Management Sciences

Department News

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2009

A team of three senior MIS students from the Tippie College—Kevin Wilmarth, Laura Geers and Casey Koppes—accompanied by faculty advisor Yvonne Galusha, attended the 2009 CaseIT competition on February 4-8 in Vancouver, Canada. CaseIT is an international MIS undergraduate case competition, open to 16 teams. Teams in the 2009 competition came from the US, Canada, Singapore, South Africa, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Italy. For more information see www.sfubusiness.ca/caseit.

2008

Street Chairs INFORMS Data Mining Competition

Professor Nick Street served as the coordinator of the First INFORMS Data Mining Competition, sponsored by the Data Mining Section of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Titled "The Antibiotic Protocol Case," the contest was held in conjunction with the INFORMS national meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 12-15, 2008. The contest challenged contestants to use data mining and optimization techniques applied to real data to design a health care management strategy. Dozens of contestants from around the world entered the two-part challenge.

Ohlmann Runner-Up in Two INFORMS Competitions

Works authored by Jeffrey Ohlmann, assistant professor of management sciences, earned recognition in a pair of competitions at the annual conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) held in Washington D.C., Oct. 12-15, 2008.

Ohlmann's case study, Hawkeye Football Programs, was the runner-up in the 2008 INFORMS Case Competition administered by the INFORMS Forum on Education. This competition, also sponsored by the INFORMS' Education Committee and the INFORMS' Case and Teaching Materials Initiative, is designed to encourage the creation and dissemination of new case studies. Based on a consulting project with former MBA student Mark Ahern, Hawkeye Football Programs describes a forecasting and inventory management problem facing The University of Iowa's Sports Information department. Versions of the case have been used at the Tippie College in the MBA core Data and Decisions course, as well as in the undergraduate and MBA core Operations Management courses.

In addition, Ohlmann and co-author Michael Fry were recognized as finalists for the 2008 Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, awarded by the INFORMS College for the Practice of Management Sciences (CPMS). This prize honors the effective use of quantitative analysis to solve practical problems. Ohlmann and Fry's work involved the design of routes for the delivery of optical-scan voting machines. Their solution approach has been successfully implemented in Hamilton County, Ohio, for multiple elections, resulting in a significant reduction of logistical costs.

Campbell Paper Makes SSRN Top Ten Download List
The paper "Time Slot Management in Attended Home Delivery" by Niels Agatz, Ann Campbell, Moritz Fleischmann, and Martin Savelsbergh was listed on the Social Science Research Network's Top Ten Download lists for Scheduling and Logistics for the two-month period ending July 17, 2008. An article entitled “What E-Tailers Can Learn From Airline Pricing” by the same authors, together with Jo Van Nunen, appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 7, 2008.

BTA Team Wins Award at 2008 AITP National Collegiate Conference
Eight UI undergraduate students from the Business Technology Association (BTA) traveled to the 2008 Association for Information Technology Professionals National Collegiate Conference (AITP-NCC) in Memphis, March 27-29, with their faculty advisor, Yvonne Galusha. Students Jason Bertram, Casey Koppes, Steven Oldfather, Victor Ondego, Eric Prill, Casandra Roethler, Zach Wear, and Kevin Wilmarth formed teams that competed in the areas of Microsoft Office Solutions, PC Troubleshooting, Systems Analysis and Design, Database Design, Network Design, and Application Development. The team of Cassandra Roethler and Zach Wear received second place for excellence in Systems Analysis and Design. BTA teams have previously won awards at the AITP-NCC in 2007, 2006, and 2005.

2007

Lowe Receives INFORMS Recognition
Management Sciences professor Tim Lowe has been named an INFORMS Fellow by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Lowe received the honor for “outstanding and exceptional accomplishments and experience in operations research and the management sciences.”

Campbell Appointed Associate Editor of Transportation Science
Associate Professor Ann Campbell has been appointed an associate editor of Transportation Science, a top-tier academic journal in the area of transportation and logistics. Campbell is also on the INFOR and Transportation Research, Part C editorial boards.

