INFORMS @ USF A Message from the New President

After an action packed year from 2010-2011, the INFORMS@USF chapter has begun the 2011 academic hitting the ground running. Although our department is facing something of a rebuilding year with six PhD students graduating and only three entering the program, we are encouraged by the way others have stepped up to fill the shoes of those departed. This year the Chapter is continuing the tradition of holding numerous social events, participating in community outreach, and maintaining an active lecture series. These activities promote a strong sense of community within our department; it seems unique that each student knows every other student in their department by name. These also provide valuable networking opportunities and exposure to cutting edge research, allowing us all to grow socially and academically. We have a huge number of students presenting at the annual meeting, which is a testament to our departments commitment to promoting student success. The 2010-2011 academic year promises to be exciting and engaging. I sincerely hope that everyone continues to work hard on their studies as well as building the social network that has developed here over the years. It is only through your involvement that the department and INFORMS@USF chapter continue to be successful, and that is greatly appreciated by myself and the other officers.

OR on the Field...
The former president of INFORMS @USF asked: "Who wants to help in a medical mission in Dominic Republic?" "I wanna do that!" I said. We set up the trip in less than 3 weeks. During that time, I had the respective training to apply all the initiatives designed by the team with the objective of improving the logistics involved in medical missions. So I was an engineer/physician for a week, awesome! It was an incredible experience. My role as engineer was about being the logistic specialist in a team conformed by 70 physicians (and consider that I never had real logistic experiences before). And as a person, is about those instants that you say: engineering rocks!. I only have to mention that the trip was only the icing on the cake, after a semester of hard work of my teammates Laila Cure, Anna Danandeh, Ozan Ozcan, Mehrnaz Abdollahian, Roberto Garuti and Alfredo Santana at USF. By: Diego Martinez

Committee 2011-2012
President Vice President Treasurer Secretary Lecture Series Coordinators Webmasters OR Times Editors Ludwig Kuznia Long Zhao Javad Sajjadi Monica Puertas Mehrnaz Abdollahian Serkan Gunpinar Eleazar Gil Felipe Feijoo Anna Danandeh Florentino Rico

Volume 8, Issue 1 Fall 2011 s issue: Inside thi

t Corner .2 ate Studen hedule . The Doctor nference sc Informs co ts ..3 USF studen .. 4 mn . . Alumni Colu . otos.. F in Ph INFORMS@US

A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF

The Doctorate Student Corner Non-pharmaceutical interventions for the mitigation of pandemic influenza outbreaks
Current approaches for pandemic mitigation utilize both pharmaceutical interventions (PHI), which include vaccines and antiviral drugs, and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI), which include among other measures social distancing, quarantine, isolation, school and workplace closure, and travel restrictions. There are, however, certain challenges with the use of PHI at the critical early stages of a pandemic. As evidenced by the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, with the emergence of a new virus subtype, a surge production of a potent vaccine in sufficient quantities can take up to nine months. At the same time, to use antivirals as an effective prophylactic measure generally requires a substantial level of stockpile, which can be infeasible due to prohibiting production and storage costs. Also, the use of a large-scale antiviral-based prophylaxis can result in some strains of influenza becoming antiviral resistant while maintaining infectiousness. NPIs have the advantage of being available in the early phases of a pandemic and thus can reduce pressure on health service providers allowing them time to procure, distribute, and administer vaccines and antiviral. NPIs are particularly important in developing countries that do not count with the resources needed for effective pharmaceutical intervention strategies. Some of the NPIs have already been incorporated into national pandemic preparedness plans, existing WHO recommendations and in the guidelines of the CDC. However, a careful review of the above plans and guidelines reveals that there is no consistent NPI strategy of when and how to implement these interventions. The plans and guidelines vary in their definitions of declaration thresholds, implementation stages, target population, and implementation logistics. Some of the recent papers on simulation-based models for pandemic influenza mitigation, have examined various non -pharmaceutical intervention strategies. Our review of these papers found differences in the assumptions regarding some of the key model parameters, such as intervention initiation, duration of the intervention phases, composition of risk groups, compliance levels, and other NPI related parameters. Based on our literature review we believe there is a need for a better understanding of the dynamics behind nonpharmaceutical interventions and parameter selection. Our overall research objective is to develop a decision-aid methodology to support the design of non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies for the mitigation of pandemic influenza outbreaks. This methodology will provide a better understanding of the science of interventions and will ultimately empower public health policy makers with strategies to minimize the impact of pandemic outbreaks in our quality of life. By: Dayna Lee Martnez PhD. Candidate

Congratulations to IBM best student paper winner, Dongping!

