Resoundingly Human

As we live in an increasingly internet-driven world, it should come as no surprise that online or cyberbullying is a problem of growing significance and impact, one that actually seems to have worsened during the pandemic. In 2022, nearly half of all teenagers experienced some form of online bullying or harassment. But what may be less well understood is beyond the mental and emotional impact, online harassment can also pose a risk to an individual's personal data and financial security.

Joining me to help explore this topic is Lisa Yeo, a professor with the University of California MERCED. We'll talk about the work she has been doing to combat online bullying and harassment and how this fits into the larger discussion of security and privacy.

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 2023 INFORMS president Laura Albert, professor and department chair of industrial & systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As we near the end of the year, I'm once again joined by our 2022 INFORMS president Radhika Kulkarni to take a look back at the past year, her favorite moments and memories, what insight she gained, what she'll take with her, and finally, any special insight she might have for our incoming 2023 president.

This week's podcast is an incredible example of the power of O.R. and analytics to unite and empower people and communities across the globe, and I'm excited and honored to share this story with you! I'm joined by Andrew Wylie, a simulation consultant at Simul8 Corporation which develops simulation software to provide unique, evidence-based approaches to decision making, and William Taylor, head of operations at Shout-It-Now, which uses innovative approaches to provide South African communities with free sexual and reproductive health services. We'll be discussing the unique partnership between these two organizations, which is leveraging O.R. and analytics to make a lasting impact and help save lives.

Welcome back for another in a special series of the Resoundingly Human podcast, filmed and recorded in person in Indianapolis at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting. I'm joined by Brian MacDonald at Yale University. He is a keynote presenter at this year's Annual Meeting, Sports Analytics, and he has kindly taken some time out of his busy meeting schedule to share special insight into, well, all things sports analytics!

Special series featuring in-person interviews from #INFORMS2022 in Indianapolis! I was delighted to be joined in person in Indianapolis at the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting by Prashant Yadav with INSEAD. He was a keynote presenter at this year's Annual Meeting, Global Health Security and Healthcare Supply Chains: Perspectives and Opportunities for Operations Research, and he kindly took some time out of his busy meeting schedule to sit down with me and explore the topic of his presentation.

With just days to go before the INFORMS community gathers in Indianapolis for the 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting, the first fully IN PERSON Annual Meeting since 2019, I am delighted to be joined once again by the 2022 INFORMS President Radhika Kulkarni. We'll take a look at this year's meeting, what's new and different this year and what we've missed about meeting face-to-face, as well as a quick update on INFORMS as we enter the latter half of her year as president.

Semiconductors. Everyone uses them, but how many of us really know what they are, what they do, and the increasingly important role they play in our modern world? Much like supply chains, artificial intelligence and other O.R. buzzwords that are making their way into the public conscious, semiconductor is a term that most of us have probably heard, but their actual significance might remain a bit of a mystery.

And perhaps even less well known are the challenges associated with their manufacturing, especially with the ongoing issues relating to supply chains, and alarmingly, the risk this could pose to national security.

In this episode I'm joined by Zachary Collier, professor with Radford University and a visiting scholar at the Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST), to take a deep dive into all things semiconductor and tackle some of these questions and growing concerns.

It's the end of a long day, or maybe the start to a fun weekend … you lean back in your chair, hammock, front porch step, wherever, and crack open your favorite brew. Life. Is. Good.

But have you ever thought why your favorite beer IS your favorite? Nowadays, chances are (especially if you are a millennial) you're drinking the product of one of nearly 10,000 craft breweries here in the U.S. and NOT one of the large traditional beer companies that have been such a significant part of the history of brewing in America (Budweiser Clydesdales, anyone?). And why are the beers that are popular today are so different from those our parents and grandparents enjoyed in previous decades?

Today I'm excited to dive into the takeoff of craft beer brands with Bart Bronnenberg, a professor with the Tilburg School of Economics and Management at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. His study "Millennials and the Takeoff of Craft Brands: Preference Formation in the U.S. Beer Industry" looks at the rise of craft brands, particularly beer, in the U.S. and their impact on the market.

Operations research, analytics and data science can provide a wide range of solutions to many of the challenges facing organizations, from staffing to resource allotment to evaluating success and failure, if you have a business problem, O.R. and analytics can provide an effective, data-based solution.

But making sure you are picking the correct solution, the right approach for your unique problem, is just as important. Sure, having AI or machine learning-based solutions might sound super cool, but how do you know it's actually the right answer to your problem? And when organizations are investing thousands if not more in these solutions, a lot is riding on the choice you make.

We'll be exploring the answers to these questions and more, with a particular focus on data-centric vs. decision-centric analytics and solutions, with Karen O'Brien. Karen O'Brien is an analytics leader and a 20-year public servant, having served in diverse analytics and leadership roles within the Department of the Army as a member of the Army Civilian Corps. Her applied operations research experience ranges from ballistics to logistics and she has built advanced data analytics capabilities in multiple organizations. By training, her undergraduate work was in physics and chemistry, and she leverages her MS in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University to bridge the worlds of big data analytics and classic operations research.