Poster Presenter Bios

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Erwin J.W. Abbink,  MSc
Managing Consultant Innovation, Netherlands Railways (NS)
Erwin J. W. Abbink (1970) earned a MS in Operational Research from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands and a MS in Information & Knowledge Technology from the Middlesex University of London, Great Britain. In 2008 he received the Franz Edelman Award as part of the team from the Netherlands Railways. He is a managing consultant at the Process quality & Innovation Department of the Netherlands Railways. He is working on new decision-support models and applications for planning and real-time dispatching of trains, rolling stock and crew since 1995. Focus in his work is on management of R&D projects and on OR based consulting. Based on his work, he has published several articles in top-level journals.

Ahu Akdemir
Graduate Student , Bogazici University
Ahu Akdemir received her B.S.in Industrial Engineering from Galatasaray University,  Turkey. She is a graduate student in Bogazici University where she studies graph theory, in particular, Ramsey numbers, defective Ramsey numbers, defective Ramsey numbers on special graph classes and cocolorings of these graph classes. Her research interests include network based models and algorithms, planning and scheduling. She is also interested in implementing mathematical models in GAMS, heuristics and forecasting applications using R.

William C. Bauldry, PhD
Professor, Appalachian State University
William Bauldry is a professor at Appalachian State University specializing in analysis and applied mathematics. He has authored numerous papers, several textbooks including "An Introduction to Real Analysis" (Wiley, 2009), and given over 100 invited and contributed presentations on topics ranging from using technology in the classroom to cryptanalysis to Operations Research. He is part of the "DIY Modeling" NSF-funded project creating mathematical modeling software for student use. For the past ten years, Prof Bauldry has been a Head Regional Judge in COMAP's "Mathematical Contest in Modeling" which is sponsored in part by INFORMS.

Evan Bloom
Doctoral Candidate, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Evan Bloom is a candidate for a PhD in Policy Analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, in his third year. His work ranges from water policy in California, to the current state of to the prevention of HIV in Los Angeles County. His work has focused on applying Robust Decision Making, an innovative decision support methodology, across a variety of fields. His dissertation will assess tradeoffs between portfolios of energy efficiency policies and demand response pricing regulation in California’s electricity markets, using such techniques.

Clinton Brownley, PhD
Founder and President, Eclectic Analytics
Clinton Brownley, Ph.D., is the founder and President of Eclectic Analytics, a management and decision analysis consulting company headquartered in Silicon Valley.  Since 2006, Dr. Brownley has used decision modeling and analysis techniques to address complex policy and strategy decisions for a variety of public and private organizations.  Dr. Brownley is a Councilmember for CPMS: The Practice Section of INFORMS and is also an active member of the Decision Analysis Society.  Dr. Brownley received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. degree from American University.

Mehmet Ferhat Candas, PhD
Research Engineer, IBM TJ Watson Center
Mehmet Ferhat Candas received the B.S. degree in the industrial engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, and the PhD degree in operations research and industrial engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. He is currently an Advisory Research Engineer in Business Analytics and Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM TJ Watson Research Center, where he has been developing analytics based solutions for various problems for both government agencies and private companies. Prior to joining IBM Research, he worked at AMD as a Staff IT Architect for five years, and developed AMD’s supply chain and manufacturing planning decision support system.

Arturo Castillo, MSc        
Research Consultan , MidlandHR
Arturo Castillo is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at Nottingham University after winning a university scholarship and being partially funded by Conacyt. He has worked as IT consultant involved in projects where OR has been applied. He spent two years at Mexico’s financial intelligence unit where he participated implementing anti money laundering software. Arturo was an associate in a knowledge transfer partnership aimed to develop rostering software using advance scheduling techniques at MidlandHR in the UK, for which he remains providing consultancy. Arturo holds an M.S. in Management of IT from Nottingham University, UK and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from La Salle University, Mexico.

Nick Clark
Master’s Student, University of Toronto
Nick Clark is a master’s student in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is studying forest fire management systems and the use of empirical data and simulation modeling to improve airtanker deployment decision-making.

