Claude brings 37 years of experience and leadership in information technology, process automation, enterprise architecture, and software implementation. His expertise includes building and leading successful teams focused on results, improving business processes based on business strategy and long-term company vision and goals, and delivering value-added to internal and external customers. Prior to South Shore Furniture, Claude was an information technology consultant specializing in the wood and paper industry.
Mr. Bernier lives in Quebec City, Canada. When he his not working he enjoys hiking and camping in National Parks across North America.
The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute is honored to have Claude join us to help determine SCL's future direction.
]]>“There have been enormous changes in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, with deep learning algorithms developed that have been quite disruptive,” Xie said. “But in theoretical terms, we don’t understand very well how and why these algorithms, which use complex neural networks, work the way they do.”
Her project aims to build a bridge between statistical hypothesis testing and modern machine learning, leveraging deep learning to develop efficient, powerful testing tools for high-dimensional and complex data (akin to the role hypothesis testing has played in previous decades), and also use-testing to develop principled validation tools for machine learning models and provide the foundation of deep models themselves. It’s essential to push the theoretical understanding of deep learning algorithms, so they have what Xie calls “proof of reliability”; in other words, users can know whether or not these algorithms will be reliable in practical situations, such as with stochastic power systems or supply chain issues. Other end-use cases include disease outbreak detection and healthcare systems.
The research tasks are built on multidisciplinary expertise and strong collaborations between the project’s co-PIs: These include ISyE faculty members George Lan, A. Russell Chandler III Professor, and Tuo Zhao, assistant professor; Mark Davenport, associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Xiuyuan Cheng, assistant professor of mathematics at Duke University.
]]>H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
]]>Georgia Tech Researchers Receive $2.5 Million Grant to Focus on Improving Atlanta-Area Transportation Through Holistic Community Approach
Researchers from Georgia Tech have been awarded a $2.5 million National Science Foundation Smart and Connected Communities Grant to develop systems that will improve travel mobility, safety, equity, and sustainability using the city of Peachtree Corners, Ga., as an immersive living lab.
During the course of the four-year project, the research team will develop tools and evaluate policies that will allow communities to leverage advances in information, communication, and sensor technologies in a quantifiable manner to achieve sustainable travel goals.
The project’s principal investigator, Frederick R. Dickerson Chair and Professor Srinivas Peeta, explained that the crux of the work lies in analyzing and fusing qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources, including emerging technologies—like sensors that collect large volumes of data—and communications strategies like community feedback surveys.
“In any city, there are all these resources,” said Peeta, who is jointly appointed in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “For transportation engineers, how do we use all of these technologies and all of the data? How do we use all of this to come up with solutions that are holistic?”
Through the grant, Peeta and the research team will work to create strategies to meet the needs of a diverse set of constituents, with a particular focus on reaching under-represented communities. These include “information deserts” in lower-income neighborhoods, in which residents do not have as much access to smartphones and internet, as well as senior residents for whom technology is an obstacle.
To foster sustainability values in children, the project will involve initiatives in K-12 schools, including engagement roles for a local high school. The researchers will also develop a new community app to provide Peachtree Corners users with information about travel options and collect feedback.
The Georgia Tech researchers are partnering with the City of Peachtree Corners; Gwinnett County Department of Transportation; Tortoise, an artificial intelligence company focused on last-mile delivery logistics and shared micro-mobility; Paul Duke STEM High School in Gwinnett County; and Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners, a publicly-funded test environment designed to advance intelligent mobility and smart city technology.
“Curiosity Lab is a unique public/private partnership that facilitates innovation by others. We are excited to work with Georgia Tech researchers to advance mobility concepts that benefit future generations,” said Betsy Plattenburg, executive director of Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners.
Through this grant, the research team will address the challenges of how to integrate disparate, multi-source data from various stakeholders and use it to systematically generate solutions — in the form of partnerships, behavioral interventions, and policy interventions — to meet sustainability objectives at the community level in a systematic, quantifiable manner over time.
The researchers will utilize methods from multi-objective and multi-agent optimization, machine learning, behavioral economics, and data and policy analytics to generate multi-dimensional solutions.
“We are making steps towards real-time policy analysis and program evaluation with information-based strategies,” said the project’s Co-PI Omar Asensio, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy and director of the Data Science and Policy Lab. “The connections to real-time experiments and observational data feeds will be important. To do this effectively, we will introduce methods of causal inference to isolate the underlying causes of behavior change in travel patterns, which will then feed into more effective machine learning models. Real-time analysis represents a step-change in our ability to understand travel choices related to congestion and sustainability.”
Asensio explained that the move towards real-time analytics can be faster, cheaper and potentially more accurate than traditional government transit surveys, which are slow, costly, and update relatively infrequently.
The Peachtree Corners project will focus on collaboration among three main constituencies: transportation users, providers, and influencers.
“For the users, how can they have a better travel experience? For influencers, what can they do to share information and reach larger groups? And for providers, how can they collaborate?” Peeta said.
Gwinnett County Transit is the main public transportation provider in Peachtree Corners. But there are also private sector companies that provide micromobility options like electric scooters that supplement traditional public transportation.
Influencers are community pillars such as school districts and major employers that have the opportunity to share information about transportation with their constituents and influence travel behavior.
The transportation users in this project are the residents of Peachtree Corners, a diverse population of different ages, abilities, genders, races, and income levels that all have different needs and travel behaviors.
The goal is that after four years, the model will be sustainable in Peachtree Corners and can be replicated in other communities.
“By the end of this project, we hope to have a framework that can be transferred to any city with a smart and connected framework,” Peeta said. “If they’re able to do it there, then it’s transferable elsewhere.”