Albert lands American Family Insurance grant to improve machine learning in insurance industry

Laura Albert, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received a research grant from American Family Insurance to apply optimization methods to improve machine learning tools for insurance industry applications.

Through the grant, administered through the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute at UW-Madison, Albert will employ a new approach to enhance planning and real-time workflow routing for insurance claims. The project is initially for one year, with a renewable second year of support.

While the research could improve customer service and reduce costs in the insurance industry, Albert notes the fundamental modeling work could hold promise for other challenges such as disaster response, call center optimization, emergency services and last-mile delivery.

Albert is the David. H. Gustafson Department Chair in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.