Mark Colosimo, PhD
Global Director of Analytics, Urban Science
Mark Colosimo acts as the Global Director of Analytics at Urban Science in Detroit, MI, providing analysis and consulting on automotive dealership data throughout the world.  In his ten years at Urban Science, he has led the development of new, innovative products and methodologies to assist OEMs and dealers in increasing sales and profitability, as well as managed various projects impacting dealership network decisions globally. He is also currently pursuing a PhD in Industrial Engineering at Wayne State University.  He also holds an MBA, MSE, and BSE from the University of Michigan.

Camila Costa Dutra, M. Eng
PhD Student, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Camila Costa Dutra has a Masters in Production Engineering at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil , and is a PhD student of the Production Engineering Post-Graduate Program, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

Rajdeep Debnath
Student, Indian Institute of Management
Rajdeep Betnath is a student of Executive education, Business Analytics and Intelligence 2, at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and a Senior Systems Engineer, Thomson Reuters India.

Amy Donahoe-Anshus, BS
Unit Head in Systems and Procedures, Mayo Clinic
Amy is a Unit Head in Systems and Procedures at Mayo Clinic’s internal consulting group. She began her career at Mayo in 1983 and after 15 years in clinical settings, joined the Division of Systems & Procedures. Amy’s current leadership and consulting roles include the Clinical Practice Convergence Unit, Mayo’s electronic environment including Meaningful Use preparations, Mayo Quality Academy Instructor for Change Management, and collaborations with administrators and physicians to support Mayo’s strategic priorities.  Amy received a Masters in Human and Health Service Administration (St. Mary’s College of Minnesota), and Bachelor’s Degrees in Physical Therapy (University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School) and Psychology (College of St. Benedict).

Burak Erkayman MSc
PhD Student, Ataturk University
Burak Erkayman has graduated from Sakarya University Industrial Engineering Department. He received his MSc from Y?ld?z Technical University (YTU) Systems Engineering program and is a PhD student at Sakarya University Industrial Engineering program. His concentration is on Logistics, Supply Chain and Logistics Management, Decision Support Systems and Scheduling. He is a research assistant at Ataturk University Industrial Engineering Department.

Philip Fahringer, MS
Systems Engineer, Lockheed Martin Corporation
Philip Fahringer is an operations analyst with Lockheed Martin Corporation and has been there since 2006. He is retired from the Navy, having served the last ten years as a logistics analyst, determining logistics requirements for Naval and Joint Forces contingency scenarios, and developing budget priorities. Currently, Philip is the lead developer for the Dynamic Comparative Analysis Methodology for Lockheed Martin, and focuses on balancing costs and outcomes under conditions of uncertainty. He holds master’s degrees in operations research and strategic planning.

Antonio Ferrel, MSc
Project Risk Engineer, Centrica Energy Upstream
Antonio Ferrel is Project Risk Engineer at Centrica Energy Upstream (CEU). His current role is to help shape the way CEU collects, analyses and reports project risk data to senior management and decision-makers. He initiated his career 10 years ago when, after graduating with a BSc in Engineering Physics, he joined the O&G industry with Schlumberger as an Offshore Field Engineer. He then joined Det Norske Veritas as Risk Management Consultant, providing solutions in Health and Safety analysis. In between he went on to develop his analytical skills and graduated with an MSc in Operational Research from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Mengying Fu, PhD
Operations Research Analyst, Progressive Corporation
Mengying Fu is a Sr. Operations Research Analyst at Progressive Corporation. Her areas of focus include creating more efficient/effective routing and skilling models, optimizing the balance between schedule efficiency and work environment, creating analytical tools to improve both accuracy and speed of resource planning decisions, and optimizing the adaptability and flexibility of Progressive contact center in response to a continuously changing business environment and workforce.  She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University in 2011. Her dissertation is about modeling and optimization of complex manufacturing systems using optimization, simulation, and statistics.

Bharat Gera
Line Manager, IBM Corporation
Bharat Gera is a line manager at IBM Corporation. He has been involved in the project management of enterprise software and hardware projects over the past decade and a half. He has worked primarily in storage, database, data warehouse, and analytics domains. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP)® and has an executive management degree with a specialization in business analytics from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He can be reached at bharat.gera@alumni.iimb.ernet.in

Jim Grayson, PhD
Professor, Information & Decision Technologies, Augusta State University
Jim Grayson is a professor in the Hull College of Business at Augusta State University.  He has a BS from the United States Military Academy and an MBA (Marketing) and a PhD (Management Science) from the University of North Texas.  Prior to joining ASU he worked at Texas Instruments in engineering and management positions including quality, software quality, supplier management and statistical consulting.

