Invisible but Essential
Operations researchers - also known as management scientists - are little known but indispensable experts who use math and science to better decision-making, management, and operations. Operations researchers work at Tel Aviv University, IBM, the military, and throughout business, government, and academia.
Impressively, they make sense of millions of details. For example, operations research is responsible for the math models used to book the complex web of passenger reservations and discount tickets at busy airlines.
The following are examples of workshops that may interest reporters -
Israeli Politics
- Israel’s Controversial Blood Policy Toward Ethiopian Jews, Monday 13:00-14:00, keynote with Dr. Edward Kaplan (Yale University, 1997 Lady Davis Visiting Professor at Hebrew University) questions the assumptions of the 1996 Israeli health ministry decision to exclude blood donations by Ethiopian immigrants because of HIV risk.
- The West Bank Economy: Failing or Thriving? Monday 15:45-17:15, is a workshop that includes papers onscale manufacturing in the West Bank; Palestinian businesses on the West Bank; and the Palestinian entrepreneur; with Professor Benson L. Honig, St. Andrews University, Scotland; Professors Samir Abuznaid and Usamah Salim Shahwan, Hebron University; and Professors Isobel Doole and Nicola Stokell, Sheffield Hallam University.
What Mathematicians Learn from the Animal World
- Ant Colony Optimization: Nature’s Efficiency Experts, Monday 15:45-17:15, a workshop chaired by the field’s creator, Professor Marco Dorigo, Free University of Brussels, Belgium, includes a series of papers on math models derived from the observation and simulation of ant colonies.
Data Mining
- Data Mining, Tuesday 13:00-14:00, with Professor Jacob Zahavi, Tel Aviv University, is a keynote about tapping, analyzing, and converting massive amounts of data into useful information that supports decision making.
Health
- Simulating the Scheduling of Surgical Operations, Tuesday 5:00-6:30 PM, a workshop with Professor Jim E. Everett, University of Western Australia, provides an approach to dealing with lengthening queues of public patients waiting for elective surgery.
Higher Education
- The Management of Higher Education - Models, Perspectives & Illustrations, Tuesday 13:00-14:00, keynote with Professor Abraham Mehrez, Ben-Gurion University, on the evolution of the Israeli system of higher education over the past 10 years
The convention will include sessions on topics applied to a wide number of fields, including information technology, health care, the Internet, energy, marketing, real estate, securities, and telecommunications. Nearly 700 papers are scheduled to be presented at the four-day conference.
The General Co-Chairs of the convention are Professor Jacob Hornik of Tel Aviv University and Professor Benjamin Lev of the University of Michigan - Dearborn.
For additional information on the conference, including a full list of workshops, visit the web site at http://www2.informs.org/Conf/TelAviv98/.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international scientific society with 12,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work primarily in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, the stock market, and telecommunications.
The Canadian Operations Research Society (CORS), founded in 1958, works to advance the theory and practice of operations research. Its primary purpose is to stimulate and promote contacts between those interested in operations research. CORS members are employed across Canada in various industries, government, and academia.