Nichalin Summerfield

Nichalin Summerfield serves as Associate Professor and M.S. in Business Analytics Program Coordinator in the Operations and Information Systems Department at UMass Lowell's Manning School of Business, leveraging interdisciplinary expertise in quantitative methods and healthcare systems.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Operations Management (2010), Department of Management Information Systems, The University of Arizona
• M.S. in Management Information Systems (2005), Department of Management Information Systems, The University of Arizona
• BEE in Electrical Engineering (Honors) (1998), Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University

Research Focus: Her work integrates explainable AI, simulation modeling, and game theory to solve healthcare logistics challenges including patient no-show prediction, substance use disorder treatment optimization, and mobile banking security. Recent methodologies emphasize interpretable machine learning for generating testable hypotheses from complex clinical datasets.

Publication Trends: Spanning 2011-2025, her research evolved from foundational operations research (Chinese Postman Problem applications, stochastic programming) toward cutting-edge healthcare analytics, with 2021-2025 publications demonstrating strong emphasis on explainable AI frameworks for medical decision support and financial systems security.

Scientific Recognition:

• Department's Research Excellence Award (2025)
• Department's Teaching Excellence Award (2022)
• Runner-up - DSI Regional Best Paper Award (2021)
• Best Application of Theory Paper Award (2021)

Research Leadership: As Co-Principal Investigator for the 2024 Internal Seed Grant on electoral precinct resource allocation and 2017 urban transportation analytics project, she secures funding for real-world problem solving. Current work explores deep reinforcement learning in supply chain optimization, building on prior industry experience at Accenture and NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander software development.

Collaborative Networks: Partnerships with University of Massachusetts Medical School and UMass Memorial Healthcare enable translational research, while active participation in Decision Sciences Institute and INFORMS conferences drives methodological innovation in business analytics.