Bloomingdale's, a subsidiary of Federated Department Stores, is testing pricing optimization software from ProfitLogic. Should the company buy the software? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
Spring 2008
Costis Maglaras is a Professor at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University in the division of Decision, Risk & Operations. His research focuses on quantitative pricing and revenue management, the economics, design, and operations of service systems, and financial engineering.
Costis received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1990, and his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. From 1991 to 1993 he served as a research scientist at Canon Research Center America. He joined Columbia Business School in 1998. During his sabbatical in 2007, he was involved in starting Mismi Inc., where he continues to serve as its Head of Research and be part of its management team. He has also been a frequent consultant to industry.
Professor Maglaras is the author of many research articles spanning the theory and application of stochastic modeling in queueing networks, service systems, quantitative pricing, and revenue management. His recent work focuses on the application of quantitative modeling in the pricing, risk management and valuation of multi-unit real estate portfolios, and in the design of portfolio trading systems and portfolio trading algorithms. He is the author of one patent (pending approval). His research has been recognized by the 1999 INFORMS Nicholson Prize for the best student paper in Operations Research and Management Science, the 2008 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section best research paper award, and his students have won several best paper awards for their doctoral research. He has also received the Dean’s award at Columbia Business School for teaching excellence for the core course Managerial Statistics. He is a frequent speaker in academic and industry forums.
Professor Maglaras serves as the chair of INFORMS’ Revenue Management and Pricing Section for 2008-2009. He teaches and serves as faculty director for the executive education course on Risk Management offered by Columbia Business School. He holds editorial positions in many of the flagship journals in operations research and management science.
Garrett van Ryzin’s research interests include stochastic optimization, pricing and revenue management and supply chain management. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and major corporations and he has served as a consultant to several leading companies in the area of pricing and revenue management. He is currently editor in chief of M&SOM and has served as area editor for Operations Research. He is also an associate editor for Management Science and Transportation Science.