Rate My Professor Ruben Proano

Dr. Ruben Proano is an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology's Kate Gleason College of Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador. As a United World Colleges alumnus, Dr. Proano is committed to multicultural education and believes Operations Research, known as 'The Science of Better,' provides essential tools for engineering decision-making in international development. At RIT, he actively engages students by introducing them to healthcare systems engineering problems and has served in various leadership roles within the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS).

Dr. Proano's research specializes in the application of Operations Research models and methods to solve problems in healthcare delivery, global health, and the supply of pediatric vaccines. His work has been published in prestigious journals including Healthcare Management Science, IISE Transactions, Omega, and the Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization. Key publications include "Making Combination Vaccines More Accessible to Low-income Countries: The Antigen Bundle Pricing Problem" (Omega, 2012), "Determining the Optimal Vaccine Vial Size in Developing Countries: A Monte Carlo Simulation Approach" (Healthcare Management Science, 2012), "Scheduling Internal Medicine Resident Rotations To Ensure Fairness and Facilitate Continuity of Care" (Healthcare Management Science, 2017), "An Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy" (IISE Transactions, 2024), and "Designing Drone Delivery Networks for Vaccine Supply Chain: A case study of Niger" (IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 2023). In 2024, he joined the World Health Organization's Technical Advisory Group on Market Access for Vaccines, participating in meetings in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Proano also completed a sabbatical at the UNICEF Vaccine Center in Copenhagen during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his research and numerous invited presentations at INFORMS conferences have advanced strategies for making vaccines more affordable, accessible, and profitable globally.