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INFORMS, the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics, has selected the Operations, Business Analytics and Information Systems Department at the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business as one of the three finalists for the 2019 UPS George D. Smith Prize, which recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.

The Department of Decision, Operations & Information Technologies at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has been selected as a finalist for the 2019 UPS George D. Smith Prize. INFORMS, the largest international association of operations research and analytics professionals and students, gives the annual award to recognize excellence in preparing students for careers in operations research and analytics.

Jennifer Merluzzi discusses her work, "Gender and Negative Network Ties: Exploring Difficult Work Relationships Within and Across Gender," published in the INFORMS journal Organization Science, which explores the impact of strong relationships among female coworkers and how it impacts success in the workplace. 

In the U.S. prison system, the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is currently 10 times higher than the national average. And while new HCV treatment drugs are very effective, their high cost along with very limited healthcare budget in prisons impedes universal treatment in prisons. Now, new research in the INFORMS journal Operations Research, has identified new protocols that could substantially decrease HCV infection in the U.S. prison system. 

New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science took an in-depth look at 128 events of negative publicity tied to a celebrity endorser between 1988 and 2016. These events affected sponsors in 230 actual cases. What gives the research its punch is that it evaluated the effectiveness of company responses to celebrity endorsers’ misbehaviors using those companies’ daily abnormal stock returns. In other words, if a brand encountered a celebrity endorser crisis, as Nike did when Tiger Woods made news over his notorious marital problems, the study authors took into account the surrounding negative publicity’s impact on the company’s stock price.