Pinar Keskinocak, associate professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Humanitarian Logistics at the Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL), has been appointed to the position of associate director for research for the Health Systems Institute (HSI).

As associate director, Professor Keskinocak will be part of the senior leadership of HSI, along with Gregory D. Abowd, George Professor and director of the Health Systems Institute, and Mark Braunstein, HSI associate director and Professor of the Practice, College of Computing.

Professor Keskinocak has been actively involved in advising the HSI for the past year. Now, in her role as associate director, she will help develop the research mission and programs, will play a significant role in shaping HSI's research agenda and will serve as the faculty coordinator for the Master's degree program in Health Systems.

Created in 2005 as a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary initiative based at Georgia Tech and Emory University, HSI's research objective is to advance fundamental knowledge of issues central to the delivery of healthcare services through better understanding of the efficient allocation of health resources, appropriate uses of those resources, as well as the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of innovative health care delivery systems that integrate state-of-the-art information, communication, decision support, and biomedical technologies.

HSI researchers include accomplished and practicing academicians, clinicians, post doctoral scholars, and graduate student trainees engaged in the application of quantitative and qualitative research and development methodologies to the needs of the health services and healthcare delivery sectors. Bringing together the expertise of these many disciplines, HSI enables the development and implementation of novel interdisciplinary and collaborative research, education, and outreach programs to transform healthcare delivery systems and lead the nation away from an ineffective, reactive, disease-focused system to achieve a cost-effective, pro-active, health- and wellness-focused system.

Professor Keskinocak's research focuses on applications of operations research and management science with societal impact (particularly health and humanitarian applications), supply chain management, pricing and revenue management, and logistics/transportation. Her research has been published in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, and Interfaces.

With Professors Julie Swann and Ozlem Ergum, Professor Keskinocak co-founded and co-directs the Center for Humanitarian Logistics at SCL. The focus of the Center is to improve humanitarian logistics (including short- or long-term, man-made or natural disasters) and ultimately the human condition by system transformations through education, outreach, projects, and research