Fernanda Bravo

Fernanda Bravo is an Assistant Professor of Decisions, Operations and Technology Management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she has been faculty since 2015. Her research applies mathematical modeling to transform decision-making processes related to resource deployment, network expansion, and service portfolio design in complex healthcare systems.

Her educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in Operations Management (2015) from MIT's Sloan School of Management
• M.S. in Operations Management (2009) from Universidad de Chile
• Professional Degree in Industrial Engineering (2009) from Universidad de Chile
• B.S. in Industrial Engineering (2007) from Universidad de Chile
• B.S. in Biotechnology Engineering (2006) from Universidad de Chile

Bravo's research program focuses on three interconnected dimensions: designing health care policy to align incentives, fostering health care innovation through market design, and supporting decision making within health systems via data-driven models. She examines subtle and counterintuitive interactions in healthcare systems by combining game theory, queuing theory, optimization, and machine learning to quantify critical trade-offs. Her work reveals how poorly designed policies can inadvertently incentivize physicians to provide lower levels of care, and how over-regulation of drug development might stifle innovation. She also researches shared mobility systems (bike/scooter shares) and machine learning frameworks for discovering structural properties of mathematical models.

Her publication record demonstrates consistent scholarly output in top journals including Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Management Science, and Health Care Management Science. The research shows an evolving focus from broader operations management applications to increasingly specialized healthcare operations problems, with recent work addressing Medicare payment models, vaccine distribution, telehealth implementation, and ICU overcrowding prediction.

At Anderson, Bravo teaches operations and technology management to MBAs and FEMBAs, an elective in health care analytics for MSBA students, and a Ph.D. course in supply chain contracting. Her teaching benefits from practical experience gained while working with professionals at Boston-area Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Partners Healthcare, and UCLA Health.