MIE Ph.D. Students Sindhoora Prakash and Yukti Kathuria Win the TAG Master Modeler Competition

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Two Ph.D. students from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) Department, Sindhoora Prakash (lead) and Yukti Kathuria, won the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Master Modeler Competition, co-sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research, management science, and analytics. Beyond being funded to attend the INFORMS Analytics Conference in Orlando, the two MIE Ph.D. students also received a $6,000 prize.

According to the TAG website, “This multilevel, multidisciplinary, data-science competition for both academics and practitioners is intended to fight addiction, fuel recovery, and encourage healthy family lives. Master Modeler Competition 2024 requires the application of the INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional Framework and domains for problem solving to provide Davis Direction Foundation [DDF] and other related nonprofits meaningful insights, models, and solutions to make a societal impact.” 

Through the TAG competition, the DDF, a non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting addiction recovery, aims to enhance donor engagement and retention while improving grant-acquisition and donor-attraction efforts.

According to Prakash and Kathuria, their winning project “breaks down the problems [faced by the DDF] into several business questions, employing a combination of exploratory data analysis and machine learning to segment donors, discern donation trends, and optimize support strategies.” 

By employing a Recency Frequency & Monetary Value analysis, Prakash and Kathuria sorted donors into particular categories that allowed for tailored retention initiatives focused on “value maximization” and personalized communication.

Among other aspects of the project, as Prakash and Kathuria explain, they analyzed the DDF’s past grant-acquisition outcomes, which revealed areas requiring more preparation time, and recommended that the foundation explore alternative grant databases for specific program areas. In addition, their examination of DDF's online presence showed that the creation of audience-specific content, complete with targeted media attachments, would lead to better engagement on Facebook. 

As Prakash and Kathuria conclude, “Recommendations from this study include leveraging Facebook-audience insights and applying for a Google Ad Grant to enhance online presence and effectively promote fundraising events, thus attracting donors across different platforms. This comprehensive approach has the potential to strengthen DDF's role as a vital community resource, fostering sustainable support for addiction-recovery initiatives.”

Prakash says that “I am passionate about operations research and data science and dedicated to optimizing processes and facilitating informed decision-making.” Among other research projects, Prakash has been collaborating with a coalition from Camden, New Jersey, on a project funded by the National Science Foundation that applies operations research and statistical learning to optimize interventions for patients with complex medical and social needs.”

Prakash is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from the MIE department, and she serves as the vice president of the INFORMS Student Chapter at UMass Amherst. She earned her Bachelor of Technology Degree in Information Technology from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka in India.

As Kathuria explains her own background, “I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and working on operations research in healthcare at UMass Amherst. My research is focused on understanding health inequities that prevent vulnerable populations from timely access to healthcare and lead to certain communities experiencing a disproportionate burden of sickness or death.

Kathuria adds that “My current research is focused on analyzing social determinants of health to risk-stratify Type 2 diabetes pathways.” This project is in collaboration with MedStar Health and is funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She also serves as the social media officer (blog manager) of the INFORMS Student Chapter and is part of the MIE Graduate Leadership Council.

Kathuria holds an M.S. and B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (June 2024)