Karen Smilowitz

About

Karen Smilowitz is the James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in Industrial Engineering and Management Science at Northwestern University and a professor of Operations at the Kellogg School of Management. She is an expert in modeling and solution approaches for logistics and transportation systems in both commercial and nonprofit applications. Dr. Smilowitz has been instrumental in promoting the use of operations research within the humanitarian and nonprofit sectors through various organizations including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Engineering. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Science and a Fellow of the INFORMS society.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Public relations
• Machine Learning
• Engineering
• Geography
• Cartography

Selected publications

• Characterizing visitor engagement behavior at large-scale events: Activity sequence clustering and ranking using GPS tracking data

  Tourism Management · 2021 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• On the Use of Operations Research and Management in Public Education Systems

  2020 · 19 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  TutORials in Operations Research is a collection of tutorials published annually and designed for students, faculty, and practitioners. The series provides in-depth instruction on significant operations research topics and methods. INFORMS has published the series, founded by Harvey J. Greenberg, since 2005.

  DOI

• A Bounded Formulation for The School Bus Scheduling Problem

  Transportation Science · 2022 · 18 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This paper proposes a new formulation for the school bus scheduling problem (SBSP), which optimizes school start times and bus operation times to minimize transportation cost. The goal is to minimize the number of buses to serve all bus routes such that each route arrives in a time window before school starts. We show that introducing context-specific features, common in many school districts, can lead to a new time-indexed integer linear programming (ILP) formulation. Based on a strengthened ve…

  PublisherDOI

• Contextual Trustworthiness of Organizational Partners: Evidence from Nine School Networks

  Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · 2020 · 12 citations

  Problem definition: Trustworthy partners in procurement and service relationships are an asset. How can organizations discern trustworthy from untrustworthy partners, especially early on, so as to not waste time or resources on bad relationships? Academic/practical relevance: Like prior studies, we take the perspective that organizations rarely know whether a partner is trustworthy, but also that organizations often have some evidence of a partner’s trustworthiness, even before interacting. We a…

  DOI

• Dual mode scheduling in volunteer management

  Socio-Economic Planning Sciences · 2023-12-31 · 8 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Exploiting Network Structure in Routing Problems: Applications to School Bus Routing

  NSF · $619k · 2017–2022

• GOALI: Improving Medical Preparedness, Public Safety and Security at Mass Events

  NSF · $355k · 2014–2018

• Advancing Dynamic Relief Response: Integration of New Data Streams and Routing Models

  NSF · $260k · 2013–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Carlos F. Daganzo

  University of California, Berkeley

  15 shared

• Samantha Keppler

  12 shared

• Sunil Chopra

  Northwestern University

  10 shared

• George Chiampas

  Northwestern University

  9 shared

• Seyed M. R. Iravani

  Northwestern University

  9 shared

• Mehmet Başdere

  Northwestern University

  9 shared

• Hani S. Mahmassani

  Northwestern University

  9 shared

• Peter Francis

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• INFORMS Fellow, Class of 2022

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Dean Karlanh-97
• Mark Finnh-95
• Torben Gustav Andersenh-85