What is Operations Research?
Operations Research (OR) is the analysis-usually involving treatment-of a process, problem, or operation to determine its purpose and effectiveness and to gain maximum efficiency. The strength and versatility of OR lie in its ability to model the behavior of complex systems in quantitative mathematical terms, as well as its prescriptive power through analysis and synthesis.
Operations Research is interdisciplinary by nature and draws on the techniques from many fields, including the mathematical sciences, engineering, the solution economics, and the physical sciences.
About the Program
The Dual-title Intercollege Graduate Degree Program is housed in the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Students enrolled in participating graduate programs at Penn State may pursue a dual graduate degree (at either the Ph.D. or Master’s level) in OR at the same time they are meeting the requirements of their “home” graduate program. Doctoral and Master’s students can also earn a minor in OR.
“There are methodological links between OR and Statistics that remain unexplored. My dual degree lays the groundwork for a future in either academia or industry, interweaving Statistics’ sophisticated analysis with OR’s computational efficiency.”
– Ana Keeney, Ph.D. student in Statistics and OR