I anticipated reading Inside the Box: How Constraints Make us Better by David Epstein. I read Epstein’s previous books and admire how he connects and synthesizes seemingly disparate concepts into a compelling narrative. While the constraints he writes about in this book do not refer to constraints in the mathematical optimization sense, the insights resonated with me as someone who thinks in terms of objectives, constraints, and process optimization.

One unexpected surprise was encountering operations research in the book. Epstein discusses UPS’s ORION project, which was awarded the 2016 Franz Edelman Award. ORION is an outstanding example of how operations research and analytics can make a difference and create practical value. I was thrilled to see such a prominent and positive representation of OR.

I recently finished Behemoth by Joshua Freeman. The Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit in Green Bay, WI last month inspired me to learn more about the history of manufacturing given its importance to the state economy. Behemoth was my first choice, and it was an excellent one. It chronicles the history of large factories, from the first factories in England in the eighteenth century (Lombe’s Mill and Cromford Mill) through Foxconn City and the giant factories of China. I was especially interested in Freeman’s discussion of scientific management, labor reorganization, and the role factories played in shaping modernity.

Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty by Adam Kucharski delves into how we know what we know through geometry, statistics, and medical research. While Kucharski is trained as an epidemiologist, he uses examples from different fields to explore topics in epistemology and the search for truth. Ultimately, he acknowledges that certainty is elusive and instead dissects how we gather and evaluate evidence while balancing competing tradeoffs.

I read Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer (the updated and expanded edition) at the suggestion of Margaret Brandeau, who recommended it in her plenary talk at the 2025 INFORMS Annual Meeting. I was intrigued by this suggestion because I enjoy teaching engineering ethics. The book is composed of 90 essays, each of which is 4-5 pages long and address a challenging topic of our time. While I often didn’t agree with Singer, the essays pushed me out of my comfort zone and gave me a lot to ponder. I had trouble putting the book down and recommend it without reservation.

I make reading books about artificial intelligence a priority. I enjoyed AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor more than most. It focuses on machine learning and prediction as well as generative AI. I expected to read a book only summarizing AI failures, but it was actually more even-handed. What made this book effective was how they authors clearly explain both the strengths and weaknesses of AI. I found the book practical and insightful, and I will be recommending it to students in my “AI in Systems” course this coming fall.

My next read is The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us by Benjamin Recht, which explores the history of computational decision-making that shapes modern life. I was lucky enough to see Ben discuss one of the chapters at a recent seminar at UW-Madison, where he discussed how computational tools have led to automated decision-making. A couple of years earlier, he gave a fascinating and thoughtful talk about the emergence of statistics in the 20th century, reflecting how drawing conclusions from data has evolved. His talks blended computer science, data science, history, and philosophy in a way that was extremely refreshing and thought-provoking.

One of my favorite moments came during his visit to the UW-Madison optimization seminar series a couple of years ago. I asked a question after his talk that made a direct reference to Aristotle. I had long wanted an excuse to bring up Aristotle during an optimization research talk, and I was delighted to finally check that item off my academic bucket list.

Between Ben’s curiosity and his book’s focus on the intersection of computation, decision-making, and human judgment, I’m looking forward to reading The Irrational Decision.

What are you reading this summer?

Related posts:

• My book recommendations from 2019 and 2014
• David Epstein’s Substack “Range Widely”
• Ben Recht’s Substack “arg min”

On the one hand, demand for ISEs is expected to surge in the coming years. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that demand for industrial engineers will grow faster than every other engineering discipline. The field is consistently ranked one of the top engineering careers, and its impact contributes trillions of dollars to the global economies while also improving the quality of life and saving lives.

On the other, the number of undergraduate degrees in ISE have dropped precipitously in recent years, and our share of engineering graduates is shrinking.

ISE is at a crossroads. The world needs ISE more than ever, yet the talent pipeline is at risk. This contradiction was the central theme of my keynote. I believe we can address these issues by better telling our story to inspire future generations to pursue careers in ISE, and I challenged attendees to join me in addressing this challenge.

The IISE podcast Problem Solved provided a preview of my keynote (listen the first 6 minutes of the podcast below).

In the keynote, I discussed the role of research innovation in creating a “virtuous cycle” starting with studying emerging application areas that results in new theory, then practical, real-world impact, which then broadens the field by attracting new talent.

I discussed two of my recent papers in emerging application areas in operations research that were published in IISE journals. In the first paper (White and Albert 2025), I discussed how to evaluate policies for combating the opioid epidemic by routing individuals with opioid use disorder to treatment.

