Seminar by Jong-Shi Peng, Professor, Dept. Chair, UIUC
November 25, 2008 at 4:00 PM — Tech, M228
On Linear Programs with Linear Complementarity Constraints Jong-Shi Pang University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Abstract: In this talk, we will explain the fundamental importance of the class of linear programs with linear complementarity constraints (LPCCs) in disjunctive and hierarchical programming as well as in some novel paradigms of mathematical programming. In addition to providing a unified framework for bilevel and inverse linear optimization, nonconvex piecewise linear programming, indefinite quadratic programs, quantile minimization, and lo minimization, the LPCC provides a gateway to a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints, which itself is an important class of constrained optimization problems that has broad applications. We describe a logical Benders approach for the global resolution of problems the LPCC that can be applied to infeasible or unbounded. Bio: Jong-Shi Pang joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as the Caterpillar Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering in August 2007. Prior to this, he held the position of the Margaret A. Darrin Distinguished Professor in Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and was a Professor of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2003 to 2007. He was a Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University from 1987 to 2003, an Associate Professor and then Professor in the School of Management from 1982 to 1987 at the University of Texas at Dallas, and an Assistant and then an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon University from 1977 to 1982. Professor Pang was a winner of the 2003 George B. Dantzig Prize awarded jointly by the Mathematical Programming Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics for his work on finite-dimensional variational inequalities, and a co-winner of the 1994 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize awarded by the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. Two of his publications have received best paper awards. He isan ISI Highly Cited Researcher in the Mathematics Category between 1980--1999; he has published 3 widely cited monographs and more than 100 scholarly journals in top peer reviewed journals. Tuesday, November 25, 2008 M228 Tech 4:00 p.m. Refreshments Served 3:00 p.m. C211
IEMS Seminar: On Supply Risk and Asymmetric Information
January 13, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Zhibin (Ben) Yang, Dept. of Industrial and Operations Engineering University of Michigan Abstract:This research addresses the important problem of a manufacturer managing supply disruption risks under asymmetric information about suppliers' probabilities of disruption. This research is among the first in the supply chain risk management literature to study the ramifications of asymmetric information about supply risk. The talk consists of two papers.In the first paper, we model a supply chain of one manufacturer and one supplier, where the supplier's reliability is either high or low and is the supplier's private information. Upon disruption, the supplier chooses between paying a penalty to the manufacturer for the shortfall and exercising its backup production option to fill the manufacturer's order. Using a game-theoretic approach (mechanism design theory), we derived the optimal procurement actions of the manufacturer. We found that asymmetric information about the supplier's reliability may cause the manufacturer to stop using backup production with the less reliable supplier type, making the backup production option less valuable when it is moderately expensive. However, information can also be a substitute for the backup production option. Surprisingly, even as the probability of drawing a more reliable supplier increases, the value of backup production may increase under asymmetric information. In addition, higher reliability need not be a substitute for better information.In the second paper, we examined the manufacturer's strategic use of a dual-sourcing option. We found that asymmetric information makes diversification more expensive and pushes the manufacturer towards sole-sourcing to leverage supplier competition. Consequently, information becomes more valuable for the manufacturer when the underlying business environment changes in ways that encourage diversification, such as higher revenue and lower correlation between suppliers' disruptions. Surprisingly, the additional cost imposed on diversification by asymmetric information may cause the manufacturer to cease diversifying even as the supply base reliability erodes.
Books & Bottles: Balancing Career & Family in the Sciences
January 15, 2009 at 3:30 PM — C211 (Reception), M228 (Talk) Technological Instit
Books & Bottles: Balancing Career & Family Thursday, January 15, 2009 Bruce Ankenman, Northwestern University Reception is at 3:30pm in Tech, C211 with talk to follow at 4:00pm in Tech, M228. The workshop aims to provide students with an understanding of the intersection of career and family life. What are the difficulties of being a parent and a student? How can students meet the challenges of both worlds with the goal of not making them mutually exclusive. Register at http://studentlife.iems.northwestern.edu/third_thursday.html. Registration opens ten days prior to the event.
IEMS Seminar: Optimal Path Finding for Direction, Location and Time Dependent Costs...
January 27, 2009 at 4:00 PM —
Optimal Path Finding for Direction, Location and Time Dependent Costs, with Application to Vessel, UAV and Robot Routing Irina Dolinskaya Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering University of Michigan Abstract: Real-time determination of an optimal path in a changing medium (such as winds and ocean waves) requires explicit incorporation of this cost function location- and time- dependency into the model. Furthermore, the direction-dependency of a cost function adds another layer of difficulty to the problem at hand. In this talk, we present methods to efficiently incorporate the complex structure of the cost function into the path planning process. We also integrate the system's operability and dynamics constrains in the optimization model, hence combining traditionally separated optimal-path finding and path-following stages of problem solving. An application to ship routing is introduced throughout the talk to motivate this research.
First Year Brownbag: Jorge Nocedal
February 3, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Join us each week as IEMS Faculty present on their current research. This week it is Prof. Jorge Nocedal
IEMS Seminar: Optimal Market-Making with Risk Aversion
February 3, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Optimal Market-Making with Risk Aversion Miao Song Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract: Market-makers have the obligation to trade fixed amounts of securities at quoted bid or ask prices, and their inventories are exposed to the potential loss when the market price moves in an undesirable direction. One approach to reduce the risk associated with price uncertainty is to adjust the inventory at the price of losing potential spread gain. For a single-security model, we show that a threshold inventory control policy is optimal with respect to an exponential utility criterion, and more general results are obtained for mean-variance analysis. The mean-various analysis for a multiple-security model suggests that there exists a connected no-trade region and that the optimal strategy can be obtained from the no-trade region.
IIE Winter Dinner
February 4, 2009 at 5:00 PM — Cohen Commons, 4th Floor Technological Instit
Psst. Psssst. Hey. Hey, buddy. Yeah, you. You look like somebody who could use an IE Event. Well, we got one here for you. A real nice one. Cheap, too. Whaddya say?IIE Winter DinnerWednesday, February 4th5:00 PMCohen Commons (4th floor of Tech)-Free dinner for all IE majors-Hear about the cool new things coming to IE this year-Sign up to be a member of IIE (Institute of Industrial Engineers): free if you have above 3.5See attached flyer for more details...See you there!The IIE Board
First Year Brownbag: Recruiting Weekend
February 10, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Join us each week as IEMS Faculty present on their current research. This week will have no faculty presenter but graduate students will be finalizing recruiting weekend. This is not open to the public.
IEMS Seminar: Optimal Multiple Listing Strategies for Liver Transplant Patients
February 10, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Tech
Optimal Multiple Listing Strategies for Liver Transplant Patients Lisa Maillart Industrial Engineering Department University of Pittsburgh Abstract:End-stage liver disease patients must join at least one local waiting list to be eligible to receive cadaveric liver offers, each of which is evaluated and either accepted or declined. We analyze a patient's option to join several local waiting lists, a practice referred to as "multiple listing." More specifically, we determine where a patient should list to maximize total life expectancy under certain constraints. We model the organ accept/decline decision as a continuous time Markov decision process, and the upstream listing decision as an integer program. We parameterize the model using clinical data and present insightful numerical examples.
