Amy Ellen Mainville Cohn

Amy Ellen Mainville Cohn is a Professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health. She serves as the Faculty Director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety (CHEPS) and Chief Transformation Officer at Michigan Medicine, where she collaborates on process re-design and operational improvements.

• Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT (2002)
• A.B. magna cum laude in Applied Mathematics from Harvard (1991)

Her research focuses on applying combinatorial optimization to complex systems like healthcare and aviation, emphasizing multi-criteria objective functions and uncertainty management. She is known for bridging methodologies across domains (transportation, healthcare) to develop scalable solutions for resource allocation, scheduling, and decision-making under conflicting objectives.

As an educator, she teaches optimization techniques to undergraduate and graduate students and mentors experiential learners. She values fostering a diverse academic community and has led initiatives to enhance teaching and research collaboration.

• Alfred F. Thurnau Professor (recognizing excellence in undergraduate education)
• Leadership roles at CHEPS and Michigan Medicine

Amy is actively involved in healthcare engineering, co-directing projects to improve patient safety and provider scheduling systems. She collaborates with institutions like the Department of Veterans Affairs and previously worked on radiation treatment optimization models. Her work integrates simulation, data science, and stakeholder engagement to address real-world constraints.