INFORMS Editor’s Cut on public sector operations research

INFORMS President Ed Kaplan and former President Anne G. Robinson are the editors of the latest INFORMS Editor’s Cut on public sector problems. This is an important issue to Ed and Anne. Ed’s February President’s column highlights the important of operations research for the public good:

At the summer 2015 board meeting, Glenn Tecker led us through an exercise where, working in small groups, board members and senior INFORMS staff imagined newspaper headlines involving INFORMS they would most like to see in 10 years’ time. The responses were truly exciting: O.R. and analytics help tailor successful personalized treatments for cancer; organizations in all sectors are able to better use limited resources for the benefit of humanity; two INFORMS authors share the Nobel Peace Prize for humanitarian logistics. We can help with the major problems of the world, and we should strive to make the world a better place.

This is also an issue near and dear to my heart. I am teaching a course on public sector OR and even have a course blog. I’ll post a reading list at the end of the semester. I encourage you to check out some of the resources in the Editor’s Cut.

One of the papers is a 2015 paper on kidney exchanges by a team including Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth. Other papers are about aviation security, school choice and school lunch, obesity and public health, terrorism, disaster evacuation and humanitarian logistics, garbage collection, and illegal drug control. See the list here.

Here is some more reading:

• Ed Kaplan is bringing operations research to El Savador. Read about this in his column in OR/MS Today.
• Want to make a difference? Check out Pro Bono Analytics, a new initiative within INFORMS to match volunteer members with non-profit organizations working in underserved and developing communities.

These Editor’s Cut editions are a way for us to tell our story as operations researchers. I think that’s important. And fun – I’ve enjoyed all the issues so far.

And finally, here are a three fun videos to add:

Jon Caulkins’ Omega Rho talk on crime modeling and policy

ORiginals! Prof. Banafsheh Behzad, at the California State University, Long Beach, discusses her research using mathematics to analyze obesity. 

The Right Match: a video on kidney donation matching (my blog post here):