Dr. Elena Katok
- Professor of Operations Management
- Ashok and Monica Mago Chair in Management
The endowment was established in 2015 by an anonymous donor to support the research and scholarly activities of the appointed faculty member.
“Behavioral operations management is one of the fastest-growing areas of operations management. Already, the field of behavioral operations management has contributed to our understanding of how operations management models are likely to work in practice. It is my hope that down the road, this better understanding will improve how these models are implemented and used in industry.”
Dr. Elena Katok is a pioneer in the growing field of behavioral operations management, which examines the way human behavior affects business practices.
Her research focuses on issues related to market design, procurement auctions, supply contract performance and forecasting systems design.
“My interest in behavioral operations management evolved from my interest in experimental economics,” she said. “Early on in my career, I was fortunate to have had an opportunity to work with Dr. Gary Bolton and Dr. Alvin Roth. The topics of market design and strategic procurement naturally lend themselves to being investigated using game theoretic models and laboratory methods, so this was a natural fit.”
Her husband, Dr. Gary Bolton, holds the O.P. Jindal Chair in Managerial Economics at UT Dallas. Dr. Alvin Roth is an economics professor at Stanford University.
Katok and Bolton developed the Center and Lab for Behavioral Operations and Economics at UT Dallas for which they both serve as co-directors. Katok helped establish the Behavioral Operations Management section of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and has served as president of the section.
She co-organized the first Behavioral Research in Operations Management conference in 2006. The conferences are now held annually, which she said is a testament to the growth of behavioral operations management.
Katok’s research has been published in top business and economics journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. She is currently department editor for behavioral operations for the journal Production and Operations Management and associate editor at Management Science. The National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense are among the organizations that have supported her research.
Katok came to UT Dallas in 2012 as an Ashbel Smith Professor. She previously was a professor of supply chain management in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. Katok earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in finance and economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her MBA from Pennsylvania State University, where she also earned her PhD in management science.