Julie Ivy

Julie Simmons Ivy is the Vivian L. Carpenter Collegiate Professor and Chair of the Industrial and Operations Engineering (IOE) Department at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on decision modeling under uncertainty to address complex societal issues in healthcare and hunger relief. Dr. Ivy’s research seeks to model complex interactions and quantitatively capture the impact of different factors, objectives, system dynamics, intervention options and policies on outcomes with the goal of improving decision quality. Dr. Ivy develops and applies systems science methods, including the analysis and modeling of large data sets, simulation modeling, decision theory, and stochastic modeling including Markov decision processes and partially observable Markov decision processes, to improve hunger relief and health decision making. This research seeks to impact how researchers and practitioners address complex societal issues, such as health disparities, public health preparedness, hunger relief, student performance, and personalized medical decision-making and has been funded by the CDC, NSF, and NIH. Dr. Ivy is an INFORMS Fellow, an IISE Fellow, and serves on the National Academies Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics. Dr. Ivy has focused on empowering women of color and underrepresented minorities in IE/OR and STEM over 25 years. She was an INFORMS Minority Issues Forum Fellow and received the INFORMS 2020 WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS.