Program Overview
The University of Iowa Department of Management Sciences offers the PhD degree in each of three broad areas of management sciences:
Faculty and students work individually or in small teams, sometimes with external clients, to identify previously unstructured problems amenable to computer modeling. The solutions to these models lead to useful interpretations and deeper extensions that are worthy of further analysis by Quantitative Methods. Although a student must choose one of the following three areas as a major area of concentration, interdisciplinary work is encouraged and frequently appears in dissertations.
Graduate Student Handbook
Management Information Systems (MIS)
This area is concerned with the design, implementation and management of computer based systems so as to meet the information processing needs of organizations. Specific areas of research interest include computer networking, database systems, artificial intelligence applications in management, decision support and expert systems, and performance analysis and optimal design of computer systems. The MIS program at Iowa has a strong technical and quantitative orientation. Many doctoral students whose major area is Management Information Systems choose to supplement their coursework with computer science electives. With our technical orientation, many PhD dissertations involve building and analyzing mathematical models of MIS decision problems. Other research areas may involve developing systems oriented solutions to the software, database, and telecommunications problems currently facing organizations. See further information on research in this area.
Operations Management
This area is concerned with the planning, organizing, and control of manufacturing and service activities. Students in operations management develop solid analytical skills in optimization, statistics, and computer science, and apply these skills to the problems of operations management. The program in operations management has a quantitative focus, and dissertations in the area usually involve analytical modeling. Depending upon the topic, dissertations can involve empirical research, but such research is usually performed to support original theoretical development. Potential research topics include the design of efficient and responsive manufacturing and distribution systems, the effective implementation of various operational planning systems, and the efficient use of resources in a variety of operations management settings including service management problems. See further information on research in this area.
Quantitative Methods
The Department of Management Sciences has a small but internationally known group in optimization whose active research areas include the development of polynomial time interior point methods for linear and nonlinear systems. Current applications include large scale optimization related to telecommunications network reliability and design, robot trajectory planning, and geometric programming in engineering manufacturing. Another internationally known area involves faculty research in applied stochastic systems, forecasting, stochastic programming, discrete optimal control, decision theory and analysis, and applied game theory. Recent applications include stochastic inventory models in medicine, industrial organization, and settlement litigation. The Department has hosted visiting scientists in optimization from six different countries with seven of our visitors each staying longer than one month.See further information on research in this area.