Eric Gross, PhD
Associate, Xerox Corporation
Eric Gross has 15 years experience at Xerox Corporation spanning the gamut from basic research to the design of print engine systems, to on-site implementation of document production process improvements.   Prior to Xerox he was a member of the research staff at the Toshiba Center for Manufacturing Excellence in Isogo, Japan.  He developed and implemented production system improvements for the manufacture of appliances and semiconductor devices and refined his expertise in control, system modeling, and optimization.  Eric holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and a minor in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and a BSME from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  He is a certified lean six sigma black belt, and has been granted more than 35 patents.  He has led a 3 year technology incubation project in the area of sensing with the University of Minnesota, and is a co-investigator in the area of cyclic systems with the University of Michigan with funding from the National Science Foundation’s “Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry”.

Anurag Joshi, MS
Customer Optimization Engineer, Philips Lumileds Lighting
Anurag Joshi supports worldwide operations team at Philips Lumileds Lighting where he develops mathematical models and software to reduce the gap between stochastic supply and variable demand. Anurag works extensively in the area of data mining, analytics and optimization. Anurag holds a M.S in Operations Research from State University of New York at Buffalo.

Lana Klein
Managing Partner , 4i, Inc
Lana has over 15 years management consulting and analytics leadership experience focusing on CPG, pharma, retail industries. At 4i she leads Strategic Growth and Marketing Foresight practice, providing thought leadership, expertise and engagements oversight. Over the last 5 years, Lana has led numerous client engagements in this area working with major US and global clients across multiple product and services categories.  Prior to joining 4i in 2005, Lana spent over five years with A.T. Kearney, consulting clients in CPG, Pharmaceutical, and Retail industries on a broad range of Growth, Marketing and Operations issues. Lana holds MBA from IMD (Institute for Management Development), Switzerland

George Konstantinow PhD
Information Technology Consultant
George Konstantinow, Ph.D., is an Information Technology consultant and independent medical researcher from Santa Barbara, California, with focus on consumer healthcare informatics, predictive analytics, and standards for clinical decision support. Dr. Konstantinow holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. from New College of the University of South Florida. He was previously Assistant Professor of Medical Research at Duke University Medical Center. He is a member of INFORMS, the IEEE, and HIMSS; chairs various professional societies in Engineering in Medicine and Biology; and serves as corresponding member of the IEEE-USA Medical Technology Policy Committee.

Eugene Levner, PhD
Professor, Ashkelon Academic College
Eugene Levner received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computational Mathematics from Lomonosov State University, Moscow, USSR (1968) and the Ph.D. degree in Computer & Systems Sciences from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow (1973). From 1972 to 1990, he worked for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Moscow; from 1994 to 2010 for the Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel. Since 2010, he is a full professor at School of Economics in Ashkelon Academic College, Israel. His research interests include operations research, mathematical modeling, and design and analysis of algorithms. He has authored/coauthored several books and more than 100 papers.

Dave Longhorn, MS
Operations Research Analyst, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command
David Longhorn is an Operations Research Analyst with the Transportation Engineering Agency, Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.  He is a former U.S. Air Force officer with assignments at the National Security Agency, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Transportation Command.  In 2008, he deployed to the Combined Air and Space Operations Center as a senior mobility analyst.  Mr. Longhorn earned a Master of Science degree in Operations Research from the Air Force Institute of Technology and a Master of Military Operational Art and Science from the Air Command and Staff College.

Robert Love, M.S
Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
Robert Love is an Associate supporting Booz Allen Hamilton’s Advanced Analytics practice. Mr. Love employs statistical methods and analytical techniques to deliver business intelligence, decision analysis, and operations research support to a variety of clients.  He has over four years of research, program management, and modeling experience across transportation and IT domains. Mr. Love holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee State University, and a M.S. in Technology & Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Charles M. Macal
Director, Argonne National Laboratory

David Makovoz, PhD
Deloitte and Touche LLP
David Makovoz received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Washington. Prior to joining Deloitte and Touche LLP, he served as Director of R&D of Impact Computing, Principal Analyst at CACI, and Chief Engineer at Caltech's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. With a background firmly rooted in physical science, Dr. Makovoz has spearheaded a number of innovative initiatives across a wide array of complex domains including modeling and simulation, machine learning, pattern recognition, image processing, signal processing, information retrieval, data mining, natural language processing, and high performance parallel computing. 

