Curriculum Vitae
About
Empirical operations management — studying how people, workload, and their environment interact to shape productivity and care in healthcare and service operations.
Short Bio
RJ Niewoehner is an Assistant Professor in the Operations and Decision Technologies department at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. His research uses empirical methods to understand how human behavior and working environment interact to affect productivity, with a focus on people-centric problems in healthcare and service operations — asking questions like what work should be done, and who should be doing it. His work has appeared in Management Science, Operations Research, and Production and Operations Management, and has been featured in the Harvard Business Review.
Before joining Kelley in 2022, he earned his Ph.D. in Operations at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds an M.B.A. from the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Before his academic career, he worked as an electronics engineer for the U.S. Army and as an operations intern for the disaster-response nonprofit Team Rubicon.
Positions Held
Academic Appointments
-
2022–
Assistant Professor
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University — Operations and Decision Technologies
Bloomington, IN, USA
Degrees
Education
-
2017–2022
Ph.D., Operations
Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
-
2015–2017
M.B.A.
Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego
Academic focus on Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Data Analytics
-
2007–2011
B.S., Electrical Engineering summa cum laude
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA
Minor in Business Leadership
Refereed Journal Articles
Published & Forthcoming
Physician Discretion and Patient Pick-up: How Familiarity Encourages Multitasking in the Emergency Department
Focusing Provider Attention: An Empirical Examination of Incentives and Feedback in Flu Vaccinations
- Received a favorable report from the Management Science Reproducibility Project
- 1st Place — 2023 Center for the Business of Life Sciences Conference and Research Paper Competition
- 2nd Place — 2020 POMS College of Supply Chain Management Best Student Paper Competition
- 3rd Place — 2021 POMS College of Healthcare Operations Management Best Paper Competition
In Progress
Working Papers
Pushing Past Patient Ratios: How Real-Time Workload Information Shapes Nurse Assignment, Retention, and Patient Care
Delayed Orders, Faster Flow: Batch Ordering Across Patients in Emergency Departments
From Groceries to Green Spaces: Linking Built Environment Features to Patient Health
Limited Movement Means Vanishing Visits: How Patient Mobility and Signal Coarseness Reordered Healthcare Traffic in the Wake of COVID-19
For a Broader Audience
Practitioner Articles
How do you motivate busy physicians to give more flu shots?
Building a Tolerance for Failure
Invited Talks & Conferences
Presentations
Pushing Past Patient Ratios: Workload Information Shapes Nurse Assignment, Retention, and Patient Care
- INFORMS, San Francisco, CA — November 2026 (planned)
- MSOM Conference, Boston, MA — July 2026
- Emory Goizueta Business School, Invited Seminar — February 2026
- Indiana University Health — December 2025
- Indiana University — November 2025
- INFORMS, Atlanta, GA — October 2025
- Wharton Workshop on Empirical Research in OM — September 2025
- Wisconsin School of Business, Invited Seminar — April 2025
- INFORMS, Seattle, WA — October 2024
- Indiana University — September 2024
Proceed with Caution: How Broadband Access and Speed Help and Hinder Student Learning Outcomes
- INFORMS, Atlanta, GA — October 2025
Movement and Visits: How Patient Willingness to Travel Reordered Traffic in the Wake of COVID-19
- INFORMS, Phoenix, AZ — October 2023
- POMS, Orlando, FL — May 2023
- University of North Carolina — March 2022
- DSI Conference — November 2021
Physician Discretion and Patient Pick-up: How Familiarity Encourages Multitasking in the ED
- INFORMS, Phoenix, AZ — October 2023
- POMS, Orlando, FL — May 2023
- Indiana University — February 2023
- INFORMS, Indianapolis, IN — October 2022
- University of North Carolina — March 2022
- INFORMS Healthcare — July 2021
- INFORMS — November 2020
Focusing Provider Attention: An Empirical Examination of Incentives and Feedback in Flu Vaccinations
- Indiana University — April 2023
- University of California, San Diego, Invited Seminar — April 2023
- Cornell University — January 2022
- Georgetown University — December 2021
- University of South Carolina — December 2021
- Indiana University — December 2021
- University of Utah — December 2021
- University of Minnesota — November 2021
- DSI Conference — November 2021
- INFORMS, Anaheim, CA — October 2021
- INFORMS — October 2021
- Wharton Workshop on Empirical Research in OM — October 2021
- MSOM SIG — June 2021
- POMS — May 2021
- INFORMS — November 2020
- INFORMS, Seattle, WA — October 2019
- INFORMS Healthcare, Cambridge, MA — July 2019
In the Classroom
Teaching
Classroom Instructor
- BUS P-304 — Core Operations, Honors Program Indiana University, Fall 2022–Present
- BUSI 403 — Core Operations, Undergraduate University of North Carolina
Teaching Assistant
- Core Operations, Executive MBA Program 2019–2021
- Core Operations, Undergraduate Program 2019–2020
- Core Strategy & Supply Chain Analytics (Graduate) Rady School of Management, 2017
Profession
Service & Awards
Ad-hoc Journal Referee
Management Science · Operations Research · Manufacturing & Service Operations Management · Production and Operations Management · Journal of Operations Management · Service Science · TutORials in Operations Research
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
- Finalist, Sauvain Undergraduate Teaching Award 2025–26
- Management Science "Distinguished" Service Award 2025
- M&SOM Meritorious Service Award 2025
- M&SOM Meritorious Service Award 2023
- M&SOM Meritorious Service Award 2022
Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina
- Latané Outstanding Graduating Student Award 2022
- Peggy Lee – Sunil Wahal Award for outstanding, up-and-coming doctoral candidate 2021
- Harvey Wagner Award for research progress 2019
Rady School of Management, UC San Diego
- Rady Family Foundation Fellowship
Virginia Tech
- SMART Scholarship Awardee (Science, Math, and Research for Transformation) 2008–2011
- Semifinalist, ECE Department "Senior of the Year" nomination 2011
- Dean's List Fall 2007 – Spring 2011
Before Academia
Industry Experience
-
2016–2017
Operations Intern
Team Rubicon Global, San Diego, CA
- Constructed and implemented Team Rubicon's Critical Incident Protocol for planning around unforeseen incidents at home and during deployments
- Drafted a $2M proposal to fund a Mobile Training Team, enhancing Team Rubicon's reach, response time, and impact capability
- Deployed on Operation Pay Dirt as a volunteer team leader, guiding sifting operations in Ft. McMurray, Canada after a wildfire destroyed more than 2,400 homes and buildings
-
2011–2015
Electronics and Communications Engineer
U.S. Army Civilian, Aberdeen, MD
- Managed a project of local and external personnel to design and test a system mitigating the limitations of force protection systems via interference cancellation technology
- Designed and implemented four high-power computing systems leveraging GPUs to extend predictive simulation power to the internet domain
- Capitalized on leadership training opportunities unique to Department of Defense employees, leveraging military and civilian networks to their fullest extent