Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Too Warm To Win Big? Unpacking The Backer Dynamics Behind Female Crowdfunding Success Using A Warmth And Competence Perspective, Dan Liu

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

While crowdfunding is often heralded as a democratized funding avenue that empowers women with higher success rates, this study reveals a more nuanced picture of gender dynamics. The Stereotype Content Model suggests that women are often perceived as warmer but less competent. Using a large dataset from Kickstarter, we find that female-led projects can attract more backers, likely due to warmth-driven appeal, but receive smaller average contributions, potentially due to concerns about risk linked to lower perceived competence. However, the total funding raised by female-led campaigns is comparable to that of male-led ones, showing no clear advantage or disadvantage. This …

Online Community Dynamics: An Analysis Using Louvain During Major Sporting Events, Anushka Jaint, Yashodhan Karulkar, Kashish Jindal, Sri Sai Harshita Gadavarthi, Sanya Gulati

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

With the power of social media transforming the way people connect and interact with each other, the dynamics of community formation on platforms such as X during major events are of crucial importance. While social media is an increasingly key driver in determining interactions, little is known about the online influence forming and developing fan communities in high-stakes events. This study looks into the development of user communities for datasets drawn from Kaggle on two of the world’s largest sporting events: the FIFA World Cup 2022, or football, and the T20 World Cup 2022, or cricket, with the aim of …

The Role Of Ict In Enhancing National Logistics Performance And Economic Productivity, Jin Ho Kim

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study sheds light on the transformative impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on national productivity via logistics performance. By distinguishing between mobile and wired Internet speeds, the research demonstrates how these technologies influence logistics performance and, in turn, national productivity across different economic contexts. The findings reveal a nuanced relationship between ICT and logistics performance, with mobile ICT playing a more significant role in developing countries due to its accessibility and cost-effectiveness. In contrast, developed countries benefit from a balanced integration of both mobile and wired ICT. Moreover, the study highlights the mediating role of logistics performance in …

Blockchain As A Digital Coordination Infrastructure For Project Management: A Systematic Review And Integrative Framework, Cherie Bakker Noteboom, Sai Neelima Seru, Aravindh Sekar

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Blockchain technology has gained increasing attention as a digital infrastructure capable of improving transparency, trust, and coordination in complex, multi-organizational project environments. However, existing research on blockchain-enabled project management remains fragmented and industry-focused, providing limited guidance for organizational adoption and integration. This study addresses this gap through a systematic literature review of 29 peer-reviewed studies, following PRISMA guidelines, to examine how blockchain capabilities are incorporated into project management practices across industries and maturity stages.

Grounded in Resource-Based View and Coordination Theory, the analysis employs a feature-to-process mapping approach to link six core blockchain capabilities—decentralization, transparency, immutability, smart contracts, traceability, and …

The Value Of Personal Data Ecosystems: A Flemish Media Sector Case Study, Maarten De Mildt, Melanie Verstraete, Sofie Verbrugge, Didier Colle

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Personal Data Stores (PDSs) have been proposed as a privacy-preserving approach to data sharing that increases individual control over personal data while enabling new forms of cross-organizational collaboration. This collaboration leads to the emergence of Personal Data Ecosystems (PDEs). Despite growing interest in PDEs, limited research has examined how the organizational and economic barriers identified in prior studies manifest in practice. This paper investigates these challenges through a case study of the Flemish media sector within the Solid4Media project, which explores the use of PDSs to support data sharing and personalization across media organizations. Using a qualitative research design, data …

Responsible People Analytics For Remote-Work Decisions: A Machine-Learning Benchmark For Classifying Perceived Productivity, Ruth Menjivar, Nima Molavi, Narges Mashhadi Nejad

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study examines whether employee-perception survey data can support responsible people-analytics decisions about remote-work productivity. Using the public New South Wales (NSW) Remote Working Survey 2021 (N=1,512), the study benchmarks statistical and machine-learning classifiers for self-reported perceived productivity classes (same, less, or more productive when working remotely relative to onsite work), not objective output, under default, class-weighted, and resampling protocols. Main evidence comes from 5×5 repeated stratified cross-validation using macro F1 and balanced accuracy with fixed model specifications. Class-balanced separability is modest. Random Forest, CatBoost, and LightGBM form a leading cluster with overlapping confidence intervals (macro F1 ≈0.51–0.52). Affective/well-being items, …

Towards Developing A Career Technology Fit Framework And Analyzing Its Influence On Work-Related Outcomes Among It Professionals, Gunjan Tomer

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

With growing attrition rate and significant demand for skilled IT professionals, the importance of studying their behaviour has become important for both academia and industry. Despite ample amount of research, there is still a gap between theory and practice. Based on our qualitative study conducted on Indian IT professionals we propose that technology allocation might contribute in understanding the behaviour of IT professionals. We found that IT professionals evaluate the technology allocated to them based on their individual career motives. This evaluation, either positive or negative, influences their job outcomes. Further, we explored the factors that make a technology preferable …

