Elena Katok

Elena Katok is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she serves in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. She is also Co-Director of the Laboratory for Behavioral Operations and Economics (LBOE) and has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cologne, Germany (2007-2018). Previously, she held faculty positions at Penn State University, Harvard University, and Colorado School of Mines.

Dr. Katok earned her Ph.D. in 1996 and MBA in 1992 from Penn State University, and her B.S. in Business Administration with emphasis on Finance and Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987.

Dr. Katok is a pioneer in Behavioral Operations Management (BOM), a field that studies how human behavior factors into managerial decisions. Her research focuses on market design, strategic procurement, auctions, and supply chain management. She has made significant contributions to understanding how behavioral factors influence supply chain coordination, contract design, and procurement auctions. Dr. Katok helped establish the Behavioral Operations Management section of INFORMS and organizes the annual Behavioral Research in Operations Management conference.

Her recent publications (2018-2022) show a continued focus on trust mechanisms in procurement, contract design under behavioral considerations, auction theory, and supply chain coordination. Her work often combines theoretical modeling with laboratory experiments, demonstrating how behavioral insights can improve operational decision-making. She has particularly examined fairness considerations in supply chains, trust dynamics in procurement relationships, and the impact of behavioral factors on auction outcomes.

• Franz Edelman Award for achievement in the practice of OR&MS (2000)

As Co-Director of the Laboratory for Behavioral Operations and Economics, Dr. Katok leads research on how human behavior affects operational decisions. She has developed numerous classroom simulations to teach supply chain management concepts and has written several case studies used in business education. Her work bridges academic research and practical application in operations management.