The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports research and training in the humanities and social sciences.
When endangered howler monkey populations cross Costa Rica’s roads, they are vulnerable to injury from electrical wires and passing cars. Associate Professor Juan Camilo Serpa, partnering with Reserva Conchal, is using artificial intelligence to help prevent these injuries from occurring.
During a sabbatical year, Prof. Juan Camilo Serpa visited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Costa Rica, and found that while they were doing a lot of great work to help animals, they had little access to advanced technologies like data analytics and artificial intelligence. This inspired Serpa to re-focus his research toward the country’s NGOs, so he could help them implement new technologies that maximize the impact of their efforts.
McGill students are working with Costa Rican non-governmental organizations to safeguard howler monkeys from road hazards. Through their research, they’ve created a "Mono-SOS" website for accident reporting in partnership with a local NGO, SalveMonos.
Authors: Maxime C. Cohen, Alexandre Jacquillat, Juan Camilo Serpa and Michael Benborhoum
Publication: Management Science, Forthcoming
Across programs and subject areas, the Desautels Faculty of Management recognizes the vital role that teaching plays in enriching the student experience and in inspiring the next generation of leaders.
The Distinguished Teaching Award recipients Sujata Madan and Juan Serpa were honoured at McGill’s 2022 Management Convocation ceremony on June 1, for their excellence in teaching.
Risk is a fact of life in business—it’s also an ever-present reality in times of war. Wars and armed conflicts embroil 60% of the developing world, and now Ukraine and Russia, posing a constant threat to commodity production, the flow of international supply chains, and the economic lifeblood of these nations.
Juan Camilo Serpa, Associate Professor of Operations Management, was recently recognized with the Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching for an approach that engages students by asking them to use data analytics to see familiar data in novel ways.
Authors: Andres F. Jola-Sanchez and Juan Camilo Serpa
Publication: Management Science, 67(10):6457-6479
Abstract:
We study how armed conflicts affect inventory across firms’ production facilities. We track 38,916 production facilities—including plantations, livestock farms, and factories—in war-torn Colombian regions; we also collect the data of 5,138 attacks performed by the two rebel groups involved in Colombia’s civil war. To obtain exogenous variation in the conflict intensity, we use a difference-in-differences model that hinges on the peace process between the government and one of the guerrilla groups. We find that when the conflict intensity increases by one order of magnitude, inventory decreases by up to 10.38%. Firms, however, barely reduce finished inventory during war; they mainly reduce raw and work-in-process inventory. To offset this inventory reduction, firms increase their cash holdings—that is, they shift their working capital from physical inventory to liquid assets. The location of the facility moderates the effect of war: when a facility is close to a distribution center—hence, inventory travels short distances—the firm responds to violence by aggressively reducing inventory; when a facility is far from a distribution center, the firm reacts less aggressively to war.
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, companies are relying more heavily than ever on data analytics and business intelligence applications to weather the storm. Led by Professor Juan Serpa, a student-run initiative called COVID-QC is providing approximate real-time information about infection, death, and recovery numbers in Quebec to help leaders make more strategic, data-informed decisions.
McGill University has awarded Professor Juan Serpa with MI4 Emergency COVID-19 Research Funding to monitor COVID-19’s impact on business in Canada and across the world. Titled Quebec Data Central for Impact of Covid-19 on Society and Business and for a Post-Pandemic World, the one-year project aims to support businesses, researchers and policymakers in making informed decisions in the post-COVID era.
Under the supervision of Professors Juan Serpa and Mehmet Gumus, a team of McGill Desautels students have partnered with students from the Faculty of Engineering to develop a dashboard that tracks COVID-19 cases in Montreal and Quebec.
Updated daily, the new COVID QC website provides detailed information about the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in each Montreal neighbourhood, and throughout the province of Quebec.
Two of Canada’s most storied universities have joined forces to apply cutting-edge technology to the legal profession.
The Queen’s University Faculty of Law and the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University have partnered to advance the work of the Conflict Analytics Lab, a research lab that will widen access to justice using technology.
Holding someone accountable is no simple undertaking. Oversight is a necessary part of doing business but it’s cumbersome, requires resources, and is riddled with paperwork.
While there may not be a single, all-encompassing technique to make scrutiny less cumbersome, McGill University’s Juan Serpa and co-authors find that companies and government agencies can make simple adjustments to improve the efficiency of their checks and balances. The key is to be flexible and open to innovation.
Congratulations to the Desautels professors who received 2019 SSHRC Grants.
SSHRC Insight Development Grants
