Cathy Zheng, Chen Zhang, David Louton, and Hakan Saraoglu

Focusing primarily on the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) phenomenon, this multidisciplinary talk will feature a discussion on the potential benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration in making better decisions. Presenters will propose that proper frameworks for solving multi-criteria decision problems require multidisciplinary collaboration. They will illustrate methods that are extensively used to structure complex decision problems and have been applied to a variety of problems in a diverse set of disciplines, such as selecting a project, selecting a life insurance contract, selecting public relations firms, deciding on library acquisitions, hostage negotiations, selecting sites for wildlife management, and selecting a nonprofit for donation. The talk is intended to stimulate thinking on the implications for students, faculty, and administrators of data science and artificial intelligence in helping make better decisions. It will include examples from two research projects at Bryant: one that proposes a framework for decision-making in ESG investing and another that explores the use of robot assistants in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM).