Message from the Section Chair
I hope you enjoyed the summer. It goes by so fast! Several important conferences with significant RMP member presence were held this summer, including MSOM Conference in Dallas and POMS Annual Meeting in Houston. But the highlight for the RMP community is our annual conference held in Toronto on June 21-22 and hosted by Smith School of Business, Queen’s University. I had the pleasure to meet many of you there and catch up. I also greatly enjoyed our conversation about the soccer world cup. The event was a great success with 28 technical sessions and 107 scheduled talks, including three plenary talks. In addition, there were also several practical problem sessions. In total, 219 people attended the conference. It was preceded by the Fourth Marketplace Innovation Workshop on June 20. A message from Yuri Levin, Mikhail Nediak, and Anton Ovchinnikov, is included in this newsletter. I take the opportunity to thank Yuri, Mikhail, and Anton, and their colleagues for a wonderful conference!
During the conference, we had a business meeting where we shared several updates and had an open discussion.
- The section continues to have a strong balance sheet. Our membership has been steady in the last couple of years. The board has been working towards the goal of becoming a society within INFORMS. To that end, we have been working on initiatives to drive up the membership count. We have over 1,000 members in our LinkedIn group, while only a small fraction are paying members. Reaching out to general RM community, both in academia and industry, is critical for our continued growth. As a follow-up to that discussion, I have recently appointed Sophia Huang at Vistex to be our new social media coordinator. Please join me to welcome her. Sophia will manage the RMP LinkedIn group and work on initiatives to increase our social media presence. Stay tuned for more updates from her in the coming months.
- On behalf of the editors at Management Science and Operations Research, Gustavo Vulcano offered an update on the newly created Revenue Management and Market Analytics department in both journals. Both journals have very strong editorial boards. Please consider submitting your very best papers there.
- Ming Hu, the EIC at Naval Research Logistics, approached us about creating a new Revenue Management and Market Analytics department at the journal. We had an extensive discussion about this proposal at the business meeting. The idea received strong support. We expect to receive an update from Ming on this issue soon. This will add yet another outlet for RMP research.
Since the call for proposals to host the annual RMP conference was announced, we received several very strong proposals. The board met to vote on the proposals during the conference. I am happy to announce that our 2019 conference will be held at Stanford GSB on Jun 6-7, 2019. Like this year, the next year’s conference will also be preceded by the Marketplace Innovation Workshop.
Following our tradition, we are holding our section election for three positions on the board, including chair-elect, board member, and secretary/treasurer. Vivek Farias (MIT) served as the chair of the nominating committee this year. The candidates are listed after this message. We expect the election to open pretty soon, at which point you will receive a ballot by email. Please make sure to vote!
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. Please feel free to contact me for any suggestions regarding the aforementioned issues or anything else.
Dan Zhang
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder
Email: dan.zhang@colorado.edu; Voice: (303) 492 2340
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Forthcoming RMP Board Elections
According to the Section bylaws, there are three open officers and Board member positions. I take the opportunity to thank Vivek Farias (MIT) for accepting my invitation to chair the nominating committee. The candidates are listed alphabetically below for each position:
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Chair-Elect
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Board Member
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Secretary/Treasurer
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Omar Besbes (Columbia)
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Stefanus Jasin (U. Michigan)
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Srikanth Jagabathula (NYU)
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Ming Hu (U. Toronto)
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Gonzalo Romero (U. Toronto)
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Ozge Sahin (Johns Hopkins)
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I thank all the candidates for their willingness to contribute to the Section from an officer role. An electronic ballot will be sent in late August. Section members can vote by logging into INFORMS Connect.
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Conference Updates
2018 INFORMS RMP Conference: Message from the Organizing Committee
The 18th INFORMS RM&P Section conference took place June 21-22 at the Scotiabank Conference Centre, Toronto, Canada. The conference hosted 107 talks in 28 sessions, including three plenary talks. We had 164 registrants, 10 volunteers and 45 attendees from our sponsors for 219 people in total. The conference was preceded by a single-track workshop at the same location, the Fourth Workshop on Marketplace Innovation. Apart from technical talks, we also organized practical problem sessions, in which practitioners could present revenue management problems faced in practice, followed by a plenary discussion. These sessions were much appreciated, and seen as a convenient way of getting feedback and establishing contacts with academia.
We look back to a very successful and inspiring conference, and thank all attendants, contributors, and sponsors for a great event!
Yuri Levin, Mikhail Nediak, and Anton Ovchinnikov, on behalf of Organization Committee Smith School of Business, Queen’s University
Forthcoming: 2018 INFORMS Annual Meeting RMP Cluster
The 2018 INFORMS Annual Meeting will take place on November 4-7 in Phoenix, AR. The Revenue Management and Pricing cluster will have 62 sessions and 249 presentations. The sessions offer diverse topics including data-driven analytics, machine learning, emerging businesses, auctions, mechanism design, advertising, retail analytics, marketplace analytics, customer behaviors, and ride-sharing.
Co-chairs of the RMP cluster: