Final thoughts

I really enjoyed the Analytics conference – and not only because Lehigh University had a strong showing, from being a finalist in the UPS George D Smith Prize to counting a young alumnus on the Memorial Sloan Kettering team that won the INFORMS prize to listening to the director of marketing intelligence at Bayada Home Health Care describe the work former student Ana Alexandrescu ’10, ’11G did in using analytics to help identify home care patients more at risk of rehospitalization.

I attended plenty of fascinating talks, from the Intel presentation in the Edelman competition to the talk on analytics in insurance by an IBM professional, and met many wonderful OR professionals, such as the future boss of my doctoral student who is graduating this month.

The conference was extremely well-run and to finish I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the INFORMS people who manned the registration booth for long hours, and the prize committee members who spent a lot of time evaluating submissions and maintain the high standards of INFORMS – in particular those who participated to multiple committees, such as Susan Albin, Cindy Barnhart, Mike Gorman and Bob Smith (with apologies to the ones I am forgetting). Their work is much appreciated.

Although this year’s accomplishments will be hard to beat, I’m looking forward to next year’s analytics conference already!