News Room

By studying nearly nine million domestic flights, INFORMS members Mazhar Arikan, University of Kansas; Vinayak Deshpande, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Mark Ferguson, University of South Carolina, found that by not charging checked bag fees Southwest Airlines could be impacting their flights' ability to depart on time. Their findings were published in the INFORMS journal Management Science.

The LA Times explores garbage orbiting earth and how to clean it up, including a 2009 paper by INFORMS member Lawrence Wein and coauthor Andrew Bradley, both researchers at Stanford University.

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.