In the second (Schmidt and Albert 2024), we ask how industrial engineering and operations research methodologies can inform the siting of ballot drop boxes. This question resulted in a new integer programming model that balances cost, convenience to voters, and impact on election officials. The resulting methodology provides a practical tool that can be used in real-world settings as well as important insights for policy.

In the keynote I argued that we must do a better job communicating what we do as ISEs. Good research alone is not enough. We need to repackage our research advances into compelling stories that resonate with students, policymakers, and the public.

This was the idea behind Industrial and Systems Engineering Day (ISE Day), launched in 2025. The ISE Day initiative aimed to amplify our collective voices is attract the next generation. When ISE Day was launched in 2025, it brought together participants from 23 countries across five continents to share their ISE stories and showcase the field’s impact on the world.

The next ISE Day will be celebrated on September 14, 2026. It is an opportunity for us to raise awareness of what we offer the world and expand our global reach. I encourage you to RSVP to the LinkedIn ISE Day event if you have not done so already, and share the event with your network.

Industrial and systems engineering matters more than ever. We must tell our story clearly and often. I challenge ISEs everywhere to join me in spreading the word.

Watch the keynote talk below

Resources and references:

• Video snippet previewing my talk on LinkedIn
• Video snippet from my keynote
• White, V.M., and Albert, L.A. 2025. Evaluating diversion and treatment policies for opioid use disorder. IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 15(3), 241 – 268. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725579.2025.2523273
• Schmidt, A.P. and Albert, L.A. 2024. Locating ballot drop boxes. IISE Transactions 56(4), 424 – 436. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725854.2023.2213754
• Karwowsky, W., Salvendy, G., Albert, L., Kim, W. C., Denton, B., Dessouky, M., Dolgui, A., Duffy, V., Kumara, S., Li, J., Madni, A.M., McGinnis, L., Rouse, W., Shamma, J., Shen, M., Simchi-Levi, D., Swann, J., Tiwari, M.K. 2025. Grand challenges in industrial and systems engineering. International Journal of Production Research 63(4), 1538-1583. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2024.2432463

ISE Day information:

• Official ISE Day website
• ISE Day is celebrated on September 14 annually (except when it falls on a weekend, when it is celebrated on the following Monday)
• Use hashtags #ISEday and #ISEday2026

I started Punk Rock Operations Research on April 2, 2007. Fun fact: I published two posts on that first day. The first post introduced the blog (it’s “Hello World” moment). The second post, the first “real” post on Punk Rock OR, was a post about Al Blumstein entitled “Murder and the Operations Researcher.” Al has truly inspired me throughout my career.

When I visited Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy in 2018, where Al was a professor and former dean, I gave a talk in the Alfred Blumstein Classroom. It meant so much to me that I took a picture of it (see below). At that time, this is what I wrote about Al Blumstein:

I saw Dr. Al Blumstein of Heinz College give a talk about criminal justice and operations research when I was a graduate student, and he is part of the reason why I pursued research in public safety in emergency medical services. I gave my seminar in the Alfred Blumstein Classroom at CMU. It was an honor.

I will continue to remember Al Blumstein and his legacy.

The image of Al Blumstein at the top of this post was created using the NEOS server.

Read more about Al Blumstein:

• Al Blumstein’s New York Times obituary. You can read this obituary using the link I provide, even if you do not have a subscription.
• Official obituary 
• INFORMS History of O.R. Excellence: Biographical Profile 
• Carnegie Mellon obituary
• The video below was created in 2018 to celebrate the life, work, and legacy of Al Blumstein at his 50th anniversary at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College [32 minutes]

• AI Fundamentals & Applications for Engineers – Learn how to apply AI concepts to real-world engineering challenges
  • March 31 – April 1, 2026 https://interpro.wisc.edu/courses/artificial-intelligence-fundamentals-and-applications-for-engineers/
• AI Strategy & Governance – Understand how to lead AI initiatives responsibly, ethically, and at scale
  • May 12-13, 2026
    go.wisc.edu/ai-strategy

Both courses are two days, offered in a synchronous, hybrid format through UW-Madison’s Interdisciplinary Professional Programs (Interpro). That means you can join from anywhere—no travel to Madison required—while those who prefer an in‑person experience are welcome to join me on campus.

I’m thrilled to partner with InterPro on these offerings. Their team excels at helping instructors create engaging, practice‑focused learning experiences that bring cutting‑edge engineering topics to professionals around the world.

One powerful alternative, which I learned about while reading The Ethical Algorithm by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, is differential privacy. Instead of hiding or coarsening data, differential privacy deliberately introduces random noise into computations so that the contribution of any individual becomes statistically indistinguishable. Differential privacy adds mathematically calibrated randomness that protects individuals without sacrificing insight. This enables analysts to extract meaningful trends while ensuring that no single person’s information can be confidently inferred.

Randomization is the key idea behind differential privacy. An example of this approach is the randomized response technique, originally developed by Stanley Warner in the 1960s to collect data about sensitive topics.

Here’s a version of randomized response that I teach in my stochastic processes course. Suppose a researcher wants to estimate how many people hold certain political beliefs, but respondents may be reluctant to answer honestly. Each respondent privately flips two coins before answering. If both coins land heads, they report their true political leaning (conservative, liberal, or moderate). For any other combination of flips, they report “liberal” or “conservative,” regardless of their actual belief. This predetermined procedure forces a random liberal/conservative response, even when untrue, so the math becomes easy to correct by the researcher.

Because most responses are deliberately randomized, an outsider cannot infer an individual’s true answer and respondents may be more willing to answer honestly as a result. When the researcher aggregates responses from many people, the known probabilities of the coin flips allow them to mathematically remove the noise and estimate the overall proportions accurately, without knowing the ground truth for any single respondent.

This small but powerful idea illustrates how randomness can protect privacy without sacrificing the ability to learn from data. The fascinating part is that even though most responses are fake, the aggregate estimate is still accurate.

The same principles we teach in courses on probability and stochastic processes underpin differential privacy systems widely used by government and industry, including by the U.S. Census Bureau and Google.

For the students I teach (mostly engineering students), this topic offers a compelling example of how probability theory shapes practical algorithms that are mathematically elegant and also responsible.

Their responses guide me. Throughout the course, I weave in topics they care about, including budgeting, investing, understanding student loans, and even cryptocurrency. Several interactive course examples aim to teach students about the cost of credit card balances, how mortgages work (and when to refinance), when to purchase insurance, and the benefits of saving for retirement as early as possible.

I end the semester with a fun lecture summarizing my personal finance lessons.

I developed my first personal finance lecture in 2010, when I was at Virginia Commonwealth University. I enjoyed giving annual talks to the Honors College, and one year I decided to switch my talk from research to personal finance, so students would gain some practical knowledge that they could immediately use.

In developing that lecture, I realized that the most important personal finance habits are simple yet powerful. Others have noted that the best personal finance advice is straightforward and can fit on a notecard. I agree.

When I told my parents about the lecture, my mom offered one piece of advice: “Tell them to pay their credit card off in full every month.” I included it in my list. I credit much of my own financial success to my parents who made prudent financial decisions and set my up for financial success. I’m grateful for that advantage. Not everyone has access to that kind of guidance, so I use this lecture to share excellent advice from my parents and others more broadly.

I revived my personal finance notes when I started teaching Engineering Economic Analysis last year, and I turned the notes into a list of 10 simple rules. The list is printed below, and the lecture provides more context, information, and examples.

Including personal finance topics is rewarding for me. I enjoy seeing students connect classroom concepts such as the time-value of money to real-world decisions. At one point in the semester, we compared alternatives for paying for my daughter’s braces using the material in class and real financing options from my daughter’s orthodontist. It is my hope that students end the semester with the tools to invest wisely, manage risk, and plan for the future. If I can help students start their financial journey on solid ground, that’s a win that lasts far beyond graduation.

Professor Albert’s 10 rules for a flourishing financial future

1. Track your expenses
2. Set a budget and manage your big expenses
3. Pay your credit card statement in full every month
4. Start a Roth IRA as early as possible
5. Build and maintain an emergency fund
6. Invest in low-fee, well-diversified mutual funds (not individual stocks)
7. Borrow wisely by only taking out low-interest loans
8. Protect what matters against catastrophic losses (and skip extended warranties)
9. Don’t gamble
10. Remember the time value of money & other lessons from Engineering Economic Analysis!

What financial habit or piece of advice would you add to my list?

For more reading:

• 10 movies about engineering ethics
• why I’m excited to teach engineering ethics this fall

Several highlights come to mind:

• I was honored to be elected as an INFORMS Fellow, a milestone that means so much to me.
• ISE Day launched and was celebrated throughout the world.
• I was invited to give talks throughout the world, including Norway, Italy, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and more.
• Developing and teaching a new course at UW-Madison, AI in Systems, as well as the positive feedback from the community, was incredibly rewarding (Read my blog posts about this course here).
• Opportunities for personal growth, including baking and starting piano lessons, challenged me in a good way.

