Passion and Purpose

Self-discipline is a big part of the life of an academic. This is why Vedat Verter recommends his graduate students follow their passion.

“It’s very abstract, but to me it is an important driver,” says the Professor & Stephen J.R. Smith Chair of Management Analytics. “If I’m not passionate about something, it’s very hard to maintain my discipline to work.”

For Verter, that passion lies in applying his expertise in operations management and data analytics within the public sector to improve the well-being of people and the planet.

While many of his colleagues in the management analytics group conduct research in revenue management, Verter says, “I’m just not great at helping someone make more money...”

Instead, he works with partners—in healthcare and waste management, for example—where profit is not the main objective.

“Yes, you would like to keep costs at a certain level because you cannot have a sustainable system while continuously losing money, but there’s a difference between not losing money and maximizing profit,” he explains.

A recent study by Verter and colleagues provides a prime example. They applied text mining techniques to clinical notes to predict the risk of re-hospitalization among outpatients with mental illness.

“Hospitalization is not good for anyone, meaning it’s not good for the patient and it’s not good for the system because of the costs associated,” Verter says, noting that the research sought to determine whether these clinical notes could be leveraged to identify a patient’s increased re-hospitalization risk and allow for earlier intervention.

“It turns out that there are certain phrases we have identified that visibly increase the hospitalization risk,” which psychiatrists can watch for and act on.

This work is part of a broader research agenda aimed at addressing unique and challenging problems within the healthcare system. His research also examines the effective use of remote patient monitoring technologies in hospital settings and explores how AI can enhance human care by replacing in-person triage with an AI-assisted approach. At a recent Queen’s University MicroSummit event in Vancouver, Verter shared compelling data showing how the multi-disciplinary team he works with helped reduce patient wait times from 14 months to 8.5 months.

In a different area of focus, Verter is collaborating with the City of Kingston, Utilities Kingston, and colleagues from the business school and Smith Engineering at Queen’s University to design an integrated organic waste management system. By co-digesting wastewater sludge and organic waste, such systems collect and utilize the methane gas produced in the process as a renewable natural gas resource.

“You create a closed loop, where you reduce the landfill waste, but you also take the useful component parts from the organic waste and give it back for reuse in society,” he explains.

Verter and his collaborators are now contributing to the ongoing debate around centralized versus decentralized approaches to waste management, offering evidence that a decentralized model may offer greater financial and operational viability.

“I’ve done work on electronic waste management before, but this is very different. This is a learning process for me and it’s something I’m excited about,” Verter says.

Helping Verter to stretch himself and explore new and novel areas of inquiry is his appointment as a Smith Chair, which includes a teaching release that enables him to allocate more time to research.

“The biggest constraint in an academic’s life is time. We can find research money, but we can’t generate more time in a day,” he explains. “Be it conducting experiments or meeting and training students, it has a huge impact on eventual output.”

Verter’s contributions have not gone unnoticed. In June 2025, he received the Canadian Operations Research Society (CORS) Award of Merit, and in November 2024, he was recognized with the Research Leadership Award from Smith School of Business.

Established through Stephen Smith’s $50-million gift to Queen’s University in 2015, the Stephen J.R. Smith Chairs recognize and financially support high-quality research being conducted at the business school.