Press Releases

CATONSVILLE, MD, June 7, 2021 – Customer loyalty programs have been around for decades and are used to help businesses, marketers and sellers build a sustainable relationship with their customers. But do they work? A recent study sought to find out and researchers learned that while yes, customer loyalty programs do work, perhaps not in ways most may assume.

CATONSVILLE, MD, May 24, 2021 – Contrary to portraits painted in popular media, new research involving ridesharing services shows they provide an additional level of protection for potential sexual assault victims, particularly in neighborhoods with inadequate public transportation or in circumstances that are more prone to sex crimes.

CATONSVILLE, MD, May 20, 2021 – To deliver real-time feedback to support employee development and rapid innovation, many companies are replacing formal, review-based performance management with systems that enable frequent and continuous employee evaluation. New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research examines the role of these applications to understand the effects on employee performance appraisals.

CATONSVILLE, MD, May 11, 2021 – With the U.S. federal government investing billions of taxpayer dollars in executing technology programs, wouldn’t you like to know where this money is going? A new study has identified ways to reduce federal spending in the execution of these taxpayer-funded technology programs. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, May 4, 2021 – Paid video streaming services on your television, smart phone or other devices are increasingly replacing traditional video entertainment platforms of cable, satellite and broadcast TV. The growth of these services, known in the industry as over-the-top (OTT) media services, may be accompanied by a rise in pirated content, particularly where access to those services may be restricted, a group of researchers has found.

CATONSVILLE, MD, April 22, 2021 – INFORMS announced that it is launching a unique new member benefit that will deliver billions of curated external data, news sentiment, and geo intelligence for data science and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives for INFORMS members. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, April 13, 2021 – INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals, announced it has awarded The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) its 2021 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science for its use of operations research (O.R.) to master food assistance amid emergency responses.

CATONSVILLE, MD, April 13, 2021 – INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics, has awarded the Department of Business Analytics at the University of Iowa the 2021 UPS George D. Smith Prize. The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.

CATONSVILLE, MD, April 1, 2021 – Online marketers have seen the pattern: 95%-98% of online visitors search for something, but the search never converts into a purchase and they leave the site without buying. For marketers, this results in speculation and assumptions that can lead to wasted time and investments in ineffective marketing programs.

CATONSVILLE, MD, March 24, 2021 – COVID-19 has been shown to spread on airplanes by infected passengers, so minimizing the risk of secondary infections aboard aircraft may save lives. New research in the INFORMS journal Service Science uses two models to help solve the airplane seating assignment problem (ASAP). The models can lower the transmission risk of COVID-19 more so than the strategy of blocking the middle seats, given the same number of passengers. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, March 22, 2021 – Authors of a paper examining how information systems can abate racial and other biases in technology, published in the INFORMS journal Management Science, have been chosen as one of five finalists in a prestigious competition for the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Award. The winner is recognized with a prize of up to $20,000. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, March 8, 2021 – It’s a common assumption among marketers that if you can customize any form of marketing, particularly mobile advertising, you’ll get better results. With this in mind, mobile marketing relies significantly on user tracking data as a cornerstone advertising strategy.

CATONSVILLE, MD, March 4, 2021 – INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals, has awarded Amazon with the 2021 INFORMS Prize for sustained and enduring institutional achievement across all elements of its business, notably Amazon Transportation Services.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 25, 2021 – Short notice versus no advance notice makes a huge difference when it comes to employee scheduling in the restaurant industry. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds checks for parties handled by servers who were asked (with no advance notice) to stay longer than their scheduled shift dropped by 4.4%, on average. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 23, 2021 – INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics, has selected three finalists for the 2021 UPS George D. Smith Prize, which recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 17, 2021 – Policymakers at all levels of government are racing to vaccinate hundreds of millions of people to save lives and blunt the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. New research published in the INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics provides a simulated model for drive-through clinics that can be used for mass COVID-19 vaccinations based on the successful use of such a clinic to address H1N1. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 10, 2021 – Three INFORMS members –Russell Allgor, chief scientist at Amazon, Hani Mahmassani, William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation at Northwestern University, and Jong-Shi Pang, Epstein Family Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California – have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. They join more than 100 new members recently elected. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 2, 2021 – According to new research, the presence of an Airbnb property can actually contribute to an increase in housing prices and rental rates in a local neighborhood. But it depends on where the property is located.

CATONSVILLE, MD, January 14, 2021 – INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals, has selected six finalists for the 50th annual Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science, the world’s most prestigious award for achievement in the practice of analytics and operations research (O.R.). 

CATONSVILLE, MD, January 12, 2021 – Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are perfectly suited to help companies and marketers monitor and set prices based on real-time dynamic pricing. But new research has identified some possible unintended consequences of AI in this area.