei Li, recommended me to try a mobile app game called Candy Crush. They thought it was too much fun. I had also heard about it, so I proceeded to download it from iTunes but got confused. There were just too many games that appeared to be the Candy Crush game. I could not figure out which one I should download."

MARCH 2018 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

BERT ZWART

Co-author with Nikhil Bansal and Bart Kamphorst of
"Achievable Performance of Blind Policies in Heavy Traffic,"
in Mathematics & Operations Research

"It is known that Shortest-Remaining-Processing time (SRPT) minimizes delay. The question is, is it possible to find a blind scheduling policy (which is a policy that does not know the sizes of jobs in advance) that matches the growth rate of SRPT in heavy traffic? The answer is no, but we construct a randomized policy that is in some sense optimal."

FEBRUARY 2018 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

YVES CRAMA

Co-author with Mahmood Rezaei, Martin Savelsbergh, and Tom Van Woensel of
"Stochastic Inventory Routing for Perishable Products,"
in Transportation Science

"The retail sales of fresh products in the United States amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, but the net profit in this sector only represents a small percent of revenue. So, even a small reduction in logistical costs may translate into large absolute savings, and in significant benefits when expressed as a percentage of net profit. Our models focus on the joint reduction of routing and inventory costs. The results demonstrate the potential of analytical methods to optimize the distribution of fresh products by large retail chains."

JANUARY 2018 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

LUYI GUI

Co-author with Nikhil Bansal and Bart Kamphorst of
"Design Incentives Under Collective Extended Producer Responsibility: A Network Perspective,"
in Management Science

"Proper treatment of end-of-life products such as electronic waste has become one of the most pressing issues around the globe, and it is important to understand how environmental policies should be designed and implemented to effectively tackle this issue. Meanwhile, policy implementation is a complex process, and analyzing this process requires novel ways that synthesize concepts and tools from different areas such as operations research, game theory, mechanism design, etc."

2017

DECEMBER 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

SUJIN JANG

Author of
"Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams,"
in Organization Science

"I grew up moving back and forth between South Korea and the United States. Perhaps because of this, I’ve always been fascinated with what happens at the intersection of different cultures. More specifically, I stumbled upon the topic of cultural brokerage while interviewing executives and managers about their experience working in culturally diverse settings. I realized that navigating cross-cultural settings is an interactive process, with certain individuals taking on the role of a cultural broker based on their previous cultural experience. Hearing the stories of various individuals who had engaged in—or been the recipient of—cultural brokerage, and trying to better understand their experience, was what initially led me to study this topic."

NOVEMBER 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

NATALIE M. SCALA

Co-author with Stella Tomasi, Andrea Goncher, and Karen M. Bursic of
"Motivation and Analytics: Comparing Business and Engineering Students,"
in INFORMS Transactions on Education

"I earned my PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and taught independently towards the end of my study. When I joined Towson [University], I noticed that various aspects of my lectures were resonating differently with business students — some concepts better than the engineers I previously taught, others were more of a challenge. I suspected something was driving this difference, and I wanted to figure it out..."

OCTOBER 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

EBRU K. BISH

Co-author with Hadi El-Amine and Douglas R. Bish of
"Robust Postdonation Blood Screening Under Prevalence Rate Uncertainty,"
in Operations Research

"There are many established infections, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis viruses — as well as many emerging infections — that are transmittable through blood transfusion. In fact, the American Association of Blood Banks has a large set of emerging infections on their current “watch list.” Therefore, an effective donated blood screening policy can save lives and improve health outcomes. However, for many emerging infections, disease dynamics and prevalence rates are highly uncertain, and there is a lack of understanding of optimal screening policies.... Stochastic optimization modeling and methodologies can prove to be very useful for many problems arising in public policy and healthcare systems, and optimal policies can make a big difference on the safety of healthcare delivery."

SEPTEMBER 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

SUSAN M. SANCHEZ

Co-author with Brian L. Morgan, Harrison C. Schramm, Jerry R. Smith, Thomas W. Lucas, Mary L. McDonald, Paul J. Sánchez, and Stephen C. Upton of
"Improving U.S. Navy Campaign Analyses with Big Data,"
in Interfaces

"I hope [readers] recognize that ‘thinking big’ in the context of real-world problems can be fascinating. Practitioners should go beyond asking simple questions of their computational models and instead seek insights about broader and deeper questions. Researchers now have many new and exciting avenues for exploration where their work can make a tangible difference."

AUGUST 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

VEDAT BAYRAM

Co-author with Hande Yaman of
"Shelter Location and Evacuation Route Assignment Under Uncertainty: A Benders Decomposition Approach,"
in Transportation Science

"There has been a significant increase in the number of natural and man-made disasters over the past decades. The massive amount of destruction caused and the tremendous operational challenges imposed by disasters on governments and humanitarian agencies illustrate the importance of a disaster management program. An important part of such a program is to evacuate a disaster region to protect people threatened by the disaster. The unusual surge in traffic demand far beyond the capacity of the road network and the fact that people’s lives are at stake, make the evacuation traffic management problem critical. Often, the problem of locating safe shelters is solved independently from evacuation traffic management/planning problem, or ignored. Generally, an evacuation traffic management/planning problem is solved with shelter location decisions as given. However, considering these two problems separately may result in suboptimal, i.e., less efficient evacuation plans. Considering these two problems simultaneously renders the problem a hard one. Additionally, the inherent uncertainty in such problems increases the complexity of the problem. As such, saving human lives and the challenges of this problem are my main motivation."

