Julie Ivy

Julie Simmons Ivy is a professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Fitts Faculty Fellow in Health Systems Engineering. She previously spent several years on the faculty of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She received her B.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. She also received her M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering with a focus on Operations Research at Georgia Tech. She is a President of the Health Systems Engineering Alliance (HSEA) Board of Directors. She is an active member of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Dr. Ivy served as the 2007 Chair (President) of the INFORMS Health Applications Society and the 2012 – 13 President for the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum. Her research interests are mathematical modeling of stochastic dynamic systems with an emphasis on statistics and decision analysis as applied to health care, public health, and humanitarian logistics. This research has made an impact on how researchers and practitioners address complex societal issues, such as health disparities, public health preparedness, hunger relief, student performance, and personalized medical decision-making and has been funded by CDC, NSF, Clinton Health Access Initiative, and the UNC Cancer Center.

Research Interests

Dr. Ivy’s primary research interests are in the mathematical modeling of stochastic dynamic systems with emphasis on statistics and decision analysis as applied to health care, manufacturing, and service environments. The focus of her research is decision making under conditions of uncertainty with the objective of improving the decision quality. Dr. Ivy’s research program seeks to develop novel concepts of maintenance and monitoring policies and associated scientific theories, and apply them specifically to two important application domains: industrial and medical decision making. She has extensive background in stochastic modeling, in particular the application of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) and Markov decision processes (MDPs). Dr. Ivy’s medical decision making research relates to studying the cost-effectiveness of mammography screening, dynamic breast cancer screening policy development, false positive prediction as a function of breast cancer screening policy, the impact of comorbidity on breast cancer patient outcomes modeling birth delivery choice as a function of long term consequences such as pelvic floor dysfunction, patient-centered pharmaceutical inventory management, and public health preparedness. In addition to her research in medical decision making, Dr. Ivy also works in the area of humanitarian logistics particularly as it relates to hunger relief and equitable food distribution. Her research has been funded by the NSF and the Centers for Disease Control.

Education

Honors and Awards

• 2022 | Fellow, Insitute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• 2022 | Fellow, BRIDGES Academic Leadership for Women Program
• 2020 | WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS, INFORMS
• 2020 | Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award, NC State University
• 2016 | Moving Spirit Award, INFORMS
• 2012 | C. A. Anderson Outstanding Faculty Award, ISE Department at NC State University

Discover more about Julie Ivy

• How COVID-19 Will Affect North Carolina in the Months Ahead
• Solving Hunger with Numbers
• Special Deliveries
• Modeling for Philanthrop-IE
• Big Night at the C.A. Anderson Awards