Using AI to Co-Develop New Products and the Future of Flavor Innovation

Each year, more than 30,000 new consumer products are launched. An estimated 80% fail. What’s an operations research scientist to do? In this seminar, Dr. Lougee will present a novel AI system designed to aid human product developers to be more efficient and effective.  The talk is based on a multi-year research collaboration between McCormick & Company and IBM Research. McCormick is the first food and flavor company to use AI for product development. Its first AI-enabled retail products were launched in 2019.

Dr. Robin Lougee is a member of the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the former Global Research Industry Lead for Consumer at IBM Research. Robin is known for her service to the INFORMS community and spearheading new initiatives that benefit industry and academia. She is a founder of COIN-OR, the open-source initiative for Operations Research software, the INFORMS Professional Colloquium (now Early Career Practitioner Network), and the Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics.