The Opioid Epidemic: Using OR/MS to combat the leading public health crisis

We’re continuing our countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World.  In this episode, I’m joined by Cynthia Rudin, with Duke University, Charles Isbell, with the University of Wisconsin, and Michel Littman, with the National Science Foundation, for a preview of their plenary session, “Making the Most of this AI Moment: A Fireside Chat.” Charles serves as the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs with the UW-Madison, and Michael is the division director for information and intelligent systems at NSF.  Cynthia, the session moderator, is a longtime INFORMS member and the Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Duke University, as well as heads the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab.

We’re continuing our countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World.  Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Harriet Nembhard, professor and president of Harvey Mudd College. Harriet is Harvey Mudd College’s sixth president, and a nationally recognized leader in the field of industrial and operations engineering, an expert in health systems, a voice on the national level for transforming undergraduate STEM education, and a champion for Harvey Mudd’s mission. She is leading the development of an ambitious strategic plan to fortify Harvey Mudd’s standing as a distinctive liberal arts college for science, engineering, and mathematics. Harriet will be presenting the plenary session – Preparing Interdisciplinary Leaders: Reimagine Your Department As A Place For Educating Future Operations Research Leaders Who Can Tackle Complex And Nuanced Problems – at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting.

We’re in the countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World.  Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Koen Peters, head of optimization for the World Food Programme’s Supply Chain Planning & Optimization branch. For the last decade he has been leading initiatives in the area of optimization and analytics, including tools that are now used to inform the design of food baskets, sourcing strategies, and delivery networks. These user-friendly solutions ensure that WFP can reach as many people in need as possible with available resources, and were awarded with the 2021 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science. Koen holds a Master of science degree in operations research and management science from Tilburg University, and is pursuing a PhD in humanitarian analytics at Tilburg University’s Zero Hunger Lab.

We’re in the countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World.  Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Ann Tracy, Colgate-Palmolive’s Chief Sustainability Officer. Ann leads Colgate’s Global Sustainable Strategy and Key Initiatives, integrating a strong technical foundation across their Enterprise Sustainability and Social Impact Strategy Core Ambition Pillars – driving social impact, helping millions of homes, and preserving our environment.

In this episode, I’m joined by a longtime member of the INFORMS community, Richard Larson, post-tenure professor with MIT, past-president of both ORSA and INFORMS, recipient of the INFORMS Lanchester Prize, and author many times over, including his most recent book, Model Thinking for Everyday Life. What’s wonderful about Dick’s latest book, is its innovative and accessible approach to showing you how to think like, well an INFORMS member! The book combines real life examples with Dick’s own personal experiences to show you how to shift the way you problem solve and improve your own decision making processes. But most of all, it’s a fun and entertaining read!

This episode of the podcast was recorded live in Phoenix at the 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting. Keynote speaker Dr. Les Servi shared special insight on his talk, ‘Operations Research and National Security,’ which provided an informative, and dare I say fun, first-hand look at the role of O.R. in National Security! Les is the Chief Scientist Cyber Operations Research at The MITRE Corporation and the immediate Past President of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), as well as an INFORMS Fellow.  This video has been created with the approval and consent of The MITRE Corporation. The views and opinions expressed in the video are those of the individual featured and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of MITRE.

I am thrilled to welcome back to Resoundingly Human the 2024 INFORMS President Julie Swann, who is also the A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professor and Department Head of the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University, to share some behind the scenes updates on all that’s been happening with INFORMS!

The opioid epidemic is a decades long public health crisis that is only continuing to grow in severity and impact. It is currently the foremost public health crisis in the United States, with its roots tracing back to mid to late 1990s when the highly concentrated prescription pain killer Oxycontin was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in conjunction with the controversial pain as the fifth vital sign campaign, among other factors. As the U.S. government, healthcare system, and general public struggle to combat this epidemic, members of the OR/MS and analytics community are leveraging data and research to help provide support and solutions. Joining me to share their unique insight into a data-driven approach to help combat the opioid epidemic are Joyce Luo with MIT and Bartolomeo Stellato with Princeton University. Their study, “Frontiers in Operations: Equitable Data-Driven Facility Location and Resource Allocation to Fight the Opioid Epidemic," was recently published in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

Welcome to today's episode! We have an exciting discussion lined up as we dive into a fascinating study on TikTok, the wildly popular consumer-to-consumer media platform. My guests today explore how the length of videos impacts their performance on the platform. By modeling viewer behavior and analyzing market performance, they uncover intriguing insights including different optimal video lengths for maximizing viewer traffic. Stay tuned as we unpack these findings and their implications for content creators and platforms alike! I’m excited to introduce Xuying Zhao with Texas A&M University and Jane Gu with the University of Connecticut, to discuss their study in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research, called Content Length Limit: How Does It Matter for a Consumer-to-Consumer Media Platform?

Looking back, I think we can all recognize and appreciate the role that our parents played in shaping who we are. But have you ever thought about the impact you had on your parents, how they view themselves and others? For this episode, we’re going to turn the tables and take a look at the role that children can have on shaping and influencing their parents, specifically, how having daughters can shape how men view and interact with women in the workplace, especially men in leadership roles. This is also known as the daughter effect. I’m thrilled to introduce Zhiyan “Z” Wu with Erasmus University and Lucia Naldi with Jönköping University, who collaborated with their fellow authors on a study recently published in the INFORMS journal Management Science titled “Learning from Their Daughters: Family Exposure to Gender Disparity and Female Representation in Male-Led Ventures.”