The following presentations may interest reporters —
Utah Traffic
- Estimating Traffic Flow with Vehicle Detectors, Wednesday, May 10, 10:15 – 11:45 AM. University of Utah Professors Peter Martin and Joseph Perrin, who work with intelligent traffic systems in the Salt Lake Valley, explain how vehicle flow detectors embedded in pavement are detecting incidents and helping drivers avoid traffic jams. Local angle.
Grad Students Who Make Millions
- On Doing Well by Doing Good, Monday, May 8, 1 – 2 PM. Prof. Robert E. Woolsey, Colorado School of Mines, explains how his graduate students in operations research have done pro bono projects that generated over $267 million in savings for the public and private sectors.
Preventing AIDS
- Policy Modeling for Better Decisions - The Case of HIV Prevention, Sunday, May 7, 5 – 6 PM. Prof. Edward Kaplan, Yale University, is a leading researcher on AIDS prevention. Prof. Kaplan, who conducted a pioneering research study of needle exchange programs for the city of New Haven, Connecticut, shares his perspective.
Beating the Office Pool
- March Madness & the Office Pool, Sunday, May 7, 3 – 4:30 PM. AIDS Expert Kaplan wanted tohis NCAA basketball office pool for a change so he designed an operations research model to help. The result: He placed 25 out of 95,000 in the CBS Sportsline Tournament Pool last March. He shares his secrets.
E-Commerce – Business to Business
- Economic Returns to Firms from Business-to-Business E-Commerce, Tuesday, May 9, 1 – 2:30 PM. Two professors from the Carlson School, U of Minnesota, look at the nitty gritty of building a B2B e-commerce initiative.
Traffic Jams on City Streets
- A New Method of Incident Detection and Capacity Estimation for Signalized Streets, Wednesday, May 10, 10:15 – 11:45 AM. Purdue University professors explain how their unique system collects information from traffic signals to detect traffic jams on city streets – and helps drivers avoid frustration.
The World’s Best
- Edelman Award for the Practice of Operations Research, Sunday, May 7, 8 AM – 5 PM. Ford, IBM, the FAA, and other organizations compete for highest honors in operations research. The winner is announced Monday, May 8 at 8:30 AM. Photo ops.
Medical Ethics and the Choices We Make
- Ethics and Medical Decision Making, Tuesday, 4:30 - 6 PM. The medical community today has powerful decision-making tools – and ethical problems to go with them. Dr. Scott B. Cantor of the Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas takes a scholarly look.
Teaching Our Children Math
- Workshop for Area Math and Science Teachers, Monday 8 AM - 3 PM. "Math you can use" is the focus of this training session for dozens of local teachers. Local angle. Photo ops.
Invisible but Essential
Operations researchers are little known but indispensable experts who use math and science to improve decision-making, management, and operations. They work throughout business, government, and academia. 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. Operations research is also used to save lives, for example through AIDS prevention.
The convention will include sessions on topics applied to numerous fields, including commuter transit, e-commerce, health care, information technology, energy, transportation, marketing, telecommunications, and sports. More than 1,100 papers are scheduled to be delivered. The General Chair of the convention is Dr. William C Giauque, Brigham Young University. Additional information about the conference, with a full list of workshops, is at http://www2.informs.org/Conf/SaltLake2000/ and http://www2.informs.org/Press.
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 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 INFORMS website is at http://www.informs.org.