2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter

8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter

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Monica Puertas:A moving spirit at USF A note from the presiden

Monica Puertas, a doctoral candidate in the IMSE

Department, received the prestigious Judith Liebman

Award at the INFORMS 2013 Annual Meeting on

October 7th, 2013.

The Judith Liebman Award is presented to

INFORMS chapter members who have been a

moving spirit in his or her chapter. Recipients

are student chapter leaders who have pushed their

chapters to achieve extraordinary performance and to

engage with the local and university communities.

Monica most certainly has been a moving spirit within the USF INFORMS

student chapter, serving on the chapter committee from 2010 through 2013, most

recently as Chapter President (2012-2013). Previously, she served as Lecture Series

and Events coordinator (20102011) and Secretary (20112012).

Monica began her doctoral studies at USF in the Fall of 2009, after serving as

the deputy director of the Institute for Quality at the Pontifical Catholic University

of Peru. There, she developed and taught graduate and undergraduate programs,gaining valuable teaching and consulting experience.

Monicas research interests lie in the areas of systems modeling and optimization,

data analysis, process optimization and resource management, particularly in

healthcare environments. In pursuit of these interests, she has worked on modeling

and optimizing resource management practices at the polytrauma unit of the

James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, FL. In addition, she has developed

data mining approaches to analyze physiologic signals and has participated in

interdisciplinary collaborations

As the coordinator of the Lecture Series program, she invited 34 distinguished

scholars and industry leaders from 2011 to 2012 to share their expertise with USFstudents and faculty. She is also a passionate promoter of community service,

and lead the chapter to participate in the Great American Teach-In in 2012 at a

local Hillsborough County elementary school. Likewise, she participates in USFs

yearly Engineering Expo, encouraging K12 students in both venues to pursue an

education in the fields of science and engineering.

Thanks to her hard work, dedication and leadership, the USF student chapter

has been nationally recognized every year since 2009 and has received cum laude

and summa cum laudehonors in the past three years.

As the number of graduate stude

continues to grow and the INFORM

USF student chapter expands with n

members, others are ready to contin

their professional careers somewh

else. The 2013-2014 academic y

promises to be an exciting year, build

on previous successes with acade

and community engagement activitie

New exciting ventures are com

ahead such as mentoring high sch

and middle school students in O

and training undergraduates in

tools and software. And we have a n

newsletter design!

The success of the INFORMS@US

only possible through your involvem

an important effort we apprecimmensely.

Florentino R

Fall2 0 1 3 INFORMS

University of South Florida Student Chapte

INFORMS@USF

Department of Industrial and

Management Sciences Engineer

College of Engineering

University of South Florida

Tampa, FL

President:Florentino Rico

Vice-President:Yazhuo Liu

Newsletter Editors:

Garrick Aden-Buie

Walter Silva Sotillo

http://informs.eng.usf.edu


2/8

INFORMS Lecture Series: Dr. Eva Lee

Dr. Savachkin Receives IIE Excellence in TeachingAward

We are happy to have had Dr. Eva Lee visit us, as part of

our INFORMS@USF lecture series, on Friday, November

15th, 2013. Dr. Lee is a Professor at the H. Milton StewartSchool of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the

Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Lee is also the director

for Center for Operations Research in Medicine and

HealthCare.

The title of the presentation was Modeling and

Optimizing Emergency Department Workflow. Dr. Lee

presented a new emergency department decision-support

system that couples machine learning, simulation, and

optimization to address these improvement goals. Lee works

in the area of mathematical programming, information

technology, and large-scale computational algorithms,

and tackles challenges arising from real-world problems

through systems modeling, algorithms and software design,

predictive analytics, and risk and decision theory analysis.

During Dr. Lees visit to USF, she met with several IMSE

faculty members and enjoyed a productive and informative

discussion with INFORMS student members over lunch.

Alex Savachkin, associate professor in the IMSE

Department, received the 2013 Annual Award for

Excellence in Teaching Operations Research from the

Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). The award recognizes

outstanding educators in the field of operations research

and was presented to Dr. Savachkin at the IIE Annual IE

Conference and Expo held May 18-22 in San Juan, Puerto

Rico.

