As ACIE, Van Hentenryck will lead the development of “blue sky” initiatives, foster and nurture a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, facilitate translational research, and build strategic partnerships.

“I am happy that Pascal has agreed to serve as ACIE. In this role, he will be responsible for stimulating strategic thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurship within ISyE,” said School Chair Edwin Romeijn. “Pascal has the energy and drive needed for this role, and he will provide tremendous value to ISyE. I look forward to working with him in this capacity.”

Van Hentenryck’s own research complements this new position. His work centers on artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research. His current focus is to develop methodologies, algorithms, and systems for addressing challenging problems in mobility, energy systems, resilience, and privacy. In the past, his research focused on optimization and the design and implementation of innovative optimization systems, including the CHIP programming system (a Cosytec product), the foundation of all modern constraint programming systems, and the optimization programming language OPL (now an IBM Product).

“I am deeply honored – and also delighted – to take on this new role. There is a convergence of technologies at the union of AI and OR that promises to fundamentally change industrial and systems engineering, and even engineering as a whole,” said Van Hentenryck. “ISyE is ideally positioned to pursue these opportunities, given its strength in methodologies and its domain expertise in a number of disciplines. It is an exciting time, and I look forward to working with the faculty to pursue them.”

Van Hentenryck’s tenure as ACIE began in early October.

“When most people think about engineering, they think of mechanical or civil, but they don’t know — until they are already in college — that they can use industrial engineering and operations research tools to analyze and solve scientific, real-world problems,” explained Bonder. “We want to introduce high school students to the field and its many applications early, so they know it is a future career option.”

Big data and data science are growing fields; and while people may have heard these terms, they typically don’t fully understand their many applications.

“Data science is the idea of using computation to transform data into information, knowledge, insights, and decisions,” explained Van Hentenryck. “Data scientists are changing the world every day, and we want to help develop the next generation.”

This summer, 30 high school students gathered at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering on July 22 to participate in the Seth Bonder Camp in Computational and Data Science for Engineering. The five-day camp, led by Van Hentenryck, teaches basic programming and computer science skills to participants with little or no prior experience in these areas.

Each day began with an interactive lecture from Van Hentenryck, followed by an afternoon in the lab getting hands-on experience to implement the concepts learned. The camp uses Snap!, a visual programming language designed to teach basic programming concepts without the mathematical component. The lessons built on these ideas to show how data science is changing social science, machine learning, medicine, biology, and engineering. The campers even learned how to create a program to solve Sudoku in seconds.

“Pascal does a wonderful job taking a difficult concept and breaking it down so the students can understand it,” said Bonder. “He makes it fun and lighthearted, which makes it more appealing to the students who may be considering industrial engineering or operations research as a career choice.”

Van Hentenryck thoroughly enjoyed his time working on the camp. “It is an opportunity to go back in time and rediscover the awe I felt when I realized how to use computing for solving complex engineering problems,” he reflected. “I try to give them the confidence to dive into the field and build solutions.”

At the conclusion of the camp, several students told Van Hentenryck that they wanted to become engineers and asked to keep in touch. A few even asked him to serve as a mentor for high school research projects in the coming year.

To further their mission of increased awareness of data science and operations research among as many high school students as possible, Van Hentenryck and Bonder hope to eventually create a free online version of the course that will be open to anyone interested in learning more about this growing field.

Seth Bonder (1932-2011) was the founder and CEO of Vector Research, an operations research consulting firm. He served as faculty, and then adjunct faculty, in the industrial engineering department at the University of Michigan and as the 27th president of the Operations Research Society of America. Bonder won numerous awards throughout his career and was an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering. He earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Ohio State University.

To honor this event, Justin Betancourt, an alumnus of the Master’s in Supply Chain program and former VP of Operations and Finance at the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), offered a treasure trove of insights and reflections about his impactful journey that started at ISyE. 

Currently, Betancourt works at Delta Air Lines as a Project Manager in Workforce Planning and Analytics, where he applies his supply chain expertise from ISyE in a distinctive manner. 

Automating the Aviation Workforce 

“I like to think of my role as managing the supply chain of manpower. My job revolves around staffing at various airports, ensuring we maintain a harmoniously balanced staffing system throughout the country”. 

Highlighting the significant improvements in efficiency brought about by automation, Betancourt believes that removing repetitive and manual tasks from the equation streamlines processes and substantially lowers the chances of human error. 