IEMS Seminar: Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment
February 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment Yongpei Guan University of Oklahoma Abstract:In this talk, we present efficient policies for inventory management problems under two types of uncertainties. For the first case, the uncertainty comes from different possible realizations of problem parameters in the future, such as customer demands, inventory capacities, and costs. In our study, these parameters are also dependent on each other throughout the finite planning horizon and the underlying stochastic process does not have Markovian properties. We develop scenario tree based stochastic optimization models to formulate different inventory control problems. We also study a dynamic programming recursion framework that allows us to show that the optimal value functions for the problems are piecewise linear and continuous, which we can further use to define polynomial time algorithms. For the second case, the uncertain information is on inventory records, which may also be referred as implied uncertainty. The inventory records are inaccurate due to theft and impropriate operations in the warehouse. For this case, we study a policy, based primarily on operational rather than financial considerations, to decide the best time to count each location/SKU and offer a sequence to count locations/SKUs when workforce is limited. Simulation results indicate that our proposed policy leads to fewer stock outs with less counting workload, compared with a traditional counting method.Bio:Dr. Yongpei Guan is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He received his dual B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Economic Decision Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1998, his M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2001, and his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005.
IEMS Seminar: Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment
February 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment Yongpei Guan University of Oklahoma Abstract:In this talk, we present efficient policies for inventory management problems under two types of uncertainties. For the first case, the uncertainty comes from different possible realizations of problem parameters in the future, such as customer demands, inventory capacities, and costs. In our study, these parameters are also dependent on each other throughout the finite planning horizon and the underlying stochastic process does not have Markovian properties. We develop scenario tree based stochastic optimization models to formulate different inventory control problems. We also study a dynamic programming recursion framework that allows us to show that the optimal value functions for the problems are piecewise linear and continuous, which we can further use to define polynomial time algorithms. For the second case, the uncertain information is on inventory records, which may also be referred as implied uncertainty. The inventory records are inaccurate due to theft and impropriate operations in the warehouse. For this case, we study a policy, based primarily on operational rather than financial considerations, to decide the best time to count each location/SKU and offer a sequence to count locations/SKUs when workforce is limited. Simulation results indicate that our proposed policy leads to fewer stock outs with less counting workload, compared with a traditional counting method.Bio:Dr. Yongpei Guan is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He received his dual B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Economic Decision Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1998, his M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2001, and his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005.
Office of Student Life - The Real World: Academia to Industry (ROOM CHANGE)
February 19, 2009 at 3:30 PM — Reception in Tech, C211 Talk in Room 1-412 Francis
Thursday, February 19, 2009 Justin Boesel,MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) Reception is at 3:30pm in Tech, C211 with talk to follow at 4:00pm in Francis Searle, 1-412. PLEASE NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE Students will be shown how their educational skills can be used to enhance their future careers whether they be inside academia or in industry. IEs at Northwestern are highly skilled in mathematical processes and theory and this session aims to show them how these skills are practically applicable to their futures. Register at: http://studentlife.iems.northwestern.edu/third_thursday.html. Dr. Justin Boesel is a Lead Simulation and Modeling Engineer for the MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD). Prior to working in aviation safety at CAASD, he worked on airspace design and evaluation projects. He started his work with MITRE in 1999 after receiving his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences from Northwestern University. His dissertation, "Search and Selection for Large-Scale Stochastic Optimization," done under the supervision of Prof. Barry Nelson, won the 1999 George B. Dantzig Award for Best Dissertation from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He received a BA in History from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1990, graduating Summa cum Laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
IEMS Seminar: A Price-Dependent Demand Substitution Rule and Its Applications
February 19, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments at 3:30 p.m. in C210 Technolog
A Price-dependent Demand Substitution Rule and Its Applications Dr. Ye Lu Operations Research Center Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract: In a multi-product market, if one product stocks out, consumers may substitute to competing products. In this research, we apply an axiomatic approach to characterize a price-dependent demand substitution rule, and provide a sufficient and necessary condition for demand models where our demand substitution rule applies. Our results can serve as a link between the pricing and inventory literature, and enable the study of joint pricing and inventory coordination as well as retail competition.
First Year Brownbag: Gordon Hazen
February 24, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Join us each week as IEMS Faculty present on their current research. This week is Prof. Gordon Hazen
IEMS Seminar: Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment
February 24, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M Technological Instit
Inventory Control and Accuracy Management under Uncertain Environment Yongpei Guan University of Oklahoma Abstract:In this talk, we present efficient policies for inventory management problems under two types of uncertainties. For the first case, the uncertainty comes from different possible realizations of problem parameters in the future, such as customer demands, inventory capacities, and costs. In our study, these parameters are also dependent on each other throughout the finite planning horizon and the underlying stochastic process does not have Markovian properties. We develop scenario tree based stochastic optimization models to formulate different inventory control problems. We also study a dynamic programming recursion framework that allows us to show that the optimal value functions for the problems are piecewise linear and continuous, which we can further use to define polynomial time algorithms. For the second case, the uncertain information is on inventory records, which may also be referred as implied uncertainty. The inventory records are inaccurate due to theft and impropriate operations in the warehouse. For this case, we study a policy, based primarily on operational rather than financial considerations, to decide the best time to count each location/SKU and offer a sequence to count locations/SKUs when workforce is limited. Simulation results indicate that our proposed policy leads to fewer stock outs with less counting workload, compared with a traditional counting method.Bio:Dr. Yongpei Guan is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. He received his dual B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Economic Decision Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1998, his M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2001, and his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005.
Containment vs Coverage: Flexible Network Design in the Presence of Random Disruptions
February 26, 2009 at 4:00 PM — Transportation Center - Lower Level Chambers Hall
Transportation Center Seminar Series presents..... Michael Lim PhD Candidate, Department of Industrial EngineeringAnd Management Science, Northwestern University; Transportation Center Dissertation Year FellowContainment vs Coverage: Flexible NetworkDesign in the Presence of Random DisruptionsThursday, Feb. 26, 20094:00 - 5:00 pmRefreshments available at 3:30 pm Location:Transportation Center -Lower levelNorthwestern UniversityChambers Hall - 600 FosterEvanston, IL Abstract:We extend the concept of chaining introduced by Jordan and Graves (1995) for designing a robust supply chain network in which the link and nodes are susceptible to disruptions. We introduce the concept of fragility to quantify the change in system performance resulting from a disruption. Although one may anticipate that networks with longer chains will be more robust (will have smaller fragility) than shorter ones, our study reveals that this is not always true. We show that the fragility with respect to a single link failure decreases as the size of the chain decreases; however, the fragility with respect to a single node failure decreases as the size of the chain increases. We also show that multiple failures in a network can be decomposed into a set of multiple subnetworks with a single failure; hence we can analyze the impact of large-scale disruptions by studying each singlefailure subnetworks. Simulation experiments are used to extend insights from single link or node failures to multiple failure cases. Bio:I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences. I am interested in the applications of optimization and stochastic models to thedesign of production, service operations and supply chain systems. Before coming to Northwestern, I briefly worked for IBM as an IT consultant establishing business continuity/recovery plans for companies in auto/financial sectors.
