Clemson IE was well represented at the 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting with numerous students and faculty members attending the conference in Nashville, TN on November 13-16. The annual gathering of members of the operations research (OR) community provided the perfect platform for Clemson IE to showcase the breadth of research that students at Clemson University are conducting in the fields of transportation, supply chain and logistics, healthcare systems engineering, energy systems design and security, and production and manufacturing systems.
Post-doctoral researcher Dr. Eghbal Rashidi summed up his experience by saying “the INFORMS Annual Meeting is an excellent opportunity to meet operations researchers from all over the world.” An event this size, which has over 5,000 presentations, has something for everyone, including presenters in business, engineering, mathematics, and computer science industries. Dr. Rashidi points out that “first year PhD students looking for a research topic can find new hot topics and see new challenges the OR community is facing.” More senior researchers are able to network with their colleagues and exchange ideas at the forefront of their discipline. The OR community also benefits from professional development lectures that take place throughout the conference and from poster presentations on emerging topics in the field.
Presenters their presentation topics at the 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Nashville were as follows:
Zahra Azadi – “Two-stage Stochastic Programming for Vaccine Vial Replenishment”; Minority Issues Forum (MIF) poster competition honorable mention – “Stochastic Vaccine Vial Replenishment and Administration Optimization: A case study in Bangladesh”
Rob Curry – “Models and Algorithms for Maximum Proportional Flow Problems with Semicontinuous Restrictions”
Sreenath Chalil Madathil – “Modeling and Analysis of Remote, Off-grid Microgrids”
Dr. Sandra Eksioglu – “A Game Theoretic Model of Biomass Co-firing Policies”; Doctoral Student Colloquium panel speaker – “Panel: Work/Life Balance”
Amanda Farthing – “Cost Minimization and Fleet Sizing for Multifunction Electric Bus Fleets”
Farhad Hasankhani – “Modeling and Optimization for Organ Allocation and Donation Networks”
Dr. Tugce Isik – “Control Policies for Queueing Systems with Time-Sensitive Jobs”
Hadi Karimi – “On the Effectiveness of Tax Incentives to Support Biomass Cofiring”
Dr. Mary Beth Kurz – “Sequencing in Mixed Model Assembly Lines”
Leo Lozano – “A Backward Sampling Framework for Interdiction Problems with Fortification”
Mowen Lu – “Optimal Transmission Line Switching Under Geomagnetic Disturbances”
Josh Margolis – “Routing Problems for Unmanned Surface Vehicles with Limited Battery Life”
Dr. Eghbal Rashidi – “Vulnerability Analysis of the Initial Attack in Suppressing the Worst Case Wildfires”
Shasha Wang – “Two-stage Multi-agent Stochastic Optimization in Power Systems”
Site Wang – “A New Computational Method for Rolling-horizon Stochastic Optimization in Power Systems”
Ceyda Yaba – “Optimal Quarantining Policy for Ebola Epidemic”
Dr. Nazanin Zinouri – “Improving Healthcare Resource Management through Demand Prediction and Staff Scheduling”