Dr. Savachkin garnered this highly competitive national

award for his teaching of the undergraduate course

Probabilistic Operations Research, a course he has taught

frequently during his 9 years at USF. As described by one

of his students, USF IMSE students really enjoy his classes

because of his remarkable presentation of the material.

For Dr. Savachkin, the most rewarding aspect of teaching

is finding ways to motivate the students. I try to balance

strictness and informality, rigor and usability, he explains.

Students agree. He uses real-world and interesting

examples that illustrate probabilistic concepts and inspire

students to think more

deeply about the material,

confirmed another student.

In addition to the IIE

Award for Excellence

in Teaching Operations

Research, Dr. Savachkin

was a recipient of the

USF Outstanding

Undergraduate Teaching

Award in 2012.

2

Dr. Eva Lee


3/8

Mehrnaz Abdollahian awarded poster prize

Mehrnaz Abdollahian, USF IMSE

Ph.D. student, won first place at

the INFORMS annual conference

poster competition for her poster

entitled:A MDP Model for Breast and

Ovarian Cancer Intervention Strategies for

BRCA1/2 Mutation Carriers.

Mehrnaz competed against sixteen

semi-finalists from around the

globe at the Interactive Sessions

Competition at the INFORMS 2013

Annual Meeting, held in Minneapolis,

Minnesota.

Her poster exhibits her research indecision models for breast and ovarian

cancer treatment from the past two

years in collaboration with Dr. Tapas

Das, IMSE Department Chair, and

Dr. Rebecca Sutphen of the USF

Health Department of Genetics.

More than 300,000 women in the

United States carry breast cancer

mutation genes BRCA1 or BRCA2.

Sadly, up to 85% of these women will

develop breast cancer and up to 65%

will develop ovarian cancer in their

lifetime.

The poster presents the teams

work building a decision model to

recommend effective intervention

strategies for carriers of the BRCA1/2

mutations. The model considers

drastic risk reduction actions, such

as prophylactic mastectomy or

oophorectomy, as well as screening

and monitoring actions to help guide

physicians and patients to select themost cost-effective course of action

with the greatest probability

of a positive health outcome.

The model could

potentially be used in a free,

user-friendly online platform

for patients, physicians and

policy makers.

For Mehrnaz, the poster

competition was an excellent

experience. In addition to confirming

that her research topic is both

important and impactful, it provided

a chance to present her work, receive

useful comments from the judges

and audience, and connect with

fellow researchers in the INFORMS

community.

To fellow young women considering

a career in a STEM field, she has this

advice: Dont be afraid to speak up

about your ideas.Congratulations again to Mehrnaz!

Last year (2011-2012) the USF INFORMS Student

Chapter received the Summa Cum LaudeINFORMS

Student Chapter Annual Award. This year (2012-2013) the

chapter was again awarded the highest recognition among

all INFORMS Student Chapters worldwide.

The award recognizes the achievements of the student

chapter regarding its commitment to the promotion of

Operations Research and Management Sciences and to the

community in terms of communications, newsletters, guest

speaker presentations and social activities.

The chapter was honored to receive the award at the

Student Awards Ceremony at the INFORMS Annual

Meeting, in Minneapolis, October 7. After receiving the

Award a reception took place at the Hilton Hotel.

USF INFORMS Student Chapter is committed to win

again this award next year and to continuously improve and

increase the quality of their work.

Chapter members receive award from INFORMS President Anne Robinson

USF Chapter HonoredSumma Cum Laude


4/8

4

USF Students and Faculty Attend Annual MeetingThis year marked another successful,

eventful and productive trip of USF

faculty and students to the INFORMS

Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN.

In the annual departmental tradition,

18 students and 5 faculty members

traded the comfort of Floridas 80

October weather for four intense days

of scholarship and networking in

the legitimately crisp fall weather of

Minneapolis.

Together, faculty and students

presented more than 25 presentations

and chaired 10 sessions, making

this trip the most successful USF

representation since the author has

been attending the annual meeting [Ed:

this was his first time].

