Julie Swann

Department Head

Phone: 919.515.6423
Email: jlswann@ncsu.edu
Office: 4121 Fitts-Woolard Hall

Julie Swann is the department head and A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professor of the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She is an affiliate faculty in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at both NC State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining NC State, Swann was the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. There she co-founded and co-directed the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS), one of the first interdisciplinary research centers on the Georgia Tech campus. Starting with her work with CHHS, Swann has conducted research, outreach and education to improve how health and humanitarian systems operate worldwide.

Health and Humanitarian Research

Swann is a Fellow of IISE and a member of INFORMS as well as a research leader in using analytics and system approaches to enable health care and supply chains to become more efficient, effective, or equitable. Her work as a systems engineer with analytics skills relates to areas of public health, public policy, epidemiology, infectious disease, supply chain management, and disaster response. Recent activities include:

Conducting analytics to reduce adverse events and unplanned admissions to hospitals and skilled nursing facilities for the Medicare system, as part of a data innovation team in the 2019-2020 CMS national innovation challenge. This work includes examining the role of the CMS quality ranking systems on adverse events and unplanned admissions.
Leading a team selected by the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop forecasts and decision models to support state decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic in the US.
Analyzing the disease’s epidemiology and public health impacts the spread of a pandemic, including influenza (2007 to current) and Covid-19 (2020 to present).
Educating practitioners from non-profits, industry, government agencies, etc., that conduct emergency management and disaster response on crucial aspects of supply chain management.
Quantifying the return on investment from decisions by state agencies to improve pediatric asthma.

Julie Swann discusses her health and humanitarian research

Collaborations

Swann has collaborated widely with organizations such as:

The American Red Cross
The Carter Center
CARE USA
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Emory University Hospital
State Departments of Public Health
and many other companies

Worldwide, she has contributed to the education of thousands of practitioners in health and humanitarian systems through the co-creation and teaching in a professional certificate program at Georgia Tech. This contribution includes teaching in the MASHLM program in Lugano, Switzerland, and co-chairing the annual Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference.