Sheetal, a doctoral student in the Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences (AMCS) program, was awarded third place in the Best Poster Prize competition at the 2025 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

“I can’t believe this happened given it was my first academic conference,” Sheetal says.

Sheetal’s research is advised by Tippie College of Business faculty Qi Luo, Jeff Ohlmann, and Ann Campbell. Her poster, titled “Returns Consolidation and Outbound Freight Optimization: A Two–Stage Model for Reverse Logistics,” was presented in the Transportation Science and Logistics category.

The poster explains how her work uses advanced stochastic optimization methods to improve how returned goods move through e-commerce logistics networks.

“By accounting for unpredictable customer return patterns and fluctuating shipping prices, our models help companies decide the best times and quantities to ship items from local drop-off sites to central hubs and back to merchants,” says Sheetal, who is a graduate teaching assistant in business analytics. “The work provides insights into a data-driven approach to reduce costs, speed up processing, and bring greater efficiency to the rapidly growing world of product returns.”