Galileo University forms the first INFORMS Student Chapter in Latin America

Guatemala's international presence in technology areas continues to grow through the Galileo University and its Operations Research Institute. Students who are part of the INFORMS Guatemala Student Chapter will have benefits such as access to specialized documents in operations research, data science, business intelligence and the opportunity to meet people with similar interests to carry out joint projects.

INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences), is a community of more than 12 thousand members who are interested in operations research and related areas, such as supply chain, data science and business intelligence, among others.

At the end of 2019, INFORMS It incorporated the first student chapter in Latin America, the Galileo University chapter, with the aim of promoting scientific areas that help improve the decision-making process. 

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"After a process of getting involved and having participation with INFORMS, we managed to establish ourselves as a University that is generating a change in the area of operations research in Latin America," says Dr. Jorge Samayoa, Director of the Operations Research Institute (IIO ) and member of the International Activities Committee of INFORMS. 

“Having an entity dedicated to the study and education in operations research and related areas shows the commitment of Universidad Galileo in the area. This helps us to be able to generate these alliances and achieve that Latin Americans have more world-class activities ”, he adds.

How does INFORMS work?

INFORMS has 165 scientific communities, 16 journals and a presence in most universities in the United States of America. It also has groupings / chapters in other parts of the world, with the aim of promoting Operations Research and related areas. When an academic institution meets a series of requirements, such as having a large enough group of students, with quality teachers, with an interest in the area and with enough INFORMS members, it is feasible to create a student chapter.

In the United States there are hundreds of Student Chapters of INFORMS, which include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Buffalo (SUNY), New York University, Texas A&M University, Purdue University, University of Wisconsin Madison, among many more top-level institutions that have this type of groupings.

Besides the United States, there are only five countries that have a Student Chapter, and one of those now is Guatemala.

In Guatemala

The Guatemala Student Chapter will promote the area of operations research through:

• Seminars: Which will allow the presentation of research and new scientific developments to members of the chapter and guests. 
• Meetings: They will allow communication between Galileo University students and people from different areas to find similar interests and that may eventually create new research projects or new business entrepreneurship projects.
• Visits: They will allow its members to know, in a deeper way, different national and international industries. 

Regarding its structure, each INFORMS Student Chapter has:

• 1 advisor professor
• 1 President
• 1 General Vice President
• 1 Treasurer
• Representatives from each of the research areas, which may have vice president positions or others defined by the president with the advisor, according to the interests of the chapter.

These people will work together to develop activities that include the students of the IIO and the rest of the University. 

Having a student chapter presents an opportunity to connect Galileo University students with students from other universities that have INFORMS chapters.

“Student chapters allow for interesting collaborations. For example, when Dr. Samayoa was president of the INFORMS chapter in Purdue, coincidentally I was also president of the chapter of Texas A&M. We organized a competition between the students of these universities and some others - it was a very enriching experience for the participants. ”, Explains Dr. José Ramírez, Deputy Director of the IIO and member of the Students Affair Committee of INFORMS.

“Other benefits of belonging to the student chapter are: Access to information through the INFORMS platform, such as scientific magazines and scientific poster competitions; access to webinars sponsored by INFORMS and conferences that take place around the world ”, adds Dr. Ramirez. 

If you want to contact the Guatemala Student Chapter, send an email to: iio@galileo.edu.

Text: GES Communication