Welcome back to part two of a very special interview with our 2025 INFORMS President Dave Hunt. Earlier this month, we released part one of our conversation, during which we took a look at Dave’s goals and objectives for INFORMS in the year ahead, as well as answered some informative but FUN questions about Dave to help our listeners and INFORMS members get to know him a little better. Today, we continue our conversation with a look at how Dave came to be into the field of OR/MS and analytics, what shaped his career path, and what the exciting new ways he sees INFORMS members continue to contribute to making smarter decisions for a better world.  

Welcome to a brand-new year of Resoundingly Human podcasts! Whether this is your first episode, or you are a long-time listener, thank you for joining us and I hope you’ll subscribe for even more great content highlighting the incredible contributions of INFORMS members.

To kick off our first episode of the new year, joining me is the 2025 INFORMS President Dave Hunt, vice president at Oliver Wyman, and a 30+ year INFORMS member who received the INFORMS President’s Award for his role in founding INFORMS Pro Bono Analytics and chairing the INFORMS Ethics Guidelines committee.

As we close out another year of Resoundingly Human podcasts, I am joined once again by the 2024 INFORMS president Julie Swann, to share a final look back over the past year at INFORMS and reflect on Julie’s time as president.

Today I have the pleasure of welcoming back to Resoundingly Human long-time INFORMS member Jim Cochran, professor with the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business. In addition, I’m joined by Ryan McNeill, deputy editor for the Reuters global data journalism team.

Jim and Ryan are members of an investigative team that was recognized with the 2024 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Multimedia Journalism for their work on The Bat Lands, a groundbreaking science series exploring the origins and potential outbreak sites of bat-borne viruses.

Welcome to the latest episode of Resoundingly Human, the podcast brought to you by INFORMS, the leading association for professionals and students who apply science, math, technology and analytics to make smarter decisions for a better world. I’m your host, Ashley K. and thank you for joining me to explore how INFORMS members are saving lives, saving money and solving problems.

I’m pleased to introduce Tom Stephenson, director of services and strategic partnerships at Simul8 Corporation, who joins me today to take a look at how simulation is being leveraged to help to improve healthcare outcomes in a wide variety of applications.

We’re continuing our countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World. 

In this episode, I’m joined by Cynthia Rudin, with Duke University, Charles Isbell, with the University of Wisconsin, and Michel Littman, with the National Science Foundation, for a preview of their plenary session, “Making the Most of this AI Moment: A Fireside Chat.”

Charles serves as the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs with the UW-Madison, and Michael is the division director for information and intelligent systems at NSF. 

Cynthia, the session moderator, is a longtime INFORMS member and the Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Duke University, as well as heads the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab.

We’re continuing our countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World. 

Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Harriet Nembhard, professor and president of Harvey Mudd College.

Harriet is Harvey Mudd College’s sixth president, and a nationally recognized leader in the field of industrial and operations engineering, an expert in health systems, a voice on the national level for transforming undergraduate STEM education, and a champion for Harvey Mudd’s mission. She is leading the development of an ambitious strategic plan to fortify Harvey Mudd’s standing as a distinctive liberal arts college for science, engineering, and mathematics.

Harriet will be presenting the plenary session – Preparing Interdisciplinary Leaders: Reimagine Your Department As A Place For Educating Future Operations Research Leaders Who Can Tackle Complex And Nuanced Problems – at the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting.

We’re in the countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World. 

Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Koen Peters, head of optimization for the World Food Programme’s Supply Chain Planning & Optimization branch. For the last decade he has been leading initiatives in the area of optimization and analytics, including tools that are now used to inform the design of food baskets, sourcing strategies, and delivery networks. These user-friendly solutions ensure that WFP can reach as many people in need as possible with available resources, and were awarded with the 2021 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science. Koen holds a Master of science degree in operations research and management science from Tilburg University, and is pursuing a PhD in humanitarian analytics at Tilburg University’s Zero Hunger Lab.

We’re in the countdown to the 2024 INFORMS Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington, October 20-23, when more than 6,000 INFORMS members, students, prospective employers and employees, and academic and industry experts will share the ways O.R. and analytics are fueling Smarter Decisions for a Better World. 

Joining me to give a sneak peek of this year’s meeting is Ann Tracy, Colgate-Palmolive’s Chief Sustainability Officer. Ann leads Colgate’s Global Sustainable Strategy and Key Initiatives, integrating a strong technical foundation across their Enterprise Sustainability and Social Impact Strategy Core Ambition Pillars – driving social impact, helping millions of homes, and preserving our environment.

In this episode, I’m joined by a longtime member of the INFORMS community, Richard Larson, post-tenure professor with MIT, past-president of both ORSA and INFORMS, recipient of the INFORMS Lanchester Prize, and author many times over, including his most recent book, Model Thinking for Everyday Life.

What’s wonderful about Dick’s latest book, is its innovative and accessible approach to showing you how to think like, well an INFORMS member! The book combines real life examples with Dick’s own personal experiences to show you how to shift the way you problem solve and improve your own decision making processes. But most of all, it’s a fun and entertaining read!