Renata Konrad

Professor and Program Director of Industrial Engineering 

Renata Konrad is a Professor of Operations and Industrial Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she also serves as Director of the Industrial Engineering program. She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, and her MASc and BASc in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Konrad's research sits at the intersection of operations research,  humanitarian challenges, and healthcare with the goal of improving the quality, timeliness, and efficiency of systems that serve vulnerable populations. Her work spans a  range of problems: designing human trafficking awareness campaigns,  estimating prevalence and capacity needs, disrupting wildlife trafficking networks, modeling humanitarian response of forced migration, and improving access to primary care. Her research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Konrad was a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine in 2021/22. She has served on the U.S. Department of Transportation Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking and on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Human Trafficking Advisory Committee, and was a member of the Delta 8.7 Markets Working Group through the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. Within the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), she has served as President of the Public Sector Operations Research (PSOR) section, as President of Women in Operations Research and Management Science (WORMS).

On the teaching side, Dr. Konrad was the recipient of the  Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education and the IISE Modeling and Simulation Division Teaching Award.