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Message From the President
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D
ear OR Division Members,
While we patiently wait until October for our rescheduled IISE Annual Conference, I wanted to share with you ahead of time the results of two of our division's competitions. In this newsletter you will find the results of our Teaching Excellence Award as well as the Undergraduate Student Research Dissemination Award. Many thanks go out to Thomas Sharkey for coordinating the awards and the fleet of volunteer judges that made these awards possible including Yongjia Song, Sharan Srinivas, Esra Buyuktahtakan Toy, Lizhi Wang, Russel King and Baski Balasundaram.
May typically marks the changing of the guard for the OR Division. This year we say goodbye to Ambarish Acharya who has held a director position for the past two years, providing a solid voice from industry for our group. Many thanks also go out to Guiping Hu who is concluding her director role this May as well. Results of our elections for this coming year can also be found in this newsletter.
Finally, earlier this spring we sent out a survey regarding your use of OR related tools and software. We wanted to understand if there were differences between academia and industry use. Those survey results can be found in this newsletter as well.
I hope everyone remains healthy and safe this summer. I look forward to seeing you all again in the fall.
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Applied Ergonomics Conference 2020 Goes Virtual
Due to the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19), the 2020 Applied Ergonomics Conference scheduled for March 16-19 at the Kentucky International Convention Center was postponed.
The IISE Conference management team has concluded that the conference will be reformatted as a virtual event, August 4 - 6, 2020.
Registrants to this year's conference will:
- Be able to access the virtual 2020 AEC conference at no extra cost;
- Be automatically registered for the 2021 conference at no extra cost;
- Earn CEUs for professional development; and
- Have access to presentations and exhibitors.
Registrants to the March 2020 conference will:
- Be able to access the 2020 AEC virtual event at no extra cost;
- Be automatically registered for the 2021 conference at no extra cost;
- Earn CEUs for professional development; and
- Have access to presentations and exhibitors.
IISE will continue to keep AEC registrants informed and you can learn more here.
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Election Results
Congratulations to President Elect Guiping Hu and our 2 new board Directors Lei Fan and Sharan Srinivas !
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Guiping Hu
is an Associate Professor in the department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Iowa State University. She received her MS and PhD degrees from University of Pittsburgh. Her
research interests include mathematical modeling and data analytics with applications in supply chain design, decision support systems, energy systems analysis, and sustainable agriculture. She has published over 60 journal papers and her research has been supported by NSF, DOE, USDA, and DOD.
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Dr. Lei Fan is an assistant professor in the Engineering Technology Department at the University of Houston. Before this position, he worked in electricity energy industry for several years. He received his Ph.D in operations research from Industrial and System Engineering Department at the University of Florida. His research includes optimization methods, complex system operations, power system operations and planning.
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Sharan Srinivas is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering and the Department of Marketing at the University of Missouri.
He is also a visiting faculty at the University of Passau, Germany. Dr. Srinivas received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Pennsylvania State University. His area of specialization is data analytics and operations research with research interests in healthcare operations management, logistics, smart service systems, and supply chain. He has been an investigator on a range of industry-based research projects.
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2020 Teaching Award Winner -
Ramteen Sioshansi
IISE Operations Research Division recognizes Dr. Ramteen Sioshansi from the Integrated Systems Engineering (ISE) Department at The Ohio State University with the division's
2020 A
ward for Excellence in the Teaching of Operations Research. He was nominated by Professor and Chair of the ISE Department, Dr. Farhang Pourboghrat for the course
ISE 3210--Nonlinear and Dynamic Optimization. Dr. Pourboghrat writes in his nomination that "an important philosophy that guides his teaching of ISE 3210 is to teach students to think about problems methodically. Even if some students pursue careers that do not involve heavy use of optimization, the rigors and logic that must be applied to advanced optimization help them with tackling other types of complex problems in their careers." He goes on to say that Dr. Sioshansi developed this rigorous course to meet the needs of students facing complex optimization challenges in their capstone course projects. Dr. Sioshansi developed the textbook
"Optimization in Engineering: Models and Algorithms" (Springer, 2017) with his colleague Dr. Conejo, which was designed to introduce this advanced topic in a manner that is accessible to the general engineering undergraduate audience.
