News Room

A collection of press releases, audio content and media clips featuring INFORMS members and their research.

Unmasking Human Trafficking: New AI Research Reveals Hidden Recruitment Networks
News Release

BALTIMORE, MD, May 24, 2025 – Most anti-human trafficking efforts focus on breaking up sex sales; however, new research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management is turning its attention to where trafficking truly begins – recruitment. Using machine learning to analyze millions of online ads, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have uncovered patterns that link deceptive job offers to sex trafficking networks. By mapping the connections between recruitment and sales locations, the study reveals a hidden supply chain – one that can now be exposed and interrupted earlier in the trafficking process.

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New U.S. drug prices doubled amid a shift toward treating rare diseases
Media Coverage

Drugs being explicitly developed to treat rare diseases are getting more expensive.

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Human air traffic controllers keep flyers safe. Should AI have a role?
Media Coverage

Old technology is behind the recent ongoing delays and cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport, but newer technology will be an important part of the solution.

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Resoundingly Human Podcast

An audio journey of how data and analytics save lives, save money and solve problems.

Media Contact

Jeff Cohen
Chief Strategy Officer
INFORMS
Catonsville, MD
[email protected]
443-757-3565

INFORMS in the News

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Impact Prize to COIN-OR

News Release, November 11, 2014

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) recognized a longstanding open source software program with its 2014 INFORMS Impact Prize for the developers’ creation of software that has spurred the growth of new applications over its more than dozen years of existence.

INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model Survey San Francisco

News Release, November 10, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, November 11, 2014–According to a new INFORMS®  survey of 230 business, government and academic representatives released today, the concept of “analytics maturity” is important or very important to their businesses (65 percent).  Yet, 82 percent of those same respondents admitted they do not have a plan, model, or any other mechanism in place for measuring the efficacy or maturity of their analytics best practices over time.  

INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model San Francisco

News Release, November 10, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO, CA , November 11, 2014– The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) – the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of analytics, operations research (O.R.) and management science – today announced the official launch of a unique new Analytics Maturity Model that is designed to help organizations of all sizes scrutinize the way they use analytics across the business and determine how to improve their best practices over time. Whether an organization is in it’s initial stages of using analytics to improve business processes, or is at a more advanced level, the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model approach helps assess strengths and weaknesses in three important areas of analytics: the organization itself, its analytics capabilities and its data and infrastructure.

Executive Pay: The final reckoning

October 23, 2014

IN HIS book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Thomas Piketty argues that it is impossible to find an “objective basis” for the high salaries of senior executives in terms of their individual productivity: they pay themselves such exorbitant sums simply because they can. However, in a forthcoming paper in Management Science, an American journal, two academics claim to have found such an objective measure, and conclude that most bosses are not overpaid.

In their study, Bang Dang Nguyen of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School and Kasper Meisner Nielsen of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology looked at how firms’ shares react when the chief executive or another prominent manager dies suddenly. They identified 149 cases of this happening at American companies between 1991 and 2008.

Marketing Science Study: Skillfully Use Product Placement

October 15, 2014

Consumers have become highly adept at avoiding television advertisements. We switch channels, divert attention to our tablets and phones, and of course fast-forward through ads on our DVRs. Partly in response to this loss of attention, marketers are increasingly focused on product placement as an alternative way of exposing us to their brands. After all, product placement is innately much harder to skip given its integration into the actual program content.

Most academic research on product placement has primarily considered it as a separate persuasive technique independent from the commercial break advertising. That is, mirroring early research on TV advertising, research has focused on how product placement influences viewers’ recall of and attitude toward brands. However, this overlooks the possibility that product placement in a show might influence the likelihood of viewers watching an advertisement for related products at the next commercial break.

In research just published in Marketing Science, my colleagues David Schweidel of Emory University and Natasha Foutz of the University of Virginia and I began to explore whether such synergies exist.

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INFORMS Magazines

OR/MS Today is the INFORMS member magazine that shares the latest research and best practices in operations research, analytics and the management sciences.

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Analytics magazine showcases articles and research reports based on big data, AI, machine learning, data analytics and other new-age technologies.

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