Julie Simmons Ivy is the department chair of and professor in the department of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan. [1] Her research involves health care statistics [2] and the application of systems engineering to health care [3] and to other social services including food bank distribution systems. [4] [5]
Ivy graduated from the University of Michigan in 1991 and completed a master's degree in 1992 at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She returned to Michigan for doctoral study, completing a Ph.D. in 1998. [2] Her dissertation, Determining Maintenance and Replacement Policies for a Multi-State Deteriorating Process with Probabilistic Monitoring, was supervised by Stephen M. Pollock. [6]
She worked as a faculty member in the School of Business at the University of Michigan from 1998 to 2007 before moving to North Carolina State University, [2] [6] where she was a professor of industrial and systems engineering and a Fitts Faculty Fellow in Health Systems Engineering.
Ivy is African-American, [7] and was the president of the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum for 2011–2013. She also chaired the INFORMS Health Applications Section for 2007. [2] [6]
Since 2016 she has been chair of the board of directors of the Health Systems Engineering Alliance, an association of university programs focused on engineering approaches to health care delivery. [6]
In 2016, INFORMS gave Ivy their Moving Spirit Award for her work with their Minority Issues Forum. [8] She was the 2020 winner of the WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in Operations Research and Management Science. [2] In 2022 she was named a Fellow of INFORMS, "for her service and significant contributions in healthcare and hunger relief, which have advanced the stature and recognition of the OR/MS profession, making it more inclusive for underrepresented members". [9]