INFORMS Student Chapter Wins Magna Cum Laude Award
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The UMass Amherst student chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) has won the national organization’s annual Magna Cum Laude Award to recognize the chapter’s outstanding achievements during the past academic year. This influential award celebrates INFORMS student chapters that demonstrate consistent engagement, leadership, and commitment to the operations-research and management-science community.
The Ph.D. students who led the INFORMS chapter to its award were its president, Samira Samadi, and its vice president, Josh Gladstone, both from the Isenberg School of Management (Isenberg SoM). In addition, two officers from the Riccio College of Engineering (Riccio CoE) – Ph.D. candidates Sindhoora Prakash and Yukti Kathuria from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department – were among the seven officers who directed the winning chapter’s accomplishments.
The INFORMS Magna Cum Laude Award is the second most prestigious prize for INFORMS student chapters and is judged by each organization’s efforts in communications (social media, website, etc.), special events and initiatives, community service, and operations (elections, meetings, etc.). The UMass INFORMS chapter received the Magna Cum Laude Award at the #INFORMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco on November 2.
The goal of the UMass Amherst student chapter of INFORMS, which functions cooperatively through the Isenberg SoM and Riccio CoE, is to encourage interest in the field of operations research and the management sciences as well as to provide a means of communication among many areas of knowledge that benefit from that field.
As the UMass INFORMS student chapter explained: “A huge thank you to all our officers and members whose time, energy, and enthusiasm made this possible, and to the faculty from Isenberg SoM and Riccio CoE who have supported us throughout the year. A special thank you to our faculty advisor, Professor Anna Nagurney, for her continued guidance, encouragement, and dedication to our chapter.
According to Nagurney, who is the Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies at the Isenberg SoM, “Congratulations to last year's very active chapter officers, including: Samira Samadi (last year's president), Josh Gladstone, Sarvagya Jha, Yongdong Chen, Sindhoora Prakash, Yukti Kathuria, and Solmaz Abbaspour, and to all the chapter members. This student chapter is an excellent collaboration between the Isenberg SoM and Riccio CoE. Thanks also to all the faculty and staff who have supported our activities throughout the year, which have included speakers, social events, and field trips.” This year's chapter president is Jha.
As Samadi explained the UMass chapter’s activities that inspired the award, “Thanks to the dedication of our chapter officers and the guidance of our faculty advisor, Professor Nagurney, we organized a wide range of activities last year, including insightful talks by Dr. Oleh Nivievskyi and Dr. Les Servi on the practical applications of operations research. The other highlights were our field trips to the UMass Pantry and Vanguard Recycling facility, which offered valuable insights into food security, logistics, and sustainability.”
Gladstone added that “This year, we maintained our chapter's strong connection between Operations & Information Management and Engineering students through highly attended events and strong advisor leadership from Anna Nagurney. Highlights included hosting prominent speakers Dr. Les Servi and Dr. Oleh Nivievskyi and gaining real-world insights through site visits to an organics recycling operation and a local food pantry.”
The respective research projects of the two officers from the Riccio CoE, Prakash and Kathuria, are representative of the many diverse fields that INFORMS engineering students investigate.
As Prakash explained, “I am passionate about operations research and data science and dedicated to optimizing processes and facilitating informed decision-making.” She has been collaborating with Camden Coalition on an NSF-funded project, applying operations research and statistical learning to optimize intervention delivery for patients with complex medical and social needs.
Kathuria said that “I am particularly interested in how social, economic, and structural barriers limit timely access to care and contribute to unequal disease burdens and health outcomes…My current work focuses on dynamic cardiovascular-risk stratification among patients with Type 2 diabetes.”
The UMass INFORMS website explained that the chapter “is a venue for collaboration, building bridges among departments, as well as connecting UMass to other institutions and to the industry.” Among the activities planned for the coming year are the Speaker Series, field trips, community outreach, student presentations of research, and social activities such as game nights…“Undergrads and graduate students from all departments are welcome to attend and join in future meetings and activities. This chapter is truly interdisciplinary!”