This change allows staff to engage in more meaningful work, thereby enhancing overall operational efficiency. 

Betancourt shared his insights on the transformative impact of data analytics and automation. "Sometimes, the airline industry is perceived as slow to adapt due to its complexity and regulatory environment, but what's truly revolutionizing our sector is the investment in data analytics and automation." 

In his vision, the future of the aviation industry, and indeed many other sectors, lies in the harmonious integration of automation with human ingenuity.  

Betancourt’s insights into APICS 

As a founding member of APICS at Georgia Tech, Betancourt's contributions were instrumental in shaping the then-nascent organization.  

While reflecting on his motivation for joining the organization, Betancourt reminisced, “I wanted to be involved in APICS to get people in the same room and get them talking about what they're learning in school, challenge each other and grow together by networking.” 

Faced with the unforeseen challenges posed by COVID-19, Betancourt and his team demonstrated remarkable resilience and ingenuity by combining virtual and in-person engagements to adapt to the new circumstances. 

During his time at APICS, Betancourt was notably involved in strategic collaborations, particularly with the Supply Chain Institute and its director Tim Brown, under whom he also served as a teaching assistant.  

Their synergy facilitated a series of insightful seminars and discussions, enriching the learning experience for students. APICS capitalized on these opportunities, ensuring students had access to cutting-edge knowledge in supply chain advancements and research. 

Betancourt fondly recalls a key event during his APICS tenure: hosting the founder of the Project Management Institute. This seminar, primarily a success due to the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute and Tim Brown, highlighted crucial project management principles  

Beyond academic enrichment, these initiatives served as dynamic platforms for student networking, connecting them with industry leaders, faculty, and fellow students, thereby nurturing a community dedicated to collective learning and development. 

SCL Career Fair’s Networking Power 

Betancourt recalls the SCL Career Fair, as a standout event for networking, especially for those pursuing careers in supply chain management.  

“The SCL Career fair is probably the best opportunity to network with Industry professionals. Since it’s specific to supply chain roles and companies, it feels a lot more unique and intimate” Betancourt said.  

Giving thought on his journey, Betancourt shares how the career fair's specialized focus on supply chain allowed for engaging, in-depth discussions with company delegates. He credits the fair for facilitating valuable professional relationships, which notably played a role in his eventual position at Delta. 

Regarding guidance for students aspiring to careers in supply chain management, Betancourt stresses the necessity of being forward-thinking and adaptable. He asserts, "Plan ahead, think critically, and stay resilient. These qualities are indispensable in navigating the complexities of supply chain logistics." 

_______

Author: Atharva Anand Dave 

References: 

Justin Betancourt, PMP - Procter & Gamble | LinkedIn. (n.d.). https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinbetancourt 

The pair submitted their proposal, “Strategic Investment to Scale-up Aviation Biofuel,” to the Climate CoLab’s Aviation contest category. They proposed that one large country (the U.S., China, or Brazil) or coordinated region (e.g., the EU) intensely ramp up aviation biofuel production, along with associated coproducts such as diesel fuel, to a level of about 120 million tons of biomass by the year 2030. They specifically focused on the feasibility of China to contribute to this initiative.

Emphasizing technology development for aviation biofuel within a particular country would result in gaining expertise in the most efficient pathway. Plausible ways to develop a stable supply and demand for biofuel include the following:

• Collaborating with neighboring countries to establish an efficient supply chain.
• Working with suppliers and airlines that are taking initiatives to use biofuel.
• A common fuel distribution system can be established in the airports of China, similar to the bioports implemented in Amsterdam, Holland and Oslo, Norway. This way all the operators flying into these airports will be refueled by biofuel.
• With the European Union including the aviation industry in its emission trading system since 2012, a strategic alignment could be made between the EU and China to substantiate the investment.

Arulselvan and Thomas’s proposal was particularly commended by the contest judges for its potential impact to considerably reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

To learn more about the pair’s proposal, read here: http://bit.ly/2cJQPjU.

Watch a video about the pair’s work here: https://youtu.be/un9Ve3V5w8M.

About Valerie Thomas and Suriya Arulselvan

Suriya Arulselvan is a process modeling engineer at Aspen Technology in Bedford, MA. She has a Master of Science in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech, and a Bachelor of Technology in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchipappalli.