Veena Mendiratta, PhD
Practice Leade , Bell Labs CTO
Veena Mendiratta is a Practice Leader in the Bell Labs CTO organization at Alcatel-Lucent and leads the Next-Generation Solutions, Services and Systems Reliability work. Technical interests include data analytics, architecture and network dependability analysis. Current work areas include predictive analytics for telecommunications, LTE solution reliability engineering, and service reliability modeling for mission critical networks for various domains. She holds a B.Tech in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; IEEE Senior Member, INFORMS member, Alcatel-Lucent Technical Academy member, and a recipient of the Bell Labs President's Award.

Kresimir Mihic
Senior Member of Technical Staff, Oracle Labs
Kresimir  Mihic is a senior member of technical staff for Oracle Labs where he is responsible for the development of new generation of scalable approximation algorithms for solving combinatorial optimization problems. His work is aimed on finding solutions and building tools for revenue management problems. Prior to Oracle, Mr. Mihic was a senior product engineer with Magma Design Automation, where he was driving state-of-the-art Design for Manufacturing implementation and deployment efforts in the  fields of lithography process check and chemical-mechanical planarization. He was also responsible for "RTL to Silicon" design flow development.  Before his employment with Magma, Mr. Mihic worked as a staff CAD engineer in Cypress Semiconductor where he was developing technology and CAD environment flows for RTL synthesis, simulation and verification, and silicon mask data preparation. He was awarded a corporate design automation award for implementing an automated optical proximity correction design flow that replaced time consuming and error prone manual work.

Rogério Feroldi Miorando
PostDoctoral Research Fellow, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Rogério is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Industrial Engineering Department, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. His main research field is information technology management, risk analysis and simulation.

Miguel Angel Moreno, MS
Director, Universidad Panamericana
Miguel Angel Moreno has been member of Universidad Panamericana’s faculty for more than 10 years; he is specialist in Operation Management and leads the performance improvement in Mexican companies in different industries, such as metal-mechanic, dairy and services products. He has more than 30 years experience in Quality Management, Logistics, Materials Management and Production areas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering; he is Master in Productive Systems Optimization, and PhD candidate in Supply Chain Management and Logistics Management.

Nicholas Nahas, MS
Lead Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
Nicholas Nahas is currently a Lead Associate on the Infrastructure Analytics team at Booz Allen Hamilton which delivers operations research analyses to civil federal agencies with focus in energy, transportation and the environment.  In addition to his work at Booz Allen, Mr. Nahas is the current vice-president\president elect of the Washington DC chapter of INFORMS. Prior to Booz Allen, Mr. Nahas spent five years as a Systems Engineer at the Raytheon Company, in Woburn Massachusetts. Mr. Nahas holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and a M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University

Kyle Naumann
Master’s Student, Western Michigan University
Kyle Naumann is a graduate assistant and master’s student in the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering department at Western Michigan University.  His interests lie in distribution center optimization, linear programming and application of new technologies.  Mr. Naumann is a member of Alpha Pi Mu: Industrial Engineering Honors Society, the Institute of Operation Research and the Management Sciences, the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors.

Elizabeth Nielsen, MS
Senior Operations Effectiveness Specialist, Quintile
Elizabeth Nielsen’s educational and practical experience is in applied mathematics. She currently creates mathematical and analytical models for the Operational Analytics group at Quintiles, a contract research organization (CRO) in the pharmaceutical industry, where she uses modeling, simulation and analytics via multiple programming languages and software packages with a data-driven approach to create more efficient processes. She previously worked in industrial optimization and has an actuarial science background. Elizabeth has a MS in Operations Research from the University of North Carolina and a BS in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Kentucky.

