O.R. IN THE NEWS

Compiled by Barry List

The INFORMS archive of podcasts continues to offer provocative conversation with leading O.R. practitioners and thinkers. It includes recent interviews with Carnegie Mellon’s Jonathan Caulkins about modeling illicit drug use, ComputerWorld’s Thornton May on the intersection of O.R. and IT, and the authors of an Analytics Magazine article about sports law analytics, Ryan M. Rodenberg and Anastasios Kaburakis. Visit www.scienceofbetter.org and www.informs.org, to download the latest selections.

Remember to share your news-making research with the INFORMS Communications Department. Contact INFORMS Communications Director Barry List at barry.list@informs.org or 1-800-4INFORMs.

And now, the news:

Sasol cited for another international O.R. award

“Sasol has been cited for yet another international award in the field of operations research; this time for the 2011 INFORMS Prize, created by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences for meritorious achievements in all aspects of the OR/MS field.

“[Besting] several other international competitors, the operations research team based within Sasol Technology (the Sasol subsidiary responsible for its research and technology innovation and engineering/ project management services), achieved the win by demonstrating creative use of operations research during the last decade to improve decision-making and impact the company’s bottom line over the long term. They are the first African company to win the award.”

– MBendi Information Services, April 18

Redesign of U.S. donor-liver network could boost transplants

“The team reports in the INFORMS journal Management Science that donor livers currently are doled out to 11 national regions that evolved with little regard for geography and demographics, an arrangement that prevents many livers from getting to prospective recipients in time. The Pitt researchers instead trimmed the network down to six regions that better account for urban and rural population differences, geographic distance, and the anticipated supply of and demand for donor livers. They calculated that their rearrangement could result in up to 14 percent more transplants each year, a sizable increase considering that more than 6,000 transplants were performed in 2009 alone.”

– Science Magazine, April 2

Southwest jet rupture and flight risk

“After an unnerving event like the Southwest Airlines fuselage rupture, it is natural to wonder whether we have learned something new about aviation safety. To put it briefly, we haven’t.

“Editor’s note: Arnold Barnett, George Eastman professor of management science at MIT, received the President’s Citation from the Flight Safety Foundation in 2002 for his work on aviation safety. He has served as a consultant to the FAA and its contractors, and to six airports and fourteen airlines.”

– Arnold Barnett, CNN, April 4

Silicon Valley analytics skills rare but in demand in shaky employment

“Colleges rarely teach the newer programming languages like PHP, Ruby and Python, which have become more popular at young Web companies than older ones like Java, he said. Other skills, like working with large amounts of data and analytics, can be acquired only at a few companies.

“ ‘There are few programs that actually teach those things, and yet that’s the primary people we hire,’ Mr. Lee said.”

– New York Times, March 26

New NAS report highlights O.R., social sciences in national intelligence

“A new report from the National Research Council recommends that the U.S. intelligence community adopt methods, theories and findings from the behavioral and social sciences as a way to improve its analyses. To that end, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) should lead a new initiative to make these approaches part of the intelligence community’s analytical work, hiring and training, and collaborations.

“The report includes a chapter about intelligence and operations research by INFORMS President’s Award winner Edward H. Kaplan of Yale.”

– National Research Council, March 16

U.S. obesity correlates to vehicle usage

“The surge in U.S. vehicle usage beginning in the 1950s and continuing today may explain America's surging levels of obesity, a researcher suggests.

“[INFORMS member] Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois in Champaign and students Douglas M. King and Rong Yuan analyzed annual vehicle miles traveled per licensed driver as a surrogate measure for a person’s total sedentary time.”

– UPI.com, May 16

Barry List (barry.list@informs.org) is the director of communications at INFORMS.