Office of Student Life - Web Training: Building a Professional Portfolio
February 26, 2009 at 4:00 PM — MG47 Technological Instit
Looking for a job or internship? Do you just want to know how to build a website? Check out the web training to learn important skills and techniques when it comes to marketing yourself. Open to current graduate students and junior/senior undergrads. February 26th at 4pm in MG47 (Note the Room Change)May 7th at 4pm in MG51
Office of Student Life - Web Training: Building a Professional Portfolio
March 5, 2009 at 4:00 PM — MG47 Technological Instit
Looking for a job or internship? Do you just want to know how to build a website? Check out the web training to learn important skills and techniques when it comes to marketing yourself. Open to current graduate students and junior/senior undergrads. Also an event on May 7th at 4pm in MG51
Info Weekend 2009
March 19, 2009 at 8:00 PM — Technological Instit
Selected applicants are given the opportunity to learn more about our program through the Graduate Info Weekend. During this event, students have the opportunity to meet our faculty and current graduate students as well as other stellar applicants. The weekend's program will provide descriptions of our research and of the culture and lifestyle of our department. It will also be an opportunity to tour the campus and explore the Evanston community and the City of Chicago through the various planned activities. The Info Weekend for applicants for the 2009-2010 academic year will be held on March 19-21st. This is a Thursday through Saturday. Applicants arrive Thursday afternoon and depart Saturday evening. We ask that applicants plan ahead for this but keep in mind, this weekend is by invitation only. You cannot attend if you are not invited by the department so please do not inquire about attendance. Attendance at the event is by invitation only. Please do not contact us if you do not receive an invitation.
Info Weekend 2009
March 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM — Technological Instit
Selected applicants are given the opportunity to learn more about our program through the Graduate Info Weekend. During this event, students have the opportunity to meet our faculty and current graduate students as well as other stellar applicants. The weekend's program will provide descriptions of our research and of the culture and lifestyle of our department. It will also be an opportunity to tour the campus and explore the Evanston community and the City of Chicago through the various planned activities. The Info Weekend for applicants for the 2009-2010 academic year will be held on March 19-21st. This is a Thursday through Saturday. Applicants arrive Thursday afternoon and depart Saturday evening. We ask that applicants plan ahead for this but keep in mind, this weekend is by invitation only. You cannot attend if you are not invited by the department so please do not inquire about attendance. Attendance at the event is by invitation only. Please do not contact us if you do not receive an invitation.
Info Weekend 2009
March 21, 2009 at 8:00 AM — Technological Instit
Selected applicants are given the opportunity to learn more about our program through the Graduate Info Weekend. During this event, students have the opportunity to meet our faculty and current graduate students as well as other stellar applicants. The weekend's program will provide descriptions of our research and of the culture and lifestyle of our department. It will also be an opportunity to tour the campus and explore the Evanston community and the City of Chicago through the various planned activities. The Info Weekend for applicants for the 2009-2010 academic year will be held on March 19-21st. This is a Thursday through Saturday. Applicants arrive Thursday afternoon and depart Saturday evening. We ask that applicants plan ahead for this but keep in mind, this weekend is by invitation only. You cannot attend if you are not invited by the department so please do not inquire about attendance. Attendance at the event is by invitation only. Please do not contact us if you do not receive an invitation.
IEMS Seminar: Optimizing Breast Biopsy Decision Making in Cancer Screening
April 7, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments at 3:30 p.m. in C211 Technolog
Optimizing Breast Biopsy Decision Making in Cancer Screening Oguzhan Alagoz Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems EngineeringUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonAbstract:Early diagnosis through screening mammography is the most effective means of decreasing the death rate from breast cancer. While mammography is inexpensive, the interventional procedures that result from detected abnormalities (both false and true positives) increase the cost of this population-based screening program significantly. In fact, breast biopsy actually delivers a benign result in over 80% of cases making it the most costly per capita component of a breast cancer screening program. If a mammogram reports a suspicious finding, then a biopsy is required to decide whether an abnormality is in fact a breast cancer. Our previous research has developed several computer models that calculate the risk of breast cancer based on demographic risk factors and mammography findings. The objective of this research is to optimize the biopsy decisions for breast-cancer patients such that the early diagnosis of invasive breast cancer is improved while unnecessary procedures are minimized. We develop a discrete-time finite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) model to find the optimal probability thresholds for the decision to perform breast biopsy for patients with different age groups. We perform a structural analysis of this MDP. Our computational experiments use clinical data, and show that these optimal probability thresholds change with patient age. In particular, our optimal policies suggest that as women get older they should be biopsied less aggressively. We compare our model to clinical practice and find that our model has a potential to improve breast cancer diagnosis significantly. Bio: Oguzhan Alagoz is currently an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2004. His research interests include medical decision making, completely and partially observable Markov decision processes, discrete-event system simulation, and scheduling. His works have appeared in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Medical Decision Making, Radiology, American Journal of Roentgenology, IIE Transactions, and European Journal of Operational Research. His research is funded by NSF and the National Cancer Institute of NIH.
IEMS Seminar: Quality Snags in the Mortgage-Finance Supply Chain
April 14, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments 3:30 C211 Technological Instit
Quality Snags in the Mortgage-Finance Supply Chain Dr. Paul Zipkin Duke University Abstract: This essay views the current financial crisis through the lens of quality management. The crisis represents a failure of quality, and solving it will require, among other things, careful management of quality in financial institutions and across financial supply chains. This will be difficult for several reasons, but not impossible. I offer several recommendations, partly inspired by successful quality practices in industry. Bio: Paul Zipkin is the R. J. Reynolds Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. His academic degrees come from Reed, Berkeley, and Yale. His teaching, research, and consulting focus on how supply chains work and how to make them work better, and their strategic roles in the success or failure of companies in the global marketplace. Within this broad theme, his work is concerned with issues of inventory management in supplier-customer relations; the impact of new production and communications technologies on supply-chain performance; coping with product variety at both the operational and strategic levels; and the design of logistics networks. He has published some 60 articles in scholarly journals and co-edited the book, Logistics of Production and Inventory. He is the author of the book, Foundations of Inventory Management. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and often advises companies, government agencies, and other organizations. He is a Fellow of INFORMS and the Manufacturing & Services Operations Management Society.
Office of Student Life - Becoming the Person They Can't Start the Meeting Without (Bill White)
April 16, 2009 at 3:30 PM — L361 Technological Instit
Becoming the Person They Can't Start the Meeting Without Registration required at http://studentlife.iems.northwestern.edu/third_thursday.html Thursday, April 16, 20093:30pm, Tech L361Reception (3:30pm) to precede the talk (4:00pm). Prof. Bill White, Northwestern University This seminar provides a background of leadership principles and tools for students to assess their leadership strengths and development opportunities. Many want to become leaders in industry and academia and this session will help to: Build and maintain work teams, resolve conflicts, and learn which leadership styles fits different people. This event is part of the new IEMS Office of Student Life's Professional Development Series. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228TLPDKZWH
IEMS Seminar: Design and Implementation of Late-Stage Adaptive Trials: Experiences of an Industry C
April 17, 2009 at 2:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Design and Implementation of Late-Stage Adaptive Trials: Experiences of an Industry Consultant Cyrus R. Mehta Ph.D. President, Cytel Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard University Abstract: Sound statistical principles combined with careful planning of the logistical details are essential for successful implementation of an adaptive clinical trial. In this presentation I will share my experience as a consultant involved in several late stage adaptive designs. Topics that I will cover include sample size re-estimation, population enrichment and seamless phase II/III design. Each topic will be illustrated with a real case study. The crucial role of simulation will be highlighted. Regulatory experiences will be discussed. Bio: Cyrus Mehta was born in Bombay, India. He studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and obtained his Ph.D. from MIT in 1973. Dr. Mehta is President and co-founder of Cytel Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard University. Cytel is a leading provider of software and services for the design, interim monitoring and implementation of adaptive clinical trials. Dr. Mehta consults extensively with the biopharmaceutical industry on group sequential and adaptive design, offers workshops on these topics, and sits on several data monitoring committees for these types of clinical trials. He has led the development of the StatXact, LogXact and East software packages that are widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry and at academic research centers. He publishes his methodological research results in leading statistics journals and is a past co-winner of the George W. Snedecor Award from the American Statistical Association for the best paper in biometry. He was elected a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1995 and named the Mosteller Statistician of the Year by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Statistical Association in 2000. In 2002, Dr. Mehta was named Outstanding Zoroastrian Entrepreneur by the World Zoroastrian Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Mehta is the Zoroastrian Chaplain at Harvard and MIT.