Rema Padman, PhD
Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Rema Padman is Professor of Management Science and Healthcare Informatics in the H. John Heinz III College at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She is also a Thrust Leader of Health Informatics Research at iLab at the Heinz College and has an affiliate appointment as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Professor Padman received B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, India, and PhD in Operations Research from the University of Texas at Austin. She later completed a National Library of Medicine Senior Fellowship in Applied Informatics, with postdoctoral training at the Center for Biomedical Informatics at The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Puneet Piplani, MBA
Senior Vice President, Mu Sigma
Puneet Piplani is a Senior Vice President in Mu Sigma. He has over 13 years of experience in consulting, client-partner and project management roles in various technology, retail and manufacturing organizations. Before joining Mu-Sigma, he led the Supply Chain Solutions team at Nordstrom Inc.  Puneet has worked globally, leading large teams in developing and implementing large cap projects. He holds an Engineering Degree in Computer Sciences from State College of Engineering, Haryana and an MBA from Stern School of Business, New York University.

Diana Gineth Ramirez
Chief Science Officer, Fundación Centro de Investigación en Modelación Empresarial del Caribe (FCIMEC)

Daniel Reich, PhD
Operations Research Analyst, Ford Motor Company
Daniel Reich joined Ford Motor Company, Research and Advanced Engineering, as an Operations Research Analyst in 2011. He received his Bachelor of Science from Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2004 and his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 2009. Before joining Ford, Daniel spent two years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universidad Adolfo Ibanez School of Business in Santiago, Chile.  Daniel has authored several papers on computationally tractable heuristic approaches for optimization under uncertainty. His current work includes developing optimization models for scheduling, routing and other applications.

Norman Reitter
Advisor for Information Technology, Concurrent Technologies Corporation
Norman Reitter is currently an Advisor for Information Technology at Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC), an independent, nonprofit, applied scientific research and development professional services company.  Over the past 8 years, Norm has provided multi-disciplinary decision support solutions to a variety of clients using a variety of advanced analytics techniques, operations research methods, and modeling and simulation solution approaches.  Prior to joining CTC, Norm was a U.S. Marine Corps logistics officer, responsible for multi-functional operational logistics leadership and providing analysis using logistics modeling and simulation techniques.

Mouwafac Sidaoui, PhD
Professor, University of San Francisco
Mouwafac Sidaoui teaches business analytics to both Undergraduate, MBA and Executive MBA students at the University of San Francisco in the School of Management. Professor Sidaoui is also the Director of the joint Master of Global Entrepreneurship and Management Program www.usfca.edu/jmgem that takes students to Barcelona, Taipei, and San Francisco for rigorous studies in entrepreneurship and management at three leading Jesuit universities. Professor Sidaoui recently completed his Post Doctorate in Finance & Accounting with an emphasis on Business Analytics from the Hough Graduate School of Business, University of Florida, in July 2011. His research received widespread recognition, including the USF School of Education’s Distinguished Research Award (2007), which focused on leadership and organizational culture among public universities in the United Arab Emirates. He is fluent in Arabic and has presented his research findings and served as a delegate at conferences in North America, Europe and the Middle East, including the Education Without Borders Conference in Dubai, 2009.

Vivek Sinha, MS, MBA
Senior Consultant, Advanced Analytics, Booz Allen Hamilton
Vivek Sinha is a consultant with Analytics group at Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading management and technology consulting company. At Booz Allen Hamilton he has worked on numerous initiatives involving data driven insights and analytics driven recommendations to improve operational efficiency and increase revenue for the clients. Prior to Booz Allen Hamilton, Sinha worked for Wipro Technologies as Business Development Manager and started his career as an engineer with Delphi Corporation, where he was instrumental in launch of some of the leading telematics and infotainment products for the automotive industry. Mr. Sinha holds Bachelors & Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, as well as MBA from Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

Mandyam (“Srini”) Srinivasan, PhD
Pilot Corporation Chair of Excellence, University of Tennessee
Mandyam (“Srini”) Srinivasan is the Pilot Corporation Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee and recipient of the 2006 Franz Edelman Award.  He is the author of Streamlined: 14 Principles for Building and Managing the Lean Supply Chain published by Cengage in 2004, co-author of Supply Chain Management for Competitive Advantage published by Tata McGraw-Hill in 2008, and Building Lean Supply Chains with the Theory of Constraints, published by McGraw-Hill in 2012.  Srini has many years of work experience with leading automobile manufacturing organizations, and he has consulted with a large number of industries.

