Margrét Bjarnadóttir Directory Page

Dr. Margrét Vilborg Bjarnadóttir is an Associate Professor of Management Science and Statistics in the DO&IT group. Dr. Margrét Bjarnadóttir graduated from MIT's Operations Research Center in 2008, defending her thesis titled “Data Driven Approach to Health Care, Application Using Claims Data”. Dr. Bjarnadóttir specializes in operations research methods using large scale data; her research centers around data driven decision making, combining optimization modeling with data analytics. Her work spans applications in health care, finance, people analytics and sports!

In health-care Dr. Bjarnadóttir specializes in decision modeling using EMR and claims data. Her recent papers include: “Aiding the Prescriber” which focuses on risk modeling for improved opioid prescriptions and “Predicting Colorectal Cancer Mortality” which utilizes EMR and Cancer Registry data to build decision support tools. Examples of other applications include drug surveillance design, practice patterns and patient targeting.

The focus of her People Analytics work is on algorithmic studies of demographic pay-gaps, including the best approaches to remedy the pay-gap problem taking into account both equity and the economics. In her recent paper “On a Firm's Optimal Response to Pressure for Gender Pay Equity” she highlights some of the unintended consequences of pay-gap legislation.

In finance, Dr. Bjarnadóttir studies complex networks. Her prior studies include analysis of nation-wide cross-ownership patterns and systemic risk. More recently she and her co-authors are studying the complex financial supply chains behind financial products.

Dr. Bjarnadóttir has consulted with both health care start-ups on risk modeling using health care data as well as governmental agencies such as a central bank on data-driven fraud detection algorithms.