JULY 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

JULIANE MÜLLER

Author of
"SOCEMO: Surrogate Optimization of Computationally Expensive Multiobjective Problems,"
in INFORMS Journal on Computing

"I hope that readers will understand how important it is that the type of optimization problem they encounter has to determine which solution algorithm they employ. It pays off to do some additional research to find more efficient methods, and sometimes this requires collaborating with optimization researchers to develop new methods."

JUNE 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

DONALD NGWE

Author of
"Why Outlet Stores Exist: Averting Cannibalization in Product Line Extensions,"
in Marketing Science

"Many people think of outlet stores as harmful to the image of high-end brands. While that might be partly true ... having outlet stores allows firms to introduce new products more frequently in their main channels. Therefore, the dual channel strategy actually allows brands to boost both quality and prices where their core customers are concerned."

MAY 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

ROBERT SALTZMAN

Co-author with Theresa Roeder, Judith Lambton, Lila Param, Brian Frost, and Roxanne Fernandes of
"The Impact of a Discharge Holding Area on the Throughput of a Pediatric Unit,"
in Service Science

"[A]n interdisciplinary team of healthcare and O.R. professionals can learn a great deal from one another, and then propose and test specific, sensible ways to improve patient flow. Things that are readily apparent to one group of professionals may not be so to the other. In general, an interdisciplinary approach is a great way to tackle complex problems in many different fields."

APRIL 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

RAJAN BATTA

Co-author with Yan Xia and Rakesh Nagi of
"Controlling a Fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Collect Uncertain Information in a Threat Environment,"
in Operations Research

"Search theory to me consists of lots of simple, elegant, relevant, and yet unsolved problems. Most of these problems are found in a military setting but increasingly they also occur in humanitarian settings such as search and rescue operations for survivors. I hope that more operations researchers work on these simply stated problems."

MARCH 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

LISA MAILLART

Co-author with Anahita Khojandi, Oleg A. Prokopyev, Mark S. Roberts, and Samir F. Saba of
"Dynamic Abandon/Extract Decisions for Failed Cardiac Leads,"
in Management Science

"I’ve been an active researcher in both maintenance optimization and medical decision making for many years. Although these areas of application have a lot in common, my work in these two areas was mostly in parallel. Looking at the optimal maintenance of implanted medical devices seemed like the perfect intersection of these two areas of interest."

FEBRUARY 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

IOANNIS (YANNIS) BELLOS

Co-author with Mark Ferguson and L. Beril Toktay of
"The Car Sharing Economy: Interaction of Business Model Choice and Product Line Design,"
in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

"Auto manufacturers increasingly view themselves as providers of mobility solutions, and to that end they have been adopting new business models such as that of car sharing. The choice of business model also affects more traditional considerations such as product design and compliance with environmental regulation. The good news is we find that car sharing can enable manufacturers to provide vehicles of higher efficiency. Current regulation, however, may need to be better aligned to support the adoption of car sharing by manufacturers (e.g., via the use of incentive multipliers in CAFE standards to manufacturers providing car sharing)."

JANUARY 2017 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

EVAN LEVINE

Co-author with Jessica Tisch, Anthony Tasso, and Michael Joy of
"The New York City Police Department’s Domain Awareness System,"
in Interfaces

"I wanted to make the case for analytics in the public sector. Many of the most well-known examples of analytics are from the business world, and are focused on profit or efficiency. Our field is incredibly versatile, and I think public safety provides some very compelling illustrations of how analytics can improve people’s lives."

2016

DECEMBER 2016 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

GWENDOLYN K. LEE

Co-author with Mishari A. Alnahedh of
"Industries’ Potential for Interdependency and Profitability: A Panel of 135 Industries, 1988–1996,"
in Strategy Science

"The link between industry characteristics and the distribution of firm profitability in an industry is a fundamental research topic in strategy. Industries’ potential for interdependency enriches our knowledge about industry characteristics, and is relevant to managerial practice in understanding why industries vary in profit distributions."

NOVEMBER 2016 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

THEODOROS LAPPAS

Co-author with Gaurav Sabnis and Georgios Valkanas of
"The Impact of Fake Reviews on Online Visibility: A Vulnerability Assessment of the Hotel Industry,"
in Information Systems Research

"Any system has its limits. If you stress it enough, it eventually falls apart. Review-based reputation systems are no different. I knew that, if you inject enough fake reviews, you can manipulate the ranking of any business. What I didn’t expect was that you can actually do serious damage with only a small number of injections. All you have to do is be strategic and inject the right positive or negative reviews to the right business. It’s scary, especially given the influence that these rankings have on users. I would imagine it’s even scarier for business owners."

OCTOBER 2016 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

SARAH NURRE

Co-author with Rebecca S. Widrick and Matthew J. Robbins of
"Optimal Policies for the Management of an Electric Vehicle Battery Swap Station,"
in Transportation Science

"Electric vehicle swap stations can be a viable alternative to charging stations. Unfortunately, companies such as Tesla have piloted these swap stations and are instead exploring charging stations, which are a great alternative, but there are many advantages to swap stations."

SEPTEMBER 2016 EDITION

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

NICOS SAVVA

Co-author with Michael Freeman and Stefan Scholtes of
"Gatekeepers at Work: An Empirical Analysis of a Maternity Unit,"
in Management Science

"Operations management academics have long been concerned with the management of gatekeepers in referral systems. Our paper shows that referral behaviour has a significant state-dependence, suggesting that simplistic models that neglect this aspect are likely to offer misleading advice. For clinicians and hospital managers, our paper's findings suggest that there may be overprovision of services at both high and low workload levels, albeit for different types of services and patients."