Research

Olumurejiwa (Mureji) Fatunde is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Operations Management and Statistics research group within the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, where she is advised by Professor Gonzalo Romero.

Through her research, she studies how companies and consumers make decisions. Her research interests include informal supply chains, behavioral operations, and the application of natural language processing and other machine learning methods to operations challenges. Her work leverages methods from diverse fields including operations research, statistics, computer science, and economics. She aims to use her academic work to inform the development of new products and tools to help companies, governments, and other organizations—especially those in emerging markets—improve their performance in order to better serve customers and society.

Mureji received a PhD in Operations Management & Decision Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022 under the supervision of Professor Joann de Zegher. In the past, she has worked on initiatives related to improving public health supply chains in West Africa. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Harvard University and an MSc in International Health Policy (Health Economics) from the London School of Economics.

Journal publications & working papers

The Value of Long-term Relationships when Selling to Informal Retailers - Evidence from India
Attempts to distribute durable, life-improving goods to customers at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) – the more than three billion customers who live on less than

The Impact of Interpersonal Relationships and Incentive Structures on the Performance of Actors in Informal Supply Chains, with Andre Calmon, Joann de Zegher, and Gonzalo Romero.

-Selected as runner-up for the 2021 POMS College of Sustainable Operations Student Paper Award

In-progress research

The impact of evaluating users based on performance streaks in crowdsourcing contests for skilled microtasks, with Joann de Zegher.

Competitive uncertainty vs earnings uncertainty: the impact of endogenous prizes on participation and performance in crowdsourcing contests, with Joann de Zegher.

Assortment optimization of crowdsourcing contests for medical knowledge based on revealed participant motivation, with Gonzalo Romero.