For over thirty years, the Tauber Institute has provided a dynamic and prestigious multidisciplinary program incorporating experiential, co-curricular, and curriculum-based learning across the Ross School of Business (RSB) and College of Engineering (CoE) in a capstone fellowship program. The leadership of Co-Faculty Directors Larry Seiford (CoE) and Hyun-Soo Ahn (RSB) has been integral in forwarding the vision and impact of the Tauber Institute.

Their collective efforts have successfully launched hundreds of students into their professional careers. The Tauber Institute sincerely thanks both for their commitment and significant contributions to the Tauber Institute Program.

Since 2010, Larry has served as the College of Engineering Tauber Institute Faculty Director and, over his tenure, has supported hundreds of students to launch their professional careers. During that time, the Tauber Institute was honored with the inaugural INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize for excellence in operations leadership education. He has also served as the faculty advisor for the Engineering Global Leadership students. In that capacity, he championed hundreds of CoE student’s pathways to the Tauber Institute and ensured they benefited from a broad menu of learning opportunities and experiential learning.

Since 2020, Hyun-Soo has served as the Ross School of Business Tauber Institute Faculty Director.  By beginning his role at the outset of the pandemic, he helped to steer the institute through many ensuing challenges. He initiated several valuable new activities, including revitalizing the curriculum by teaching the core class, Topics in Global Operations, where he integrated experiential learning with cutting-edge content and guest speakers who were thought leaders in operations. He also designed a new pathway for Tauber students, enabling BBA students to advance into the MSCM program, complete with the capstone Tauber project and program.

With this background and a sense of gratitude, the Tauber Institute is excited to announce the appointments of Joline Uichanco and Saif Benjaafar as incoming Tauber Institute Faculty Co-Directors in August 2024.

Joline is an Associate Professor of Technology and Operations. Her primary research area is data-driven decision-making for applications such as scheduling, inventory management, revenue management, and humanitarian logistics. Joline has collaborated actively with several industry or government partners such as Target, National Grid, Best Buy, and the Philippine government. She recently served as a Senior Research Scientist at Amazon. She studies new operations management problems inspired by the “new world of retail,” and she develops new analyses and optimization techniques for operations problems with these newly emerged dynamics of demand and supply.

Saif is a CoE Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering. His research is in the area of operations, where he focuses on sustainable operations and innovation in business models, including the sharing economy, on-demand services, and digital marketplaces. In addition to his research, Saif is a founding member of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) where he served as Pillar Head of Engineering Systems and Design. He has consulted for various companies such as 3M, General Mills, Honeywell, and the World Bank. He serves on the board of directors of Hourcar, a social car-sharing organization where he helped lead it into the largest such organization in the country.

These two distinguished leaders are joining Tauber’s Managing Director Anne Partington, as the leadership team of the Tauber Institute. Please join us in offering a heartfelt welcome to Professor Joline Uichanco and Professor Saif Benjaafar as we look forward to their leadership and influence on the Tauber Institute of Global Operations.

For further information, please contact the Tauber Institute for Global Operations at the University of Michigan at tauber.umich.edu.