Valerie Thomas is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems in ISyE, with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy. Her research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning.

About the Climate CoLab

The goal of the Climate CoLab is to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people from all around the world to address global climate change.

Inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence has developed this crowdsourcing platform where people work with experts and each other to create, analyze, and select detailed proposals for what to do about climate change.

By constructively engaging a broad range of scientists, policy makers, business people, investors, and concerned citizens, the hope is that the Climate CoLab will help to develop, and gain support for, climate change plans that are better than any that would have otherwise been developed.

Anyone can join the Climate CoLab community and participate. Community members are invited to submit and comment on proposals outlining ideas for what they think should be done about climate change. In some contests, members create proposals for specific kinds of actions such as generating electric power with fewer emissions or changing social attitudes about climate change. In other contests, members combine ideas from many other proposals to create integrated climate action plans for a country, a group of countries, or the whole world. Experts evaluate the entries and pick finalists, and then both experts and community members select the most promising proposals.

In sharing his perspective, he seeks to guide recent graduates on the realities of experiencing their first job postgraduation.  

Originating from India, Shah embarked on his academic journey in Mechanical Engineering at the Vellore Institute of Technology. After dedicating four and a half years to honing his skills in Supply Chain and Network Design he made a strategic decision to further his expertise by pursuing a master’s degree from Georgia Tech. 

Following graduation, Shah embarked on a career at Amazon, where he is currently flourishing as an Innovation and Design Engineer.  

His journey at Amazon began with an internship through the SCL Amazon Scholars Program, a pivotal experience that laid the groundwork for his transition to a full-time role.  

Shah offers the following tips, tricks and insights on how recent graduates can make the most out of their first job: 

• Take full advantage of company-provided resources for continuous skill enhancement, such as free online certifications and training 

• Seize every chance to network within and beyond one's industry, one can never know which of these connections might offer assistance in the future 

When prompted for insights into prudent financial strategies, Shah recommends: 

• Read the book “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” by Ramit Sethi, it’s ideal for fresh graduates to start their financial savings journey early 

Finally, when inquired about her networking strategies, Shah suggests: 

• Apart from the career fairs, students should take advantage of the various ISyE internal and affiliated chapters, they can connect you with working professionals who are able to guide you on your career path or refer you for future opportunities 

• Try finding conferences near you, these are the best networking opportunities where you are likely to be able to have conversations with well positioned leadership from multiple companies 

• While networking, keep the conversation light and include mix of both technical and non-technical topics 

__________

Author: Atharva A. Dave

Yuming Sun, a Ph.D. student studying Operations Research at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has been honored with the 2023 Seth Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Health Services.

The Seth Bonder scholarship is a prestigious student award in the INFORMS Health Applications Society, that promotes the development and application of process modeling and operations research analysis to healthcare design, delivery, and operations.

Officially unveiled on Sunday, October 15th at the INFORMS Annual Meeting Awards Banquet, Sun was recognized for his exceptional research addressing the urgent need to focus on the threats posed by “circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus” (cVDPV).

Pioneering Solutions in Polio Eradication

Sun’s research proposal emphasized the ongoing challenges in reducing polio transmission on a global scale and mitigating vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks -- offering hope for a polio-free world.

His work consists of modeling the spread of poliovirus in high-risk spaces, while investigating cost-effective options to stop, prevent, and end polio outbreaks.

“Vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreaks are a result of the live-attenuated viruses used in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) reverting to cVDPV in under-vaccinated communities. cVDPV leads to poliovirus transmission and potentially paralysis among infected individuals.”

A Visionary Collaboration

With his research advancement, Sun emerges as a trailblazer, potentially being the first ISyE student in over two decades to receive this revered award.

Under the guidance of his advisors, Pinar Keskinocak and Lauren Steimle, Sun has “closely collaborated with researchers in the Global Immunization Division at the CDC, and regularly incorporates their feedback into his models.”

The invaluable feedback from the CDC team has enriched the impact, positioning Yuming at the forefront of this critical research.

Hailing from Panama, Avila pursued her Bachelor of Science in Logistics and Supply chain at the Technological University of Panama. Along this remarkable path, she nurtured her skills and expertise through invaluable experiences at renowned organizations like GlaxoSmithKline and Grainger.