IEMS Seminar: Spectrum Management based on Competitive Economy Equilibrium
April 21, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments at 3:30 in C211 Technological In
Spectrum Management based on Competitive Economy Equilibrium Dr. Yinyu Ye Stanford university Abstract:Consider a competitive ``spectrum economy'' in communication system where multiple users share a common frequency band and each of them, equipped with an endowed ``monetary'' budget, will ``purchase'' its own transmit power spectra (taking others as given) in maximizing its Shannon utility or pay-off function that includes the effects of interference and subjects to its budget constraint. A market equilibrium is a price spectra and a frequency power allocation that independently and simultaneously maximizes each user's utility. Furthermore, under equilibrium the market clears, meaning that the total power demand equals the power supply for every user and every frequency. We prove that such an equilibrium always exists for the problem, and, under a weak-interference condition, the equilibrium can be computed in polynomial time. This model may lead to an efficient mechanism and a decentralized method for spectrum allocation and optimization in achieving both higher social utilization and better individual satisfaction.Bio: Yinyu Ye received the B.S. degree in System Engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford. Currently, he is a full Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Institute of Computational and Mathematical Engineering and the Director of the MS&E Industrial Affiliates Program, Stanford University. His current research interests include Continuous and Discrete Optimization, Mathematical Programming, Algorithm Design and Analysis, Computational Game/Market Equilibrium, Metric Distance Geometry, Graph Realization, Dynamic Resource Allocation, and Stochastic and Robust Decision Making, etc.
IEMS Seminar: The Impact of Size and Occupancy of Hospital on the Extent of Ambulance Diversion: Th
April 21, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments 3:30 C211 Technological Instit
The Impact of Size and Occupancy of Hospital on the Extent of Ambulance Diversion: Theory and Evidence Sarang Deo Northwestern University Abstract:In recent years, growth in the demand for emergency medical services along with decline in the number of hospitals with emergency departments (EDs) has raised concerns about the ability of the EDs to provide adequate service. Many EDs frequently report periods of overcrowding during which they are forced to divert incoming ambulances to neighboring hospitals, a phenomenon known as ambulance diversion. This paper aims to study the impact of key structural characteristics of the hospitals such as the number of ED beds, the number of inpatient beds, and the utilization of inpatient beds on the extent to which hospitals go on ambulance diversion. We first develop a simple queuing network model to describe the patient flow between the ED and the inpatient department and analyze this model using heavy traffic approximation. We show that, for a pre-specified delay probability, the fraction of time that the ED goes on diversion is decreasing in the spare capacity of the inpatient department and in the size of the ED, where both are appropriately normalized for the size of the inpatient department. We then test these findings by estimating a selection model using publicly available cross-sectional data on California hospitals and find moderate support for our theoretical findings. We also find evidence that certain hospitals, owing to their location and ownership structure, are more likely to choose ambulance diversion to mitigate overcrowding than others. Bio:Sarang Deo joined Kellogg School of Management in 2007 after completing his PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management. His primary research interest is application of operations management methods to design efficient and effective healthcare delivery systems. His current work focuses on issues in resource-poor countries (developing models for HIV treatment scale-up, studying the impact of patient load on quality of care) as well as the US (joint planning of HIV screening and treatment at the Veterans Administration, theoretical and empirical investigation into the causes of ambulance diversion).
IEMS Seminar: The Impact of Size and Occupancy of Hospital on the Extent of Ambulance Diversion: Th
April 28, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments 3:30 C211 Technological Instit
The Impact of Size and Occupancy of Hospital on the Extent of Ambulance Diversion: Theory and Evidence Sarang Deo Northwestern University Abstract:In recent years, growth in the demand for emergency medical services along with decline in the number of hospitals with emergency departments (EDs) has raised concerns about the ability of the EDs to provide adequate service. Many EDs frequently report periods of overcrowding during which they are forced to divert incoming ambulances to neighboring hospitals, a phenomenon known as ambulance diversion. This paper aims to study the impact of key structural characteristics of the hospitals such as the number of ED beds, the number of inpatient beds, and the utilization of inpatient beds on the extent to which hospitals go on ambulance diversion. We first develop a simple queuing network model to describe the patient flow between the ED and the inpatient department and analyze this model using heavy traffic approximation. We show that, for a pre-specified delay probability, the fraction of time that the ED goes on diversion is decreasing in the spare capacity of the inpatient department and in the size of the ED, where both are appropriately normalized for the size of the inpatient department. We then test these findings by estimating a selection model using publicly available cross-sectional data on California hospitals and find moderate support for our theoretical findings. We also find evidence that certain hospitals, owing to their location and ownership structure, are more likely to choose ambulance diversion to mitigate overcrowding than others. Bio:Sarang Deo joined Kellogg School of Management in 2007 after completing his PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management. His primary research interest is application of operations management methods to design efficient and effective healthcare delivery systems. His current work focuses on issues in resource-poor countries (developing models for HIV treatment scale-up, studying the impact of patient load on quality of care) as well as the US (joint planning of HIV screening and treatment at the Veterans Administration, theoretical and empirical investigation into the causes of ambulance diversion).
IEMS Seminar: Systems Monitoring and Prognostics
May 5, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments in C211 at 3:30 Technological
Systems Monitoring and Prognostics Nagi Gebraeel Georgia Institute of Technology Abstract: Recent advances in sensor technology and wireless communication have enabled monitoring of complex engineering systems. Research on interpreting and exploiting these rich data streams in making critical decisions stands to provide significant advancements across a wide range of application domains. One important application is predicting failure and performance degradation of engineering systems, which I define as Systems Monitoring and Prognostics (SMP). This talk is geared towards presenting the key components of the SMP framework; (1) acquisition and analysis of sensor data, (2) development of stochastic/statistical prognostic degradation models, and (3) development of adaptive prognostics-based operational and logistical decision models. The presentation will include a demonstration of two real-world base-case systems, a rotating machinery application and an aircraft electronic/avionic system, from the speakers Prognostic Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. The talk will be concluded by presenting examples of some current and future challenges in this area. Bio: Dr. Nagi Gebraeel is an assistant professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his MS and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, 1998 and 2003 respectively, and his B.Sc. in Production Engineering from the University of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1995. Professor Gebraeels research interest is in leveraging sensor-based data streams to improve the predictability of unexpected failure of engineering systems and advance subsequent operational and logistical decision making processes. He is a member of the Institute of Industrial Engineering (IIE) and the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS).
