Humanitarian Logistics

IE 482 takes the optimization and OR toolkit you've built up across the IE curriculum, location models, VRP, network design, and points it at problems where the objective isn't profit but human welfare: getting blood, organs, vaccines, and disaster relief to people who need them under serious uncertainty. The semester is built around case readings and a sequence of projects (earthquake response, blood supply, broccoli distribution, malaria) where you frame a real humanitarian decision problem and solve it with quantitative methods. It's a senior-level elective that shows how the same models behind commercial supply chains behave very differently when the constraints are lives instead of margins, and it's a natural bridge into thesis work or NGO/public-sector careers.