Laura Albert, the David H. Gustafson Department Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will lead the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) as the organization’s president in 2023.
Albert, an operations researcher who focuses on public sector issues such as critical infrastructure protection, emergency medical services and homeland security, was elected to the organization’s board of directors as president-elect for 2022. She will then serve as president the following year.
INFORMS, which counts more than 12,000 members internationally, connects professionals in fields spanning decision and data sciences.
Albert, who joined UW-Madison in 2013 and started as chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in July 2021, previously served as the institute’s vice president of marketing, communications and outreach from 2016-19 and has led its Women in Operations Research/Management Science Forum and the INFORMS Section on Public Sector Operations Research. She has won multiple INFORMS awards and helped write the organization’s diversity statement as part of an ad hoc committee on the topic.