News Releases

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.

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.

CATONSVILLE, MD, March 10, 2022 – After states throughout America instituted general lockdowns for businesses, employers and residents when COVID-19 arrived in the United States in 2020, one of the first measures taken to offset the impact came when the U.S. Congress passed the CARES Act that was signed into law on March 27, 2020. That measure provided $4.4 trillion in assistance to businesses and individuals through “stimulus checks” that were sent to millions of qualifying U.S. citizens.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 3, 2022 – New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research finds self-regulating is critical to reducing crime linked to Airbnb commercial listings.

CATONSVILLE, MD, February 8, 2022 – Surprisingly, a new study has found that if you’re perceived as more popular on a mobile dating app, there is a higher chance that other users will avoid connecting with you. This is one of the major findings of a study that sought to examine the effect of a dating app user’s popularity rating on their demand on the online dating platform.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 16, 2022 – Three INFORMS members have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Richard O'Neill is a distinguished senior fellow at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Martin Reiman is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University and Nikolaos Sahinidis is the Gary C. Butler Family Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They join more than 100 new members recently elected. 

BALTIMORE, MD, February 14, 2022 – Music streaming services were an unlikely area hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science finds the drop in peoples’ mobility during the pandemic significantly reduced the consumption of audio music streaming. Instead, people turned more to video platforms.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 10, 2022 – As the popularity and ubiquity of electric vehicles (EV) rapidly increases, so too is the burden of EV charging on electric utility companies. New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management finds that utilizing new business models that promote “smart charging” options can alter the cost curve for consumers and utility providers alike, creating a win-win situation that strengthens the mass market viability for the entire electric vehicle ecosystem.

BALTIMORE, MD, January 26, 2021 – New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science shows that doing something positive for public health can be costly. The researchers say that banning tobacco products means retailers may see as much as a 4% decline in gross sales.