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Operations

A Better Algorithm Can Bring Volunteers to More Organizations

Yale SOM’s Vahideh Manshadi and her collaborators found that an online platform was steering volunteers toward a small group of opportunities. By building equity into the algorithm, they were able to help more organizations find the volunteers they need.

An illustration showing raised hands emerging from a set of gears
  • Could Better Predictions Improve End-of-Life Care?

    A statistical tool that predicts when patients with advanced cancer are likely to die could help promote patient welfare by transferring more people from aggressive interventions to hospice care.

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  • Three Questions: Prof. Edieal Pinker on Holiday Travel

    We asked Prof. Edieal Pinker if operations research can make airline travel less unpleasant.

    Crowded airport
  • Can Operations Research Help Find Terrorists?

    Yale SOM’s Edward H. Kaplan uses queuing algorithms to estimate how many terror cells exist and determine how to efficiently combat them.

    Pixelated Art Work
  • How Dangerous Is America?

    In the Boston Globe Magazine, Professor Edward Kaplan writes that although more Americans report being worried about terror attacks, we are safer than we often feel. He cites his research that estimated the number of hidden terror plots being planned in the U.S. at any given time.

  • What makes an organization change?

    With the financial sector attempting to adapt to regulatory and economic uncertainty, firms are forced to prioritize and change. Phil Davis '85, an experienced management consultant, discusses the factors that can make organizational change succeed or fail, whether in the financial industry or another sector.

    What makes an organization change?
  • What is trust worth?

    Steve LaVoie founded Arrowstream to improve supply-chain management in the restaurant business. He discovered that the benefits of trust in markets have been overlooked, in part because of an overemphasis on individual actors as opposed to relationships. He also learned that building and maintaining trust is hard work.