UI to Host Time Series Conference
This year's NBER/NSF Time Series Conference will be held Sept. 14-15 in Iowa City. Professor Johannes Ledolter of the Department of Management Sciences is one of the conference organizers. Details about the conference, hotel information, and registration are online at: www.stat.uiowa.edu/timeseries.

Anstreicher Named Editor-in-Chief
Professor Kurt Anstreicher, the Tippie Research Professor and DEO of the Department of Management Sciences, has been appointed editor-in-chief of Mathematical Programming, Series A (MPA), the top academic journal for research in the field of optimization. Anstreicher was previously an associate editor and a co-editor of MPA. His term as editor-in-chief begins Aug. 1, 2007.

Ohlmann Develops Model for Drafting Fantasy Football Team
Assistant Professor Jeffrey Ohlmann is co-author of "A Player Selection Heuristic for a Sports League Draft," which has been published in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. The paper describes a decision-making model that utilizes mathematical techniques to maximize the value of the players a team drafts. At its heart, the model tries to help fantasy drafters overcome the fundamental handicap of not knowing what players will be available to draft in future rounds.

Street's Collaborative Work Earns Obermann Grant
Nick Street, associate professor in the Tippie College of Business, and Ann Marie McCarthy, professor in the College of Nursing, received funding from the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies to develop a web-based application that health care professionals can use to help children cope with painful medical testing and treatment procedures.

Ledolter Publishes New Book on Experimental Design
Johannes Ledolter has published Testing 1 - 2 - 3: Experimental Design with Applications in Marketing and Service Operations (Stanford University Press, 2007), co-authored with Arthur Swersey. Professor Ledolter's previous books include Statistical Quality Control: Strategies and Tools for Continual Improvement (Wiley, 1999) and Achieving Quality Through Continual Improvement (Wiley, 1999) both co-authored with C.W. Burrill, and Introduction to Regression Modeling (Duxbury, 2006) co-authored with B. Abraham.

BTA Members Win Honors at AITP-NCC Competition
Eight students sponsored by the Tippie College's Department of Management Sciences and the Business Technology Association (BTA) student organization traveled to Detroit at the end of March for the 2007 Association of Information Technology Professional's National Collegiate Conference (AITP-NCC).  The students were accompanied by Yvonne Galusha, faculty advisor to the BTA.

The BTA entered teams in six competitions — PC Troubleshooting, Systems Analysis & Design, Visual Communications, Network Design, Database Design, and Application Development. The competition in these categories is very steep. Businesses that sponsor the particular competitions create problems and students have a limited amount of time and computer resources to solve them. Team members Matt McVey and Daryl Hulsing were awarded first place in Database Design (out of approximately 65 teams), while team members Joe Danzer, Joe Roberts, Matt McVey, and Joe Derwin were awarded an Honorable Mention in Applications Development (out of approximately 45 teams).

BTA teams previously won first place for Website Design at the 2006 AITP-NCC, as well as third place for Website Design and an Honorable Mention in Network Design at the 2005 AITP-NCC. 

Goodson Presentation Takes First Place
Ph.D. candidate Justin Goodson received first place in the Social Sciences and Education division of the ninth annual James F. Jakobsen Conference, sponsored by the University of Iowa Graduate Student Senate and Graduate College. Goodson's presentation on The Vehicle Routing Problem with Multiple Trips described research being done with department faculty members Barrett Thomas and Jeff Ohlmann.

Zhang Wins APICS Dissertation Competition
Ph.D. student Dengfeng Zhang is the winner of the 2007 APICS Educational and Research Foundation Plossl Dissertation Competition for his thesis "Essays on Consignment Contracts and Dynamic Pricing in a Virtual Marketplace." APICS, the Association for Operations Management (www.apics.org), is the leading U.S. association for production and operations management professionals. The 2004 APICS Dissertation Competition was won by Lifang Wu, another student from the department.

Professors Receive Instructional Improvement Award
Professors Phil Jones, Jeff Ohlmann, and Barrett Thomas have been awarded an Instructional Improvement Award by the University of Iowa Council on Teaching. The award, one of only nine given in the entire University, will be used to create a computer simulation to provide a capstone experience in the core undergraduate Operations Management course, 6K:100.