Stephen Stoyan, PhD
Analytics Manager, Starbucks Coffee Company
Stephen Stoyan is an Analytics Manager at Starbucks Coffee Company.  He is part of an advanced analytical team within the Global Supply Chain Operations department at Starbucks Coffee Company, where he investigates, examines, resolves, and supports a number of projects requiring mathematical, statistical and computational expertise.  Prior to joining Starbucks Stephen was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California and he received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Darijus Strasunskas, PhD
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Darijus Strasunskas is an independent researcher and consulting. He received his PhD degree in Information Systems from NTNU, Norway in 2006. His experience stems from work with improvement business and manufacturing processes, finance analysis, information management and value assessment in food, telecommunication, petroleum and offshore wind industries. He is an experienced communicator and mentor in training employees, giving presentations for various audiences. He has been awarded for his contribution to science (best paper awards at the BIS 2009 and WSKS 2008 conferences) and practice (award for an outstanding performance at Kraft Foods International in 2001).

Jim Sunderlin, BS
Senior Associate, MCR, LLC
Jim Sunderlin is a Senior Associate with MCR, LLC and brings more than 21 years of experience in Benefits and Cost Analysis.  He has strong operations research expertise in the area of investment analysis.  He has conducted numerous business case analyses for a variety of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT), and other government agency systems.  Jim has also developed system cost estimates and conducted cost research for a wide variety of Department of Defense (DoD) weapons systems.  He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Decision Science from George Mason University.

Ann Thornton, BSc Hons
FCA Director, Accounting Valuation & Analytics, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Ann Thornton is a Director at Deloitte specializing in solving business problems using statistical modeling and complex risk-based sampling designs.  She has over 35 years of public accounting and consulting experience and is a subject matter specialist on statistical applications for risk analysis and scoring, for accounting estimates, and for financial estimates used in regulatory disputes.  Her clients cross many industries and recently include Fannie Mae, Departments of Transportation and of Education, U.S. Postal Services, and U.S. Coast Guard.

Joel Tollefson, MS
Modeling and Simulation Analyst, The Boeing Company
Joel Tollefson currently works at Boeing Commercial, building modeling and simulation tools to support the Marketing and Sales group. He has worked 20+ years at Boeing as a modeling and simulation engineer, including working on the B787 program, several software simulation programs, and various missile and space programs.  Joel has a M.S. degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Washington.  He holds an M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington.

Hans Tuenter, PhD
Senior Model Developer, Ontario Power Generation
Hans Tuenter is a Senior Model Developer in the Planning and Analysis group of Energy Markets at Ontario Power Generation. His main focus is the design, development and implementation of large scale, structural models for the energy market. He also provides analytical support for Trading, Fuels, and Portfolio Management, and works frequently on corporate projects and strategic initiatives. Recent projects include the "Modeling of Wind Energy", "Nuclear Outage Planning", and the design of payment mechanisms for OPG's regulated, hydroelectric facilities. Hans is also an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, where he teaches a workshop on Energy Markets in the Mathematical Finance Program. He holds a Ph.D in Industrial Mathematics from the University of Birmingham, England, and an M.Sc in Operational Research from Twente University of Technology, The Netherlands.

John Turner, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of California-Irvine
John Turner joined The Paul Merage School of Business in 2010 as an assistant professor of Operations and Decisions Technologies. Turner previously served as an instructor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University where he taught Production: Operations Management and served as a recitation leader and head TA, project course TA, and teaching assistant. Turner’s doctoral research addresses various problems in the planning, pricing, and scheduling of online advertising.  Applications of his research include webpage banner ads, dynamic in-game advertising (ads that are seamlessly placed into video games like this one), electronic outdoor billboards, and the next generation of digital TV.