High Technology And The Developing State: The Arrival Of Supercomputers In India, Ramesh Subramanian

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

While India has made vast strides in information technology in the last few decades, its success is mainly attributed to its software, rather than its hardware sector. In fact, India’s attempts at developing computer hardware that can match international standards have largely been unsuccessful. A notable exception is its development of a series of supercomputers that match and exceed many international standards. This paper looks at an interesting period in India’s computing history – namely the 1980s and 1990s – focusing on its development of an indigenous supercomputer. During that period, supercomputers were thought to be the sole privy of …

Sme Ai Outreach In Finland—A Case Study, Kaj Mikael Björk, Anton Akusok, Amaury Lendasse, Leonardo Espinosa-Leal

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a project (work in progress) where entrepreneurship and higher education in AI (from Master level to postdoc level) are integrated in order to produce a dual effect; helping SMEs to gain insight in how AI can aid in the corporate environment and to expose AI researchers to the real-life situations in the company world. If successful, the companies are made ready for the AI revolution and the researchers more equipped for corporate settings. The project is ongoing, so this paper addresses a work-in-progress project. The paper reflects on the project as well on some aspects that need …

Simulation Optimization Of Intermodal Freight Transportation Under Disruptions, Israt Humayra

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Rapid growth in freight transportation in modern supply chains has led to increased operational costs, congestion, and severe environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions. Combining different modes, such as highway, railway, and waterway, intermodal transportation could thus offer considerable benefit to improve efficiency, sustainability, and resilience. However, most existing planning approaches rely on simplified assumptions, fixed schedules, and average cost estimates, making them less relevant to dealing with real-world uncertainties and disruptions. This study develops a simulation-optimization framework for intermodal freight transportation under disruption. We develop a mixed-integer programming model to represent an intermodal logistics planning framework on a multi-layered …

Anaerobic Digestion Of Food Waste Components: Modeling Biogas Production, Opeyemi E. Adelegan

Civil Engineering Dissertations

Food waste constitutes the single largest component of municipal solid waste landfilled in the United States — approximately 22% of 292.4 million tons generated in 2018 — and its anaerobic decomposition releases methane, a greenhouse gas with global warming potential approximately 27–30 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year horizon (IPCC, 2021). Anaerobic digestion (AD) offers an alternative management pathway that recovers energy and produces nutrient-rich digestate, but AD performance varies by as much as five-fold across food waste streams (130–630 m³ CH₄ per Mg VS added), and existing predictive tools either treat food waste as a …

An Integrated Pull System Framework For Disassembly Industries: Bridging The Supply-Demand Mismatch In Duck Meat Processing, Hongchao Yu

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Disassembly-based production systems, such as duck meat processing, face inherent operational challenges due to one-to-many production structures, short product shelf life, and volatile customer demand. A single carcass must be processed into multiple products at largely fixed biological ratios, while demand varies across products and over time. This supply-demand mismatch frequently leads to simultaneous surplus and shortage, resulting in unstable shipment schedules, excess inventory, and unavoidable waste. Traditional order-driven pull systems typically respond to orders independently and are limited in their ability to coordinate these interrelated effects.

This dissertation develops an integrated pull system framework for perishable disassembly processes, using …

Lean Service System Optimization In U.S. Automotive Maintenance Centers: A Time Study And Simulation-Based Approach To Reducing Service Cycle Time And Increasing Efficiency, Rakibul Hasan Sarker

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The primary objective of this study is to measure the current service time at a U.S. automobile service center, with the aim of reducing waste and optimizing service operations through time study and simulation modeling. Inefficiencies in those service centers increase service time and labor costs, reduce service quality, and reduce workshop productivity, thereby increasing customer waiting time. In this study, real-world shop floor data were collected from a single service center, namely Jiffy Lube. Over the course of ten working days, 205 vehicle data points were acquired. Service time, bay time, and overall process time were computed and examined …

The Crowdfunding Paradox In Crisis: Rising Funder Demand Vs. Declining Entrepreneur Supply, Dan Liu, Guangzhi Shang, Cynthia Fan Yang

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study investigates how the crowdfunding marketplace responds to major crises, focusing on behavioral shifts among funders and entrepreneurs. Results show a dual impact on platform dynamics. On the demand side, funders become more engaged, with notable increases in the number of backers, average contributions, and total pledge amounts. This heightened activity suggests stronger altruistic motivations, as individuals view crowdfunding as a way to support others during difficult times. On the supply side, however, entrepreneurs act more cautiously, leading to a decline in new project launches. This drop likely reflects increased risk aversion and uncertainty as creators navigate volatile conditions. …