INFORMS Brown Bag: Prof. Karen Smilowitz
May 7, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Speaker: Prof. Karen Smilowitz Brown bag is a lunch seminar series designed exclusively for first-year students of the MS and PhD programs at IEMS Department. It provides an opportunity for the 1st years to hear invited speakers on a wide range of subjects that will definitely interest them. The motivation behind the series is two-fold: to help orient the 1st years for their new roles as graduate students, and to help settle them into the IEMS Department, into Northwestern University and into the field of industrial engineering and management sciences at large. 1st year students are encouraged to go to each of the BB sessions. The potential subjects for this one-year series include the following:IEMS faculty members introducing their research interests and opening projects (they will be held mainly in the latter half of the year);
Office of Student Life - Web Training: Building a Professional Portfolio
May 7, 2009 at 4:00 PM — MG51 Technological Instit
Looking for a job or internship? Do you just want to know how to build a website? Check out the web training to learn important skills and techniques when it comes to marketing yourself. Open to current graduate students and junior/senior undergrads. May 7th at 4pm in MG51
IEMS Seminar: The Elusive Era of Supply Chain Coordination[1]
May 12, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments C211 at 3:30 Technological Ins
The Elusive Era of Supply Chain Coordination[1] Nicole DeHoratiusUniversity of Portland Abstract:Researchers and managers alike have been touting the benefits of supply chain coordination. Such benefits include information sharing for improved supply chain visibility and joint planning and improved physical flow of products through the supply chain. Despite these benefits, few manufacturers and retailers have developed the partnerships needed for such coordination to occur. The magnitude of distribution center receiving errors highlights this gap between theory and practice. Using data collected from one distribution center of a large retail chain with more than 700 stores, we show that 8% of the orders received from manufacturers were incorrect and resulted in a delay in distribution. We categorized the types of receiving errors observed and discuss the root cause of these disruptive events. This essay views the current financial crisis through the lens of quality management. The crisis represents a failure of quality, and solving it will require, among other things, careful management of quality in financial institutions and across financial supply chains. This will be difficult for several reasons, but not impossible. I offer several recommendations, partly inspired by successful quality practices in industry.Bio:Nicole DeHoratius teaches undergraduate-, MBA-, and Executive-level courses on operations and supply chain management. Professor DeHoratius earned her DBA in technology and operations management at Harvard Business School. Prior to her graduate studies, she was a researcher at RAND and was on the Board of Directors of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington-Baltimore, Inc. Professor DeHoratius is the recent recipient of a fellowship from the Center for Strategic Supply Research and was named a Batten Scholar based on the impact and quality of her research. She is also a former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar which enabled her to obtain her M.Sc. in technology and innovation management from the University of Sussex in England. Professor DeHoratius's research focuses on the effective management of retail supply chains and the link between retail performance and operational execution. Poor execution at all stages in the retail supply chain can result in store out-of-stocks and, consequently, lost sales. Effective execution involves designing appropriate incentives, maintaining accurate information, and collaboration between manufacturers and retailers.
INFORMS Brown Bag: Prof. Barry Nelson
May 14, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Speaker: Prof. Barry Nelson Brown bag is a lunch seminar series designed exclusively for first-year students of the MS and PhD programs at IEMS Department. It provides an opportunity for the 1st years to hear invited speakers on a wide range of subjects that will definitely interest them. The motivation behind the series is two-fold: to help orient the 1st years for their new roles as graduate students, and to help settle them into the IEMS Department, into Northwestern University and into the field of industrial engineering and management sciences at large. 1st year students are encouraged to go to each of the BB sessions. The potential subjects for this one-year series include the following:IEMS faculty members introducing their research interests and opening projects (they will be held mainly in the latter half of the year);
IEMS Seminar: Recent Advances in Solving Chance-constrained Stochastic Programming Problems
May 19, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments at 3:30 in C211 Technological I
Recent Advances in Solving Chance-constrained Stochastic Programming Problems Jim LuedtkeUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract:Decision-makers are often faced with the task of finding a solution in the face of significant uncertainties. A classic stochastic programming approach to managing risk in such settings is to enforce chance constraints (also called probabilistic constraints) in the optimization model that require the selected solution to satisfy a desirable condition with high probability. Unfortunately, optimization with chance constraints is computationally difficult for two reasons: evaluating solution feasibility can be time-consuming; and the feasible region is not convex in general. We present recent work that demonstrates that a sample average approximation approach can be used to simplify the probabilistic nature of the problem and yet yield good feasible solutions with optimality bounds. The resulting sample approximation problem remains nonconvex, but can be formulated as a mixed-integer program (MIP). We discuss recent work using a strong MIP formulation that has been very effective in solving this problem under the restriction that the uncertainties appear only in the right-hand side of the constraints. We also present preliminary work that shows how this approach can be extended to the much more general setting when this restriction is removed. Bio:Jim Luedtke is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Luedtke received his B.S. from UW-Madison in 2001, and his M.S. in Operations Research and Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering (2007) from the Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2007-2008, Dr. Luedtke did postdoctoral research at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he studied methods for solving large-scale production and distribution scheduling problems. Dr. Luedtke's research interests include stochastic optimization, with particular focus on solutions techniques for risk-averse models, and integer programming (both linear and nonlinear).
Office of Student Life - Knocking on Wall Street's Door: Getting Started in Industry (Jonathan Owen)
May 21, 2009 at 3:30 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Knocking on Wall Street's Door: Getting Started in Industry Thursday, May 21, 2009 Jonathan Owen, General Motors R&D and Strategic Planning Presentation in M228, Reception to follow in C211 Students often want to work on Wall Street or other major financial entities. This session would be a portfolio building using current skills and education to help them market themselves for job hunting outside academia. Registration is required. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228TLPVL28A
IEMS Seminar: Constant Proportion Debt Obligations: A Post-Mortem Analysis of Rating Models
May 26, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments at 3:30 in C211 Technological In
Constant Proportion Debt Obligations: A Post-Mortem Analysis of Rating Models Michael B. GordyBoard of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Abstract:In its complexity and its vulnerability to market volatility, the CPDO might be viewed as the poster child for the excesses of financial engineering in the credit market. This paper examines the CPDO as a case study in model risk in the rating of complex structured products. We explain how a CPDO transaction works and review events in this market to date. We demonstrate that the models used by S&P and Moodys would have assigned (at best) low probability to the spread levels realized in the investment grade corporate credit default swap market in late 2007. The spread levels realized in the first quarter of 2008 would have been assigned negligibly small probabilities. Had the models put non-negligible likelihood on attaining these high spread levels, the CPDO notes could never have achieved investment grade status. This is joint work with Soren Willemann. Bio:Michael Gordy is a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Board. His current research focuses on credit risk pricing, and on the design, calibration and computation of models of portfolio risk. Michael is recipient of Risk's 2004 Quant of the Year and GARP's 2003 Financial Risk Manager of the Year, and serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Banking & Finance, the Journal of Credit Risk, and the International Journal of Central Banking. Michael received his Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1994.
