Cornell Operations Research is dedicated to advancing the field of Operations Research through our talented students, scientific discovery, collaborative work with business and industry, and academic outreach.

Operations Research (OR) emphasizes optimizing organizational and system performance using advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.

OR is used in many different industry segments—from health care to logistics to financial services. It is also applied in different business functions from finance to manufacturing and marketing. It helps solve diverse business problems such as identifying best product placements in retail establishments to ensuring appropriate inventory levels in spare parts manufacturing.

Technology, computing, and information science all leverage OR’s historical and current intellectual thought to enhance practical application. Operations Research employs high-performance computing capabilities to achieve its objectives.

There is a close connection between Operations Research (OR) and commercial software. A wide array of software products, from Excel Solver to high performance parallel processing simulation tools, are based on OR-developed abstract ideas and concrete algorithms (several of these packages, notably CPLEX and AMPL for optimization, were developed by Cornell alumni). Such software products are used to solve OR models that are routinely used in manufacturing, distribution, marketing and other business functions.

Learn more about this exciting and influential scientific field and Cornell's role in advancing the OR discipline.