Dongping Du, our doctoral student, won first place in the IBM Best Student Paper competition at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference (EMBC)2011, September 2 in Boston for her paper titled as Multiscale modeling of glycosylation modulation dynamics in cardiac electrical signaling. The competition is peer-reviewed and finalists selected based on the merits of submissions, conference presentations and corresponding nominations. She also received free conference registration and a $1,200 monetary award. Dongping Du is under the supervision of Hui Yang, assistant professor in IMSE, and Eric Bennett, professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology. http://www.embs.org/news/117-embc-2011-student-awards

Upcoming Lecture Series

Dr. James Luedtke University of Wisconsin-Madison "Branch-and-Cut Approaches for Chance-Constrained Formulations of Reliable Network Design" Nov. 28th, 2011 12pm-1pm, MSC 3705

Where are our graduates now?

Wilkistar Otieno
Graduation Date: PhD in IE, August 2010 Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, University of WisconsinMilwaukee Location: Milwaukee, WI Research Interests: Reliability Engineering with Application to Nanotechnology and Energy Systems, Statistical Design of Experiments and Analysis and Engineering Education.

Vishnuteja Nanduri
Graduation Date: PhD in IE, August 2009 Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, University of WisconsinMilwaukee Location: Milwaukee, WI Research Interests include stochastic optimization, simulation-based optimization, and game-theoretic modeling. My application areas of interest are energy and environmental policy modeling.

Cihan Babayigit
Graduation Date: PhD in IMSE, Fall 2007 Position: Business Process Manager, Turkis Restaurant Chain Location: Vienna, Austria Job Description: Market Modeling, Pricing, Business Analytics

Patricio Rocha
Graduation Date: PhD in IE, Summer 2011 Position: Engineer, Resource Adequacy Planning Department, PJM Interconnection Location: Norristown, PA Research Interests/ Job Description: Market Analytics in Electric Power Systems; Reliability in Electric Power Systems

Andres Uribe-Sanchez
Graduation Date: PhD in IE, Fall 2010 Position: Post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of California San Diego Location: San Diego, CA Job Description: Research in the area of real-time interactive cancer treatment plan optimization

Alcides Santander
Graduation Date: PhD in IE, Summer 2010 Position: Assistant Professor at Universidad del Norte Location: Barranquilla, Colombia Research Interests include simulation-based optimization, healthcare engineering and supply chain

2011 INFORMS Annual meeting at Charlotte

Sunday, November 13th: Ludwig Kuznia, Multi-Period Hybrid Power System Design for Remote Areas Long Zhao, Tree-based Multi-dimensional Lifting Function and It's Application Ludwig Kuznia, A Primal Algorithm for Solving Chance Constrained Mixed Integer Programming Problems Felipe Feijoo, Generation expansion planning with a real options approach under cap and trade regulation and stochastic fuel price variations Monday, November 14th: Yu An, Mitigation of Hub Congestion: Temporary Hubs and Dynamic Routes Seyed Javad Sajjadi, A Two-layer Network Model and the Algorithm Tuesday November 15th: Long Zhao, An Exact Algorithm for 2-Stage Robust Model with MIP Recourse and its Applications in Power Systems Anna Danandeh, A Scheduling Model with Dynamic Electricity Price and Local Generator Ludwig Kuznia, Long Term Planning for Palliative Chemotherapy for Late Stage Cancer Patients Wednesday November 16th: Sandro Paz, A Multiple Pickup Route Optimization Problem Monica Puertas, Determining Patient Flow and Resource Utilization Diego Martinez, Post-surgical Complication Patterns Based on Laboratory Test Results and Electrical Heart Signals Oguz Cimenler, A decision on innovativeness focusing on an efficinet social network structure: A complete network (graph) approach Dayna Lee Martinez, Non-pharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza Long Zhao, Robust Network Design Problems Fethullah Caliskan, Impact of Organizations' Networking Structure on Innovative Performance Serkan Gunpinar, A Multiple Period Stochastic Coal Transportation and Inventory Model

INFORMS@USF in Photos
Members of our student chapter, faculty and staff from the IMSE department shared a fun afternoon of karaoke and dinner at the INFORMS@USF welcome event (September 16th, 2011).

INFORMS@USF students participated in the INFORMS annual Halloween party hosted by Monica Puertas and Sandro Paz (October 29th, 2011)

Volume 8, Issue 1
Our INFORMS@USF guest speaker series has been a success: Dr. Cetinkaya from Texas A & M and Dr. Jeffrey W. Herrmann from the University of Maryland visited and shared their work with our community.

Fall 2011
IMSE 4202 E. Fowler Ave. ENB 118 Tampa FL, 33620 Tel: (813) 974-5591 Fax: (813) 974-974-5953
informs@eng.usf.edu

OR Newsletter Editors: Anna Danandeh Florentino Rico

http://informs.eng.usf.edu 4