Ph.D. candidate Javad Sajjadi

described the event, saying It is a

great opportunity to attend INFORMS

Annual Meetings to meet new people

and start collaborations, learn about

hot topics in the community and the

state-of-the-art research in your specific

field, and finally, get feedback about

your own research.

Healthcare and data mining

USF representation was strongest in

the intersection of healthcare and data

mining, a popular topic at the meeting

and the subject of Tuesdays plenary

speech by Dimitris Bertsimas, Co-

Director of the Operations Research

Center at Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, titled Health Care

Analytics.

USF graduate students presented

research that will help physicians and

patients avoid hospital readmissions,

diagnose pelvic organ prolapse, improv

clinical trial screening in Alzheimers

studies, and to maximize the use of

data from patient monitoring systems.

Public Health and Simulation

Two students presented research on

the impact, treatment and prevention

of a pandemic outbreak using

simulation. For doctoral candidate

Sandro Paz, the best reason to attend

the INFORMS Annual Meeting is to

build his professional network. One of

his favorite moments from his time in

Minneapolis was answering questions

after his talk on treatment strategies for

pandemic influenza.

Optimization and Energy

INFORMS is a society for students,

professionals and experts in operations

research, so it should not be surprising

to find that a significant portion oftalks focused on novel optimization

techniques and applications. Overheard

conversations at lunch were more likely

to include phrases like branch and

bound, Benders decomposition,

or convexity than discussions of the

weather.

USF students presented talks on

robust optimization techniques as well

Fall Semester INFORMS Welcome Event

Student presentation topics at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2013.


5/8

StudentPresentations

Garrick Aden-Buie, Boosted Tree Ensembles for

Predicting Postsurgical ICU Mortality

Fethullah Caliskan, The Impact of Collaboration

Networking Formations on Invention Performance

Anna Danandeh, Robust Optimization for Fuel

Supply Chain; Robust Security-Constrained Unit

Commitment with Dynamic Ratings

Felipe Feijoo,A bi-level model approach for optimal

operation and interaction of micro-grids in deregulated

electricity markets.

Andres Garcia, Interventions as an alternative to

penalties in preventable readmissions

Alireza Ghalebani,A Cooperative Investment

Decision Model for Renewable Energy

Mona Haghighi, Cost-effective Enrichment

Strategies for Alzheimers Clinical Trial Screening by

Data Mining

Gang Liu, Modeling, Grouping and Monitoring of

Nonlinear and Spatiotemporal Profiles

Yazhuo Liu,Identifying Readmission-Related

Clinical Associations By a High-Dimensional Tree-

Embedded Graphical Model

Iman Nekooeimehr, Dynamic Feature Analysis for

the Classification of Pelvic Organ Prolapse

Sinan Onal, Combined Supervised and Unsupervised

Segmentation of Pubic Bone for Diagnosis of Pelvic

Organ Prolapse

Sandro Paz, Dynamic Treatment and

Chemoprophylaxis of Pandemic Influenza of Strains with

Antiviral Resistant

Monica Puertas, Data Mining Approach using

Hemodynamic Parameters

Javad Sajjadi,A Network-Based Method to Identify

Highly Discriminating Subsets of Biomarkers; A Branch-

and-Price-and-Cut Approach for Maximum Multiple

Weighted Clique Problem

Walter Silva Sotillo, Impact of a Potential H7N9

Pandemic Outbreak in the U.S.

Long Zhao, Solutions for Two-stage Robust

Optimization

as applications of optimization in integrating renewable energy

into the national electric grid.

This years meeting offered doctoral candidate Anna Danandeh

the opportunity to get to know the scholars working in my field,

learn about other hot topics, and strengthen weak ties from

previous conferences and lecture series.

For Long Zhao, now in the

final semester of his Ph.D.,

the focus of the meeting was

on the hunt for gainful future

employment. His favorite part

was having dinners with my old

and new friends from NationalLabs, the power industry and

universities from all over the

United States.