Security-Oriented Voice Authentication Using Machine Learning, Ifeoluwa Stella Elegbe

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study develops and evaluates a machine learning and deep learning-based voice authentication system for secure identity verification. As traditional authentication methods such as passwords, PINs, and security tokens continue to face challenges, including identity theft, forgetting, and unauthorized access, voice biometrics offers a more secure, convenient, and user-friendly alternative, especially for remote, hands-free, and accessibility-focused applications. The study adopts a closed-set speaker identification framework, where the system determines the most likely speaker from a predefined group of enrolled users. A structured methodology is implemented, beginning with audio preprocessing and feature extraction. Key acoustic features, including Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), …

Optimizing Maintenance Routes For Highway Infrastructure Using Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicles, Qing Tang, Chenxi Chen, Xianbiao Hu, Yuxin Ding, Tianjia Yang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA), a leader–follower style connected and automated vehicle system, enhances safety during transportation infrastructure maintenance in work zones. However, the significantly lower speed of ATMA, compared to regular vehicles, causes moving bottlenecks that reduce roadway capacity and prolong queuing, leading to further delays. Different ATMA routes lead to varying patterns of time-dependent capacity drop, affecting the user equilibrium traffic assignment and resulting in differing system costs. This study aims to optimize ATMA routing within a network to minimize the system cost associated with its slow-moving operation. To this end, a queuing-based traffic assignment approach is …

Bridging Mission And Execution: Integrating Participatory Design In Early-Phase Mission Engineering For Stakeholder Alignment And Mission Clarity, Rafi Soule

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

This research examines mission framing during the early phase of Mission Engineering. Stakeholder interpretations diverge under ambiguity. Interoperability constraints are often not surfaced early. These conditions reduce mission clarity and weaken mission-to-system mapping readiness. The study integrates a participatory design-inspired, artifact-first workflow with RAG-enabled retrieval from a closed corpus to support evidence-grounded reasoning and traceable citations.

Phase 1 uses an online survey to establish baseline patterns in practice (N = 86). Shared understanding is positively associated with mission clarity (r = 0.60, p < 0.001). Phase 2 uses a time-bounded comparative workshop with two conditions. Expert reviewers rate mission statement quality higher for the participatory design condition (mean 3.5) than the traditional condition (mean 2.8). Technical feasibility ratings are similar across conditions. Phase 3 demonstrates RAG-enabled, closed-corpus, retrieval-supported traceability using the Referencer tool. It is reported as a proof-of-concept for evidence-grounded rationale and auditability, and as a pathway …

Choice-Based Crowdshipping For Next-Day Delivery Services: A Dynamic Task Display Problem, Alp Arslan, Firat Kilci, Shih-Fen Cheng, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper studies integrating the crowd workforce into next-day home delivery services. In this setting, both crowd drivers and contract drivers collaborate in making deliveries. Crowd drivers have limited capacity and can choose not to deliver if the presented tasks do not align with their preferences. The central question addressed is: How can the platform minimize the total task fulfilment cost, which includes payouts to crowd drivers and additional payouts to contract drivers for delivering the unselected tasks by customizing task displays to crowd drivers? To tackle this problem, we formulate it as a finite-horizon Stochastic Decision Problem, capturing crowd …

Learning-Based Graph Shrinking For Quantum Optimization Of Constrained Combinatorial Problems, Monit Sharma, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Graph shrinking has recently emerged as a powerful preprocessing technique for hybrid classical–quantum optimization, enabling variable and constraint reduction before quantum solving. Conventional approaches rely on Semi-Definite Programming (SDP) relaxations to compute vertex correlations, but these methods suffer from high computational overhead, instance-specific tuning, and limited generalizability. In this work, we replace the handcrafted SDP correlation stage with a reinforcement learning (RL) based correlation estimator, trained to predict merge quality directly from graph structure. We reformulate the graph shrinking process as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), design a Graph Neural Network (GNN) policy to guide vertex merging, and integrate the …

Securing The Energy Transition: Cyber-Physical Security And Resilience In Next-Generation Power Systems, Airin Rahman

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Modern power systems are rapidly evolving into renewable-dominated and digitally interconnected cyber-physical infrastructures due to the increasing deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs), inverter-based technologies, and advanced control platforms. Maintaining reliability under high renewable penetration requires flexible resources capable of shifting energy across extended time horizons. Long-duration energy storage (LDES), particularly hydrogen-based energy systems, has therefore emerged as an important enabler of renewable integration, grid flexibility, and resilience. However, the growing dependence on communication, sensing, and distributed control also expands the cyber-physical attack surface of modern power systems, creating security and resilience challenges that conventional operational paradigms were not designed …