Industrial Engineering Professor Ozlem Ergun along with Northwestern University Professor Karen Smilowit organized a symposium in Washington D.C. titled "Doing Good with Good OR: Applying Operations Research for Societal Impact."  The purpose of the symposium was to introduced several rich problems that arise in non-profit/humanitarian applications, including disaster relief distribution and community health care delivery.    

Speakers included Yann LeTallec of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, who discussed the use of Operations Research to address global health issues in resource-limited setting; Jeremie Gallien of the London Business School, who discussed public distribution of essential drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa; and David Sarley of John Snow International, who discussed improving the equity and access to essential health through optimization modeling. The symposium also included two discussants – Nathaniel Hubert of the Department of Public Health, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, and Paul Detjen of the Mobile CARE Foundation. 

Ozlem Ergun is involved in humanitarian logistics and is co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics.  

For more information, visit the original article at http://www.isye.gatech.edu/news-events/news/release.php?nid=64834