News Room

Two INFORMS members from the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, doctoral student Bhupesh Shetty and Associate Professor Jeffrey Ohlmann, in conjunction with Professor Gary Gaeth, developed an optimization model to improve Monday Night Football schedules. By analyzing every Monday night game played between 1993 and 2008, the researchers discovered three factors that have the greatest impact on generating high ratings: games played by Super Bowl champions, teams with high profile players or coaches joining the team, and teams with high-powered offenses.

Using data from a Washington Post comprehensive report, two INFORMS members investigated the impact of technology on police performance and practice. Professors Min-Seok Pang and Paul Pavlou, both from Temple University’s Fox School of Business, found that the use of analytics and smartphones to access intelligence led to decreased instances of lethal force by police, whereas wearable video cameras were linked to an increase in lethal force on civilians by police. 

According to Nicos Savva, INFORMS member and associate professor at the London Business School, the reforms to the Kuwaiti healthcare system outlined in the Kuwait Development Plan for 2015-2020 could result in one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world. In particular, investments in specialization and preventative care hold the key to improving both patient outcomes and hospital productivity.

INFORMS members Professor Xiao Liu of New York University and Professors Param Vir Singh and Kannan Srinivasan of Carnegie Mellon University conducted a study on which digital platforms are the most effective at gauging the success of a TV program. The study, which will be published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, found that Twitter is significantly more effective than other platforms, including Google Trends, Wikipedia, IMDB, and the Huffington Post, at predicting TV ratings.

The “Rothkopf Rankings,” published in May 2016 in the INFORMS journal Interfaces, recognized Clarkson University as a top U.S. school for contributions to operations research practice literature.