Systemic Risk: The Next Frontier in Risk Management and Regulation
May 28, 2009 at 7:30 AM — JBC Commons (4th Floor) Technological Instit
Systemic Risk: The Next Frontier in Risk Management and Regulation Thursday May 28, 2009Presented by Jeremy Staum, Associate Professor, Industrial Engineering and Management SciencesRegister online (http://www.industry.northwestern.edu/mornings/registration.php)Location and schedule (See Below) The current paradigm of risk management and regulation addresses the risk of each firm in isolation. How can government regulators measure or reduce the risk of the financial system as a whole? How might this affect the practice of risk management within financial firms? Can regulation provide incentives for firms to make decisions that reduce systemic risk? We will discuss some basic concepts and insights of the emerging field of systemic risk management and consider their implications for engineering a more stable financial system. Location and Schedule Location: Northwestern UniversityMcCormick School of Engineering and Applied ScienceTechnological InstituteJBC Commons. 4th floor2145 Sheridan RoadEvanston, IllinoisSchedule: 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast8:00 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. Welcome and Introductions8:15 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Presentation9:00 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. Questions and Answers9:25 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Closing and Departure Jeremy StaumProfessor Jeremy Staum is associate professor in the department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. Prior to coming to Northwestern, he worked at a hedge fund and as an equity derivatives quant while earning his Ph. D. in Management Science from Columbia Business School. He was on the faculty at Cornell for two years, teaching in its master's program in financial engineering, before joining Northwestern in 2003. He is also the department editor for financial engineering at IIE Transactions
INFORMS Brown Bag: Prof. Jeremy Staum
May 28, 2009 at 12:30 PM — C211 Technological Instit
Speaker: Prof. Jeremy Staum Brown bag is a lunch seminar series designed exclusively for first-year students of the MS and PhD programs at IEMS Department. It provides an opportunity for the 1st years to hear invited speakers on a wide range of subjects that will definitely interest them. The motivation behind the series is two-fold: to help orient the 1st years for their new roles as graduate students, and to help settle them into the IEMS Department, into Northwestern University and into the field of industrial engineering and management sciences at large. 1st year students are encouraged to go to each of the BB sessions. The potential subjects for this one-year series include the following:IEMS faculty members introducing their research interests and opening projects (they will be held mainly in the latter half of the year);
IEMS Seminar: Sharpening Comparisons Via Gaussian Copulas and Semidefinite Programming
June 2, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Refreshments at 3:30 in C211 Technological In
Sharpening Comparisons Via Gaussian Copulas and Semidefinite Programming Shane HendersonCornell University Abstract:A common problem in operations research involves comparing two system designs through simulation of both systems. The comparison can often be made more accurate through careful control (coupling) of the random numbers that are used in simulating each system, with common random numbers being the standard example. We describe a new approach for coupling the random-number inputs to two systems that involves generating realizations of a Gaussian random vector and then transforming the Gaussian random vector into the desired random-number inputs. We use nonlinear semidefinite programming to select the correlation matrix of the Gaussian random vector, with the goal of sharpening the comparison. We describe implementation issues and a number of examples. This is joint work with Sam Ehrlichman..Bio:Shane G. Henderson is a professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. He is the simulation area editor at Operations Research, and an associate editor for the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation and Operations Research Letters. He is the president-elect of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society. He co-edited the handbook Simulation as part of Elseviers series of Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, and also co-edited the Proceedings of the 2007 Winter Simulation Conference. He likes cats but is allergic to them. His research interests include discrete-event simulation and simulation optimization, and he has worked for some time with emergency services.
IEMS Candidacy Exams
June 15, 2009 at 8:00 AM — L361 Technological Instit
IEMS Candidacy Exams
June 16, 2009 at 8:00 AM — L361 Technological Instit
IEMS Candidacy Exams
June 17, 2009 at 8:00 AM — L361 Technological Instit
MS Recognition and PhD Hooding Ceremony
June 19, 2009 at 9:00 AM — Ryan Auditorium Technological Instit
MS Recognition and PhD Hooding Ceremony - Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, 847-491-4547 No tickets required Ryan Family Auditorium Technological Institute (12) 2145 Sheridan Road Preceded by 7:30 AM reception in Grand Foyer, Technological Institute
IEMS Undergrad Senior Ceremony
June 19, 2009 at 11:00 AM — M345 Technological Instit
IEMS SENIOR CEREMONY Friday, June 19th Tech M345 11am - Noon Refreshments will be served, followed by presentation of departmental awards and honors.
Professional Masters Recognition Ceremony
June 19, 2009 at 12:00 PM — Ryan Auditorium Technological Instit
Professional Masters Recognition Ceremony - McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, 847-491-4547 No tickets required Ryan Family Auditorium Technological Institute (12) 2145 Sheridan Road
University Closed for July 4th Holiday
July 3, 2009 at 12:00 AM —
TGS Night Out Summer Social
July 14, 2009 at 5:00 PM — The Lakefill Norris University Ce
TGS Night Out Summer Social Time: 5:00pm - 7:00pm Date: 7/14/2009 Location: The Lakefill, near the Norris University Center (Evanston Campus) This quarter's TGS Night Out will be a picnic held at the Lakefill co-hosted by TGS and a graduate student group (to be announced). There is no charge for admission or for refreshments. Registration is now open online at http://survey.gsad.northwestern.edu/night_out_july09/, and closes June 12.
TGS - New Graduate Student Orientation
September 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM — Norris University Ce
In addition to opening remarks from incoming President Morton O. Schapiro, a lunch reception, campus tours, and a resource fair, The Graduate School is developing several informative and useful breakout sessions for incoming Master's and doctoral students during orientation. Topics will include: Master's and Ph.D. students' unique financial needs, grants and grant-writing, multicultural and international student life, and technology resources. More details about the 2009 orientation will become available over the summer
New TA Conference
September 15, 2009 at 8:00 AM — Ryan Auditorium Technological Instit
OverviewThe New TA Conference is training for all new teaching assistants. Registration is required. Over one day, participants explore strategies and philosophies of good teaching while getting to know more experienced graduate students. Tuesday, September 15, 2009Check-in opens at 8:00amConference runs 8:30am-5:30pmTechnological Institute, Ryan AuditoriumStructureAfter a brief orientation, new TAs work with a teaching assistant fellow (TAF) from their discipline (or a closely related discipline) to learn about specific strategies for teaching effectively within their departments.New TAs then select from several concurrent workshops facilitated by TAFs and Center staff. In each session, participants reflect on their own teaching approach and practice techniques for: leading discussion sections, labs, lectures, or problem-solving sections.Comments from Past ParticipantsRole playing put us in control, [we] learned the "hard" way that we will be dealing with all types [of students] ....[The TAFs gave us] a lot of chance[s] for us to give input--not just talking at us.- New TA, ChemistryI learned a lot about various grading strategies/criteria. It was very interesting to hear from people in different (but related) disciplines. I learned about lots of different teaching styles. How to anticipate and address problems in the classroom. [Our TAF gave] lots of practical application, [used] brainstorming sessions, [and gave] pointed and applicable feedback.- New TA, Performance StudiesContactE-mail us or call 847-467-2338.
IEMS New Graduate Student Orientation
September 16, 2009 at 9:00 AM — C211 Technological Instit
The Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences will host its new graduate student orientation on Wednesday, September 16th from 9am to 5pm with an evening dinner to follow. This is required for all incoming graduate students. More information will be sent out shortly
IEMS Seminar: A Faster and Simpler Algorithm for Computing Market Equilibrium
September 22, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
A Faster and Simpler Algorithm for Computing Market Equilibrium Dr. James Orlin Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract:Devanur, Papadimitriou, Saberi, and Vazirani recently published the first polynomial time algorithm for computing an equilibrium for the linear utilities case of the market model defined by Fisher. Here we provide a much faster and simpler algorithm. In addition, we provide the first strongly polynomial time algorithm for computing the equilibrium. (This latter algorithm is not as simple.) We describe our algorithms from an economic perspective in a way that is accessible to a general audience.This work is joint with Mehdi Ghiyasvand. Bio:James Orlin specializes in network and combinatorial optimization. He has helped develop improved solution methodologies in airline scheduling, railroad scheduling, logistics, network design, telecommunications, inventory control, and marketing. Together with MIT Sloan colleague Thomas L. Magnanti and Ravindra K. Ahuja, he has written the award-winning text Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications (Prentice Hall, 1993).