Finally, a highlight for many

USF students is the yearly

tradition of gathering for dinner with attending faculty and

alumni. My favorite part of INFORMS is to meet with the USF

IMSE family both the current graduate students and the alumni

as well as my colleagues and friends from all over the US and the

world, said Fethullah Caliskan. This year, the dinner was held in

a cave-like room at The Local, an Irish restaurant.

Congratulations to the USF IMSE Department on another

successful attendance of the INFORMS Annual Meeting! Mark

your calendars for next years meeting: November 9-12, 2014 in San

Francisco, CA.

It is a great

opportunity to attend

INFORMS Annual

Meetings to meet

new people, startcollaborations, and get

feedback about your

own research.

Javad Sajjadi

Current students and alumni enjoying the yearly USF IMSE dinner.


6/8

Doctoral Candidates Earn Ph.D. Degrees

6

IMSE Department HighlightsMay, 2013:Dr. Grisselle Centeno received USFsWomen in Leadership and Philanthropy Awardfor

her outstanding achievements recruiting and retaining women in the fields of science and

engineering. She has served as a mentor, advisor or committee member for over 100 female

students and is an excellent role model for female students in engineering. Dr. Centeno intends

to use the WLP research award to provide female students with strategies to overcome potential

challenges and struggles they may encounter while in school or in their future careers.

September, 2013:IE professesors receive NSF grant award. Dr. Susana K. Lai-Yuen and Dr. Grisselle Centeno were awarded a

two-year grant of $200,000 from the National Science Foundation for suport of their project entitled Increasing Diversity in

Engineering through Healthcare Applications. The goal of this project is to develop active learning tools and evaluate their

efficacy at improving student understanding of engineering theories.

September, 2013:IE senior wins top spot in IEEE International Poster Competition.Jasper Quach, summer BSIE graduate, and

now PhD student in the IMSE Department recently won first place in the 2013 IEEE Power and Energy Society General

Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada in July. The conference hosted a total of 193 students from all over the globe in the

poster competition, and included both graduate and undergraduate level students.

Three IMSE doctoral candidates successfully defended their dissertations this November and will earn their Ph.D. degrees

at graduation. Graduation will take place during the second week of December 2013. Congratulations!

Eleazar Gil-Herrera

Classification Models in Clinical Decision Making

Eleazar earned his B.S in Computer Science from the University San Antonio de Abad in his

hometown of Cuzco, Peru. He earned his M.S.I.E. from the University of Puerto Rico. Post-

graduation, he has accepted a post-doc position at Morsani College of Medicine, USF.

Long Zhao

Novel Models and Algorithms for Uncertainty Management in Power Systems

Long earned his B.S. in Engineering (2006) and M.S. in Computer Science (2009) at XianJiaotong University, China. He is from Shandong, China and plans to pursue a career in

industry upon graduation.

Fethullah Caliskan

The Impact of Organizations Collaboration Strategies and Alliance Network Positions on

Invention Performance

Fethullah earned his B.S. in Industrial Engineering (2001) and M.A. in Human Resources

Mgmt. (2006) from Marmara University, Turkey, and his M.S.I.E. from USF (2013). Upon

graduation he will move to Atlanta, GA with his family. He is from Denizli, Turkey.


7/8

INFORMS@USF OutreachGreat American Teach-In

INFORMS@USF participated in the 2013 Great

American Teach-in on November 21st, 2013 at the Ben HillMiddle School, Tampa, FL. It was a great opportunity for

us to share with the middle school students what Industrial

Engineering is and what kinds of jobs we do. A Lego

assembly line was simulated, and later the students came

up with ways to improve the process. This is now part of

the INFORM@USF student chapter on-going community

engagement activities.

Future City 2013

The INFORMS@USF will participate as coaches in

the Future City at Berkeley Preparatory School. TheFuture City Competition is a national, project-based

learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th

grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. This

competition engages students in engineering principles.


8/8

INFORMS @ USF | Fall 2013

Industrial and Managment Systems Engineering

University of South Florida

4202 E Fowler Ave, ENB 118

Tampa, FL 33620

2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter

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