INFORMS Releases

INFORMS, the largest association for the decision and data sciences, has awarded the 2021 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and University of Southern California for their work to deploy a national-scale targeted testing system to allocate limited testing resources in Greece to screen visitors for COVID-19 at the border. The award was presented today at the 2021 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Anaheim, Calif. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 22, 2021 – Cynthia Rudin has been named the recipient of the Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 18, 2021 – In a world where false news spreads easily and rapidly, and institutional trust is declining, the imperative for local newspapers to serve as reliable sources of news is more important than ever. Like any business, however, finding strong and sustainable revenue is foundational to their mission. For news organizations, subscription revenue is increasingly important to newspapers as advertising revenue continues to decline. Paywalls can increase subscription revenue by helping newspapers not only acquire new subscribers but also retain existing ones. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science shows that newspapers’ strategy of offering subscribers free access to digital content increases subscriber retention and boosts revenue by as much as 7-12%.

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 14, 2021 – New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could enhance public safety by employing new, robust data-driven approaches to identify adverse effects of drugs faster and more reliably, which would improve the regulatory decision-making and oversight processes. This approach would substantially contrast with the current FDA approaches for monitoring drug safety, which suffers major drawbacks, e.g., that they are based on voluntary reports that can result in inaccurate or untimely decisions. 

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 12, 2021 – Airbnb created a free, smart-pricing tool for its Airbnb hosts. But the tool meant to promote racial equality has done little to solve the problem. New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science finds the algorithm’s price recommendations are not affected by the host’s race, but rather the tool’s race blindness has resulted in unintended consequences that may lead to suboptimal pricing for Black hosts.