CTLSnippets E4: A Guide to Solving Real World Problems through Applied Research

Описание: Welcome to CTL Snippets! Let's hear from our guest, CTL faculty Dr. Sundaravalli Narayanswami, IIM Ahmedabad, on aligning academic research with industry to develop effective solutions for real-world problems.

Dr. Narayanswami spoke about the need to uphold stakeholder centricity while defining research problems to bridge the gap between research and practice. She spoke about the role of management, policy and science in creating technologies and processes that can be applied to the Indian context to solve problems unique to our system. She explained how sequential decision-making, which utilizes machine learning and decision-making techniques, helps solve contextually different applied decision-making problems under uncertainty due to a combination of dynamic and stochastic optimization at each echelon of decision-making. She emphasized that researchers need to engage deeper with the industry and understand their problems better to develop relevant tools to solve those problems instead of solving problems using a single tool limited by unrealistic assumptions, rendering the research inapplicable in real life. Finally, she shared her views on what lies ahead for the Centre and laid out different research areas.

Dr. Sundaravalli Narayanaswami is an Associate Professor of Public Systems Group, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Most of her research in the past and present are in transportation operations and knowledge management that involve applications of ICT and OR tools in real-life problems of large impact. She has also taught programmes at Mumbai, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Dr. Sundaravalli is well published and has a vibrant and extensive consultancy experience, mainly with government organizations in policy making on good governance and administration.