Closing out the year with the 2025 INFORMS President

I'm so excited to be joined by someone whose name is deeply woven into the fabric of the INFORMS community – Dr. Jim Cochran, Professor of Applied Statistics and the Mike & Kathy Morone Research Chair at the University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Business. Jim is a longtime INFORMS member, past recipient of the INFORMS Prize for the Teaching of OR/MS Practice and INFORMS Presidents Award, and a Fellow of INFORMS, the American Statistical Association, and the African Academy of Sciences, and a tireless advocate for analytics education, international collaboration, and community engagement. He's attended more INFORMS meetings than most of us can count – and today we're talking about what has changed, what has stayed the same, and why INFORMS remains such a meaningful home for so many members like Jim.

We close out another terrific year of Resoundingly Human podcasts with our 2025 INFORMS President Dave Hunt, for a look back over his time as president, milestones, and what activities he's looking forward to getting back to in 2026.

In this episode, we're continuing our special relaunch series by welcoming one of this year's INFORMS Annual Meeting plenary speakers – a pioneer in the fusion of machine learning and optimization, and a leader in advancing AI for real-world engineering challenges. Pascal Van Hentenryck is a Fellow of INFORMS and AAAI, and has made groundbreaking contributions to constraint programming and optimization systems that are still used in industry decades later. His current research focuses on integrating AI with mathematical optimization to solve incredibly complex and large-scale problems in energy, transportation, supply chains, and more. At the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting, he delivered a plenary address titled "Learning to Optimize: Foundations and Industrial Impact," exploring how machine learning and optimization can work hand-in-hand to meet real-time demands in today's dynamic systems. 

In our latest episode in the Resoundingly Human podcast refresh, Ramayya Krishnan, Carnegie Mellon University, and plenary speaker at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting, shares how today's rapid advances in AI technology create new opportunities for synergy with OR/MS, with broad implications for workforce development, public policy and education. 

Welcome back to Resoundingly Human, the INFORMS podcast! After a short break this summer, we are back with more great content and interviews featuring INFORMS members whose work is helping make Smarter Decisions for a Better World. In this episode, Margaret Brandeau, professor at Stanford University, and the opening plenary speaker at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting, gives valuable insight into how operations research is helping to inform better public policy to save lives.

Retailers are gearing up for their annual "Christmas in July" sales, but this year, the early holiday cheer comes with a warning: escalating tariff whiplash may lead to higher prices, fewer options, and major delays for shoppers come December. Behind the scenes, businesses are scrambling to forecast demand and lock in orders for the back-to-school and winter holiday seasons — but unpredictability in trade policy is breaking the very tools they rely on to plan. In this episode, I'm joined by Debdatta Sinha Roy, a principal scientist in O.R. and data science at Oracle Retail Science R&D, to explore how this volatility is creating an invisible crisis within the analytics systems that power global logistics, and what a better path forward could look like. From smarter sourcing strategies to more stable policymaking, we'll discuss what it will take to bring long-term resilience to today's fragile supply chains — as retailers and consumers alike are already feeling the impact on the holiday shopping season.

As we are well into the first half of the year – and here at INFORMS we have packed a lot into these first few months – now is a terrific time to circle back and check in with the 2025 INFORMS President Dave Hunt. We kicked off a brand-new year of Resoundingly Human podcasts back in January with a special double header featuring Dave where we discussed both his goals and objectives relating to INFORMS as well as heard his perspective on the unique and exciting ways INFORMS members are going to continue to help make smarter decisions for a better world.

Welcome to the final episode in our special series of Resoundingly Human podcasts highlighting the finalist teams for the 2025 Franz Edelman Award, the Nobel Prize of Analytics. These finalist projects represent teams from around the world who have leveraged advanced analytics to transform their organizations, address their most significant challenges, and better serve their customers and communities. Prior to the 2025 Analytics+ Conference, I had the opportunity to sit down with 5 of the 6 teams and today I'm joined by members of the team representing Flipkart to share some insight into their incredible work.

Looking back, when you were younger, do you wish you had some guidance when it came to making the really important decisions for your future? What college should I attend? Should I buy the reliable hatchback or the fire engine red mustang? Is this job offer right for me and my future? My guest today has created a tool that can do just that, by leveraging decision science technology to support and empower students as they make these important choices! Joining me today is Matthew Brady, tech entrepreneur, whose career has spanned both sides of the aisle from industry to education.

Welcome to the latest in our special series of Resoundingly Human podcasts highlighting the finalist teams for the 2025 Franz Edelman Award, the Nobel Prize of Analytics, which will be awarded at the upcoming 2025 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference in Indianapolis this April. These finalist projects represent teams from around the world who have leveraged advanced analytics to transform their organizations, address their most significant challenges, and better serve their customers and communities. Today I'm joined by members of the team representing Amazon to discuss their finalist project in the leadup to the Franz Edelman competition.