INFORMS Releases

New audio is available for media use featuring Andrew Trapp, an associate professor of Operations and Industrial Engineering in the Business School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). This content is made available by INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences. All sound should be attributed to Andrew Trapp. He has courtesy professorships in Mathematical Sciences and Data Science. Trapp conducts research on refugee resettlement, and in general, decision making to improve outcomes for migrants such as refugees and asylum seekers. There are 4 questions and responses. These responses were provided on April 15, 2022.

CATONSVILLE, MD, April 8, 2022 – Regulators around the world are increasingly requiring food product packaging to display nutrition warning labels. This raises the question of whether those warnings influence consumer purchasing decisions, and if so, how does it affect consumers’ health?

BALTIMORE, MD, April 4, 2022 – INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, announced it has awarded Chile its 2022 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science for its use of operations research (O.R.) to improve response strategies to the COVID-19 pandemic.

INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, has awarded the Master Industrial and Applied Mathematics program in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands the 2022 UPS George D. Smith Prize. The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 21, 2022 –The recent crisis in Ukraine is reigniting the discussion of the appropriate mix of assistance for refugees. According to the UN Refugee Agency, six million refugees already lived in camps in 2021 due to multiple armed conflicts worldwide. Humanitarian organizations (HOs) are working to help people struggling because of regulations that impede integration into host countries. Cash assistance is one way that HOs are helping in addition to providing in-kind assistance in the form of food and non-food items. The intention of the cash assistance is to provide refugees with spending flexibility, restore their dignity and improve the wealth of the host community. However, cash assistance brings its own challenges. New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management identifies a way to provide incentives for the retailer to voluntarily reduce prices while causing no harm to refugees or host communities.