A student who took this course notes in their support letter that "not only does the course effectively teach nonlinear programming at an undergraduate level, but it also effectively helps to develop critical thinking, something very difficult to teach in a classroom setting." They go on to highlight the impact the course assignments had by saying that "each assignment was a realistic application of nonlinear programming that involved a great deal of independent thinking and no single correct way to approach the problem."
Another student who took this course in 2019 highlights in their letter of support, a recurring theme the selection committee recognized in Dr. Sioshansi's nomination. They say that "Dr. Sioshansi holds his students to extremely high standards, standards higher than any other instructor I've experienced because our work in the real world carries such large implications." Despite the initial anxieties, the student noted that "once the instruction commenced, my fellow classmates and I were amazed at the abilities we had within ourselves to conquer this rigorous curriculum, abilities that I credit Dr. Sioshansi and his instruction methods for guiding us to. The way that Dr. Sioshansi has assembled and instructs ISE 3210 is extremely conducive to learning and student success." This sentiment was frequently expressed by many students in their evaluations of this course and the instructor, which were consistently high.
The award committee commends Dr. Sioshansi for his outstanding contributions in developing and teaching this rigorous course in a highly effective and impactful manner to undergraduate engineering students at The Ohio State University.
Teaching Awards Committee: Lizhi Wang (Iowa State), Russell King (NC State), Katie McKonky (RIT), Baski Balasundaram (Oklahoma State).
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2020 Undergraduate Student Research Dissemination Award
It is our pleasure to announce the winner and the other finalists for the 2020 Undergraduate Student Research Dissemination Award.
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1st Place: Brady Collea for his work on "Efficient Algorithms for Unrelated Parallel Machine Scheduling Considering Time of Use Pricing and Demand Charges," Rochester Institute of Technology, Faculty Advisor: Katie McConky
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| Connie Feinberg |
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2nd Place:
Connie Feinberg (left) and Amrita Malur (right) for their work on "Modeling Spontaneous Volunteer Convergence using Agent-Based Simulation," North Carolina State University, Faculty Advisor: Maria Mayorga, Graduate Student Mentor: Kyle Paret.
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3rd Place:
Kalina Scarborough for her work on "Identifying a Minimal Set of Sensors to Predict Soil Moisture in Real-Time in Green Infrastructure," University of Tennessee, Faculty Advisors: Anahita Khojandi and Jon Hathaway.
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These finalists were identified through papers that were submitted to the OR track of the IISE Annual meeting and each finalist delivered a virtual presentation to a panel of judges on June 1, 2020. Overall, the presentations were excellent and clearly discussed the impact of the students' research, despite having to be delivered virtually.
The judging committee appreciated the innovations of Brady's work in modeling scheduling problems that consider varying energy costs and in interesting mutations and crossover operations in genetic algorithms. The committee was very impressed with the way Connie and Amrita were able to integrate social science concepts, such as the theory of planned behavior, into simulations for volunteer convergence. The committee was also impressed with Kalina's work on predictive methods to decrease the number of sensors necessary to monitor soil moisture, which will help to maintain green infrastructure.
Congratulations to all of our finalists!
2020 Undergraduate Student Research Dissemination Awards Committee: Thomas Sharkey (RPI), Esra Buyuktahtakin Toy (NJIT), Sharan Srinivas (University of Missouri), Yongjia Song (Clemson)
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Survey Results
Thank you for participating in the OR division survey and here are the top results.
#1 What type of membership do you have?
Academic membership top and Student 2nd.
#2 What Linear / Integer / Non Linear programming solver do you use?
Excel solver or Google and Cplex a close 2nd.
#3
What Linear / Integer / Non Linear modeling software do you use?
C++ / Java and a variety of others.
#4 What application area do you use Operations Research to solve problems?
Supply Chain followed by production.
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Annual Conference Program Updates for Fall
To All Those Planning to Attend the 2020 IISE Annual Conference:
With the health and welfare of our members and Conference attendees as our top priority during the COVID-19 pandemic, we rescheduled the Annual Conference & Expo to Oct. 31 - Nov. 3, 2020, in New Orleans at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans.
Click here to view the revised schedule and new registration dates. The early-bird discount deadline is now set for Sept. 13.
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Corporate and University Partnership Opportunities
Learn more
here
or contact
Doug Long
, IISE Global Director for Strategic Alliances for more details.
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