IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2026 Keynote — Laura Albert | May 18, 2026

Laura A. Albert is a professor of industrial & systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She served as the President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2023 and the David H. Gustafson Department Chair of ISyE at UW-Madison from 2021-24. She is the founder of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Day, celebrated annually on Sept. 14. Laura is also an elected Fellow of IISE, INFORMS, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work has been recognized with the INFORMS Impact Prize, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Fulbright Award. As an advocate for public engagement, Albert has penned several op-eds for national news outlets and authors the engineering blogs “Punk Rock Operations Research” and “Badger Bracketology.” You can learn more about ISE Day at iise.org/iseday.