This year wasn’t without its challenges. A family issue required my attention and energy. This personal setback gave me the opportunity to reflect on my priorities and values, and I’m proud of how I showed up for the people who needed me the most.

If I had to choose one word to summarize 2025, it would be compassion.

While I am naturally a compassionate person, I leaned into compassion for others in 2025 and, for the first time, I learned how to show myself compassion. And while I have a lot of room for improvement in the self-compassion department, this shift helped me grow in ways I didn’t expect, both professionally and personally. I became a better teacher, mentor, and human being.

As we head into the new year, I’m carrying these lessons forward, keeping compassion are at the heart of everything I do.

What word would define your year?

For more reading:

• A thanksgiving post on gratitude

Each case begins with a review of the National Society of Professional Engineer (NSPE) Code of Ethics, followed by a review of the facts. Then, students work in groups to discuss questions that explore gray areas where there are no clear cut answers. I tell them that if they take away one thing from this class, it should be the lessons learned from these engineering ethics case studies.

To complement the case studies, I shared a curated list of films that illustrate engineering and financial ethics in action and make the principles of ethics tangible. Below are five documentaries and five fictional films that raise important questions about engineering ethics and can serve as conversation starters.

Documentary movies:

• Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
• Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
• The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• The Social Dilemma

Fictional movies:

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Wall Street
• Jurassic Park
• Gattaca

Honorable mentions:

• Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Ex Machina

What movies that relate to engineering ethics would you add to these lists?

Update (December 20, 2025): I posed this question on LinkedIn and received several good suggestions. The two movies with the most suggestions were:

• The Martian
• Margin Call

When I served as department chair (from 2021-24), I kept a stack of notecards in my office along with a list of faculty and staff birthdays. Before every birthday, I would pull out a card and write a short note of appreciation.

My schedule was incredibly busy and this practice made it even busier. Yet, I looked forward to writing those notes. They were a welcome break from the endless demands on my time. The reflection and recognition of the good work being done in the department genuinely transformed my mindset in a good way.

When my term as chair ended, I ended the practice of writing birthday cards. These days, I miss the steady rhythm that the notes of gratitude gave me. Expressing gratitude has always sustained my spirit in challenging times.

I still keep note cards in my office that are ready to go when needed. I even found a good excuse to write one to a student recently.

Today, I want to write a note of gratitude to you, the readers of this blog:

Thank you for reading Punk Rock Operations Research. Blogging has its own rhythm and commitment, and you, the readers, keep me motivated to continue blogging. Your feedback over the years has been invaluable. I especially cherish hearing how this blog has made a tangible difference in your work, thinking, or field of study. I am honored that this blog resonates with so many in the operations research community and beyond.

I am wishing you and yours a truly happy Thanksgiving.

Laura

The initial impact was enormous. We saw a groundswell of activity, largely driven by IISE Student Chapters and ISE departments who organized many in-person events on their campuses as well as industrial and systems engineers from around the globe who stepped up to increase awareness of ISE. The global excitement for ISE Day translated into massive engagement across social media platforms, making ISE Day a truly international event.

To put the level of engagement into perspective, my 20 posts about ISE Day on LinkedIn garnered 93,628 impressions alone. The sheer volume of participation made tracking every post impossible, but the data I was able to collect speaks volumes about the robust participation in ISE Day. Some of the highlights of ISE Day 2025 include:

• 486 attendees at ISE Day virtual events
• ~200 ISEs who shared their ISE stories on social media
• 34 ISE departments in the US who posted on social media
• 25 IISE student chapters who posted on social media
• 23 countries with ISEs who posted on social media
• 5 continents with ISEs who posted on social media

We must ensure that ISE Day 2026 builds upon this momentum. ISE Day Task Force wants your feedback. Please help us make ISE Day 2026 even better by filling out this short survey.

One of the highlights of ISE Day was witnessing hundreds of industrial and systems engineers who shared their career journeys, many using the ISE Day story template that the task force created. The video below offers a glimpse into the movement, showcasing approximately 130 of the ISE stories that were shared publicly on social media:

It meant a lot to be recognized by Don Greene, the CEO of IISE:

My sincere gratitude goes out to every single person who made the first ISE Day an unforgettable international event. Thank you for making this celebration so special.

What was your favorite moment from ISE Day 2025?

Related reading:

• My post introducing ISE Day
• My post featuring my ISE story and ISE Day resources

Note: this post was updated on 11/7/2025 to display the updated numbers of participating countries and continents.