Andrew Vakhutinsky, MSc
Senior Principal Scientist, Oracle Retail Global Business Unit
Andrew Vakhutinsky is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Science Group of the Oracle Retail Global Business Unit. He is responsible for design and development of optimization algorithms for various retail applications including revenue management, space optimization, and logistics.  Prior to joining Oracle, Andrew worked on OR applications in airline, telecommunications, and defense industries.   He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Maryland, College Park, and M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Dirk Van den Poel, PhD
Professor , Ghent University
Professor Dirk Van den Poel holds a BSc, MSc in Business Engineering and a PhD in Business Administration. For 12 years, he has been active at Ghent University (Belgium), currently as full professor in marketing modeling. He initiated the MSc in Marketing Analysis at Ghent University (first predictive analytics program worldwide), the first true analytics master program in the world (http://www.mma.ugent.be). He also initiated the Marketing Engineering option as part of the Business Engineering degree at UGent His major research interests include analytical CRM, predictive analytics, big data. He has co-authored 60+ international publications (h-index: 14).

Jeremy Walton, D.Phil
Senior Technical Consultant, Numerical Algorithms Group
Jeremy Walton is a Senior Technical Consultant at NAG, with responsibility for technical marketing, including the development of example applications, technical presentations and marketing communications.  Since joining the company in 1993, he has led NAG’s contributions to a number of research projects, authored several technical papers and worked on various consultancy projects (most recently for Oxford University).  He holds a D.Phil in “Statistical Mechanics of Liquids” from Oxford University, and a first-class honours degree in Chemistry from Imperial College London.

Ryan J. Warr, MS, MBA
Senior Operations Research Engineer, Intel Corporation
Ryan J. Warr is a Senior Operations Research Engineer in the Supply Chain Modeling and Solutions group at Intel Corporation. He has had various roles in supplier management and production planning in his eleven years at Intel. He has a M.S. in Operations Research from Columbia University and a Master of Business Administration from Brigham Young University. His email address is ryan.j.warr@intel.com.

Reginald Wilson, MS
Senior Management Systems Analyst, Seattle City Light
Reginald (Ray) Wilson is a Senior Management Systems Analyst with Seattle City Light and more than twenty years of electrical system assessments and methodical business process philosophy experience in Fortune 250 companies. He has held visiting lecturer positions teaching courses in managerial business processes, circuit analysis, and electronic instrumentation. A Certified Quality Process Analyst and Certified Six Sigma Green Belt, Wilson holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in industrial operations from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. He is an active member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the American Society for Quality.

David Woo
Operation Research Practitioner, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies
David Woo is an Operation Research Practitioner at Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. Bay Bridge Decision Technologies is the leading provider of customer contact channel strategic and capacity planning solutions servicing companies across the Fortune 500 from industries ranging from banking and finance, telecommunications, outsourcing, retailing and utilities.  He is responsible for formulating and implementing Bay Bridge Decision Technologies’ analytic solutions applying simulation modeling and mathematical optimization techniques to help companies derive actionable insights and deliver high impact decisions. He is a member of the Analytics section of Informs and his primary interest is in developing Business Analytics solutions especially with techniques revolving around predictive analysis and prescriptive analysis.

Yue Wu, PhD
University of Southampton
Yue Wu is currently a Reader in the School of Management, University of Southampton (UK). She received two PhDs in the field of Operational Research at the Department of Management, London School of Economics (UK), and in the field of Control Theory and Control Engineering at the Department of System Engineering, Northeast University (China). Dr Wu had been a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Management Sciences, City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are global supply chain and logistics, maritime logistics, air cargo forwarding, revenue management in retailing, and stochastic modelling.

Chang Yan
Decision Process and Risk Management Consultant, Decision Strategies
Chang Yan is an experienced Decision Process and Risk Management Consultant with Decision Strategies. Her unique combination of business acumen, scientific training, and an intercultural background enables her to add value to a variety of consulting engagements, including multi-billion-dollar international investment decisions, multiple-asset risk assessments, acquisitions and divestitures, budgeting and planning, portfolio management, and training and capability development. Her keen interest is to apply critical thinking, probabilistic methodologies and decision process to help organizations make better decisions in the face of uncertainty, and to leverage her intercultural and business experience to develop international businesses.

Eugene J. Zak, PhD
Alstrom Grid
Eugene Zak received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology respectively. He joined Alstom Grid Inc. in 2007. Dr. Zak’s interests are in modeling electricity markets and intelligent software development. As a member of the Midwest ISO team he received the 2011 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and Management Science. Dr. Zak is a member of IEEE, INFORMS and Mathematical Optimization Society.