IEMS Seminar: Epidemics in Co-evolving Networks: The Role of Individual Behaviors and Public Polici
September 29, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Dr. Madhav Marathe Virginia Bioinformatics Institute Abstract:Complex Networks are pervasive in our society. Realistic biological, information, social and technical networks share a number of unique features that distinguish them from physical networks. Examples of such features include: irregularity, time-varying structure, heterogeneity among individual components and selfish/cooperative game-like behavior by individual components. Furthermore, the network structure, the dynamical process on the network and the behavior of constituent agents co-evolve over time. The size and heterogeneity of these networks, their co-evolving nature and the technical difficulties in applying dimension reduction techniques commonly used to analyze physical systems makes reasoning, prediction and controlling of these networks even more challenging.Recent quantitative changes in high performance and wireless computing capability have created new opportunities for collecting, integrating, analyzing and accessing information related to such large complex networks. The advances in network and information science that build on this new capability provide entirely new ways for reasoning and controlling these networks. Together, they enhance our ability to formulate, analyze and realize novel public policies pertaining to these complex networks.The talk will focus on elements of network and information science required to support policy informatics as it pertains to epidemic processes in co-evolving social and wireless networks. Understanding these epidemiological processes is of immense societal importance. Additionally they serve as excellent "model organisms" for developing a theory of co-evolving complex networks. Perhaps more intriguing, recent advances in wireless communications provide compelling reasons for studying these networks together. I will discuss this possibility in my concluding remarks. Bio:Madhav Marathe is a professor of Computer Science and deputy director of the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory. He obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree in 1989 in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and his Ph.D. in 1994 in Computer Science from the University at Albany. Before coming to Virginia Tech in 2005, he worked in the Basic and Applied Simulation Science group (CCS-5) in the Computer and Computational Sciences division at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was team leader in a theory-based, advanced simulation program to represent, design, and analyze extremely large socio-technical and critical infrastructure systems. He has published more than 150 research articles in peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and books, and has over eight years of experience in project leadership and technology development, specializing in population dynamics, telecommunication systems, epidemiology, design and architecture of the data grid, design and analysis of algorithms for data manipulation, design of services-oriented architectures, and socio-technical systems
IEMS Seminar: Algorithms for Large-scale Sparse Reconstruction
October 6, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Algorithms for Large-scale Sparse Reconstruction Dr. Michael Friedlander University of British Columbia Abstract: Many signal-processing applications seek to approximate a signal as superposition of only a few elementary atoms drawn from a large collection. This is known as sparse reconstruction. The theory of compressed sensing allows us to pose sparse reconstruction problems as structured convex optimization problems. I will discuss the role of duality in revealing some unexpected and useful properties of these problems, and will show how they lead to practical, large-scale algorithms. I will also describe some applications of the resulting algorithms. Bio: Associate Professor, University of British Columbia (2009-present)Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia (2004-2009) Wilkinson Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory (2002-2004) Ph.D. Stanford University (2002) M.S., Stanford University (1998) B.A., Cornell University (1993)
Oiffice of Student Life 2009 Kickoff Celebration
October 15, 2009 at 3:30 PM — A230 Technological Instit
Registration for the 2009 Kickoff Celebration is Open!You only receive a raffle entry if you register online!Thursday, October 25, 2009 3:30pm, Tech Institute, Room A230Join us as we kick off the new year and celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the Office of Student Life. Stop by to meet other students and hear about the programs and services of our office. There will be a FREE reception with food and raffle prizes for those who register early online. Stay for as long or as little as you like!ALL students are welcome!
IEMS Seminar: Approximate Dynamic Programming via a Smoothed Linear Program
October 20, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Technological Instit
Dr. Ciamac Moallemi Columbia Abstract:We present a novel linear program for the approximation of the dynamic programming cost-to-go function in high-dimensional stochastic control problems. LP approaches to approximate DP have typically relied on a natural`projection' of a well studied linear program for exact dynamic programming. Such programs restrict attention to approximations that are lower bounds to the optimal cost-to-go function. Our program---the `smoothed approximate linear program'---is distinct from such approaches and relaxes the restriction to lower bounding approximations in an appropriate fashion while remaining computationally tractable. Doing so appears to have several advantages: First, we demonstrate substantially superior bounds on the quality of approximation to the optimal cost-to-go function afforded by our approach. Second, experiments with our approach on a challenging problem (the game of Tetris) show that the approach outperforms the existing LP approach (which has previously been shown to be competitive with several ADPalgorithms) by an order of magnitude.This is joint work with Vijay Desai (Columbia) and Vivek Farias (MIT). Bio:Ciamac Moallemi is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University, where he has been since 2007. He received SB degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1996). He studied at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics, with distinction (1997). He received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (2007). Prior to his doctoral studies, he developed quantitative methods in a number of entrepreneurial ventures, as a founder of a computer security software startup, in an early stage drug discovery startup, and as a partner of a fixed-income arbitrage hedge fund. He is a member of the IEEE and INFORMS. He is the recipient of a British Marshall Scholarship (1996) and a Benchmark Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2003).
Job Search Boot Camp
October 23, 2009 at 1:00 PM — ITW Classroom Ford Motor Company Engineering Desig
Friday, October 23, 2009 1:00pm - 3:00pm Ford ITW Classroom Join Prof. Bill White and alums Craig Asher, Tom Brody, Rajesh Oza, Alan Wasserstrom, and more! The career management workshop will discuss various career options, and the locations that best suit these career options: Government (Fed, State, Local) Operating Businesses (Healthcare, communications, transport/logistics, retail, distribution, and manufacturing) Consulting and Non-Profits Learn how to search in High Tech and Low Tech fields. Tips on finding a mentor will be provided and you can sign up for a mentor.
IEMS Seminar: Integrated Topology Control and Routing in Wireless Sensor Network Design for Prolon
October 27, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Tech
Dr. Halit Uster Visiting Scholar Abstract: A Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be deployed in inhospitable environments, difficult-to-reach terrains, and wild habitats such as war zones, oceans, the poles, deserts, and rain forests to monitor and observe natural, environmental, and climate-related phenomena including temperature, pressure, humidity, vibration, light, chemical and biological agents, etc. The most distinguishing characteristic of a WSN is the fact that its sensors have finite and non-renewable energy resources. In this talk, we consider integrated topology control and routing issues in data gathering WSNs and address the problem of prolonging network lifetime until next sensor deployment. We suggest a policy to be employed in each period of a deployment cycle and computationally examine its efficiency in prolonging network lifetime against two other commonly employed approaches. We present mathematical models and a general efficient solution procedure that is applicable to all the three cases. We determine that the proposed policy has attractive properties and exhibits very good performance in extending network lifetime. For the proposed policy, we also discuss further parallelization of the solution approach along with additional cut inequalities as well as a Benders Decomposition approach. (Research supported by National Science Foundation under grant CMMI-0428831). Bio: Halit Ãœster is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Science/Systems from McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of logistics, design of networked systems, and applied optimization. His publications appeared in Computers and Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Interfaces, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, and Transportation Science among others. He is visiting the IEMS Department at Northwestern University during 2009-2010 academic year where he has been named Eshbach Scholar in the McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science for Fall Quarter 2009.
Office of Student Life and IIE Present a Halloween Carnival
October 29, 2009 at 4:30 PM — 4th Flr, Cohen Commons Technological Instit
Thursday October 15, 2009@4:30pm Tech Institute, 4th Floor Cohen CommonsJoin fellow industrial engineers for a halloween carnival. FREE Food! Pumpkin Decorating Contest!FREE Games and Prizes
IEMS Seminar: A Framework for Monitoring
November 3, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Tech
Russell R. Barton Penn State University Abstract:Real-time sensor data, particularly RFID and GPS data, provides new possibilities to monitor the execution of supply chain processes. This talk examines a basic framework for examining the timeliness and correctness of the movement of items and/or transactions through a sequence of supply chain events. The nature of the data poses special issues for statistical process control and process capability analysis. Bio:Russell R. Barton is a professor in the Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems at Penn State University. He also serves at the Smeal College of Business Co-Director for a one-year Master of Manufacturing Management degree program that is jointly offered with the College of Engineering. He received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Operations Research from Cornell. Before entering academia, he spent twelve years in industry. He was program chair for the 2007 Winter Simulation Conference, and he serves on the Advisory Board for the Quality, Statistics and Reliability Section of INFORMS. His research interests include applications of statistical and simulation methods to system design and to product design, manufacturing and delivery.
IEMS Seminar: A New Approach for Investment Performance Measurement
November 10, 2009 at 4:00 PM — Tech
Thaleia Zariphopoulou Oxford Abstract: A new method for measuring the performance of investment policies will be introduced. Optimality of investment strategies will be associated with a stochastic partial differential equation (spde). The novel concept of performance volatility, as the driver to this spde, will be presented. Examples of performance volatility processes, modeling different numeraires, benchmarks and market views, will be presented. Bio:Professor Thaleia Zariphopoulou is the first holder of the Man Professorship of Quantitative Finance at the University of Oxford. Previously, Professor Zariphopoulou was the VF Neuhaus Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT-Austin, Professor Zariphopoulou held a joint appointment between the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Information, Risk and Operations Management at the Red McCombs School of Business. She is an expert in quantitative finance, portfolio management and stochastic optimization. She was President of the Bachelier Finance Society from 2006-2008; and also sits on the editorial board of five academic journals in financial mathematics and quantitative finance.
IEMS Seminar: How Industrial Engineers Impact the World
November 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 - Refreshments at 3:30 p.m. in C210 Technolog
Dr. Julia Higle Ohio State University Abstract:Industrial engineering isn't quite as tangible as other types of engineering. The industrial engineering function evolves from a viewpoint and training that transcends an amazing breadth of "businesses". This makes it hard to nail down a simplistic sound-bite-sized descriptor that can be applied to industrial engineering. Because of this, the contributions of industrial engineers often fail to capture the mainsteam imagination. This seminar will explore the impact of industrial engineering -- past, present, and future. Warning: This seminar is intended to be interactive. Come prepared to participate! Bio:Julie Higle joined the faculty of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona in 1985, after completing her PhD in IOE at the University of Michigan. Her primary research has been in models algorithms for decision making under uncertainty, with an emphasis on stochastic programming. She is currently the chair of the department of Integrated Systems Engineering at THE Ohio State University, and Sr. Vice President for Academics of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.
OSL Third Thursday - Team and Group Dynamics
November 19, 2009 at 2:00 PM — 1-483 Francis Searle (cd)
Team and Group Dynamics Thursday, November 19, 2009, 2:00pm, Francis Searle 1-483 Prof. Elaine Wong, Northwestern University As organizations increasingly use groups and teams to accomplish work, it becomes important to better understand effective teams. Through discussions and experiential learning, this seminar introduces students to key groups and teams concepts that serve as a foundation for effective teamwork. This will be a highly interactive session and is limited to 30 participants. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229VFN798X9
IEMS Seminar: A Fictitious Play Approach to Complex Systems Optimization
November 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Tech
A Fictitious Play Approach to Complex Systems Optimization Dr. Robert Smith National Science Foundation Abstract:Complex systems consisting of a large number of interacting components are in practice increasingly modeled through computer simulations rather than via traditional equation based approaches. The resulting model typically allows for little or no structural assumptions on the form of the objective function or constraints, thus posing a challenging optimization problem. We explore in this talk a novel optimization paradigm inherited from game theory that animates the components of the system within a non-cooperative game of identical interest. The optimizations take place though individual best replies of the players, thus vastly reducing the dimensionality of the optimization problems solved (the components joint interactions are reflected indirectly through their shared objective function). We will illustrate the approach by discussing an application to intelligent transportation systems. Opportunities for NSF funding in Operations Research will be discussed at the end of the talk. Bio: Robert L. Smith is Director of the Operations Research Program at NSF. Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the University of California at Berkeley where he held an NSF Fellowship. He holds a bachelors degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College and an MBA from Berkeley. He is on leave from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he is the Altarum/ERIM Russell D. O'Neal Professor of Engineering.He is the recipient of the first Altarum/ERIM Russell D. O'Neal Professorship of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He has also been honored with the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award from the University of Michigan, the College of Engineering Research Excellence Award, the Industrial and Operations Engineering Award for Outstanding Accomplishment, an Outstanding Teacher Award from the Michigan Student Assembly, and a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.Professor Smith teaches courses in dynamic programming and stochastic processes. He has supervised the doctoral research of twenty-eight students since 1984.At the University of Michigan, he serves as Director of the Dynamic Systems Optimization Laboratory. The Laboratory research is directed toward the modeling and analysis of dynamical systems over time. Dr. Smith worked earlier at Bell Laboratories in the Network Planning Department where he developed models and algorithms for optimal routing of communications traffic. He is an Associate Editor of Operations Research and past Associate Editor of Management Science, and is the author of nearly one hundred peer reviewed publications
IEMS Seminar: The Economics of Dynamic Pricing
December 1, 2009 at 4:00 PM — M228 Tech
Dr. Ahmad Faruqui Principal - The Brattle Group
OSL Third Thursday - Thinking Globally and Working Internationally
January 21, 2010 at 3:00 PM — TBA
Thinking Globally and Working Internationally Thursday, January 21, 2010, Time TBA Prof. Vinayak Dravid, Global McCormick, Northwestern University Today's students must think globally, and opportunities for research with partners around the world have never been greater - or more pressing. Northwestern is committed to assisting all of its scholars (faculty, postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates) in developing a range of research collaborations worldwide. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229VP7LDUBV
OSL Third Thursday - Building Your Leadership: 6 Key Assets
February 18, 2010 at 3:00 PM — TBA
Building Your Leadership: 6 Key Assets Thursday, February 18, 2010, Time TBA Cynthia Cochran, Coordinator of Student Organizations and Leadership Development, & Jason Hanson, Area Coordinator, Northwestern University This workshop helps prepare students to become effective leaders in industry and in their community. In particular, students are challenged to think in new ways about how their effectiveness as a leader can spring from their educational, extracurricular and internship experiences. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229VP88DUQ3
OSL Third Thursday - Building Your Social Web: Networking & Social Capital
April 15, 2010 at 3:00 PM — TBA
Building Your Social Web: Networking & Social Capital Thursday, April 15th, 2010: 3:30pm Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University This session will place an emphasis on the importance of social capital regarding career advancement, research opportunities, & strengthening connections. Discussions will aim to provide insight on: building networks, maintaining networks, and using networks to their fullest. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229VP8XDV65
OSL Third Thursday - NU Portfolio: Marketing Yourself in the Age of Technology
May 20, 2010 at 3:00 PM — TBA
NU Portfolio: Marketing Yourself in the Age of Technology Thursday, May 20th, 2010, Time TBA Kamilah McCoy, University Career Services,Northwestern University University Career Services has launched a new intiative entitled NU Portfolio where students can build an online resume and portfolio to market themselves during the job hunt. Register at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB229VP9ADVCU