Avila currently shines as a Business Operations Analyst in the Global Production Planning department at Dell Technologies, contributing her talents to shape the future of supply chain operations.

Avila’s dedication towards academia was further bolstered when she was awarded a scholarship to pursue her master's degree at Georgia Tech. Like many of her peers, Avila navigated the intricate path of securing her inaugural job with unwavering determination.

Avila shares some tips, tricks and insights on how recent graduates can make the most out of their first job:

• Create a list of companies they’re interested in working with

• Having an open-minded approach and emphasizing that fresh graduates secure multiple learning opportunity

When prompted for insights into prudent financial strategies tailored for recent graduates, Avila recommends:

• Studying the market average salary for the position that you want

• Be aware of their self-perceived value and the prevalent industry norms

Finally, when inquired about her networking strategies, Avila suggests:

• Create a list of probably attendees and conduct research regarding their research and background

• Strike up a conversation with them regarding the interests, which will ultimately forging meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships

Out of a total of 40 submissions, four were designated as finalists. The winner will be chosen at the October 15-18, 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting taking place in Phoenix Arizona, during which the finalists will showcase their work in a dedicated session. All finalists receive a commemorative plaque, and the winning entrant(s) receives a $500 honorarium. In addition, the winning paper, if not published or under review elsewhere, will be invited for a fast-track review at Transportation Science.

Dipayan Banerjee
Fleet Sizing and Service Region Partitioning for Same-Day Delivery Systems

Many existing Same-Day Delivery (SDD) studies focus primarily on operational dispatch problems and do not consider system design questions. Furthermore, prior work on SDD system design does not consider the fleet sizing decision when a service region may be partitioned into zones dedicated to individual vehicles (such designs have been shown to improve system efficiency in related vehicle routing settings). Banerjee's research utilizes a novel approach to addressing two key tactical design challenges when planning an SDD system: figuring out how many delivery vehicles you need and dividing the delivery area into manageable zones.

Using continuous approximations to capture average-case operational behavior, the problem of independently maximizing the area of a single-vehicle delivery zone is considered first. The approach then characterizes area-maximizing dispatching policies and leverages the results to develop a procedure for calculating optimal areas as a function of a zone's distance from the depot, given a maximum number of daily dispatches per vehicle. Using minimal computation, the approach specifies fleet sizes and builds vehicle delivery zones that meet operational requirements, verified by simulation results.

Sushil Varma
Electric Vehicle Fleet and Charging Infrastructure Planning

Varma's research focuses on finding the best way to dispatch electric vehicles to pick up customers while making sure they charge periodically. As customer requests arrive, system operators must determine the minimum number of vehicles and chargers for a given service level, along with a matching and charging policy that maximizes that service level. Varma's approach provides a sharp characterization of the fleet size and the charging infrastructure requirements as demand grows. The research highlights the fundamental differences between planning for an electric vehicle system and a gas-powered system. To understand the difference, note that serving a customer comprises two steps -  pickup and trip, each contributing to the fleet size requirement of the system. As EVs require charging time, they need more vehicles to compensate for the trip part of the service. In turn, the optimal dispatching policy can reduce the EV requirement induced by the pick up part of the service by lowering the pickup times, owing to the extra EVs due to the trip phase. The reduction in the EV requirement depends on the number of charging stations and the size of the EV battery packs. 

The research proposes the "Power-of-d" dispatching policy, which achieves this performance by selecting the d closest vehicles to a trip request and choosing the one with the highest battery level. Varma also conducted detailed simulations that verified the scaling results. The paper discusses how the results extend to accommodate demand that increases/decreases repetitively or cyclically over time.

About Dipayan

Dipayan Banerjee is a fifth-year ISyE Ph.D. candidate advised by Professors Alan Erera and Alejandro Toriello. He is broadly interested in optimization for logistics and supply chain management with a focus on modern e-commerce systems. His doctoral research, supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Eisenhower Transportation Research Fellowship, studies demand management and delivery optimization for e-retail fulfillment. Dipayan was jointly awarded ISyE's Atlanta Air Cargo Association Fellowship for Ph.D. Research Excellence in Supply Chain Engineering in 2022. In addition to being named a finalist for the 2023 INFORMS TSL Society Best Student Paper Award, he also was a finalist for the 2019 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize.

About Sushil

Sushil Varma, also a 5th-year ISyE Ph.D. student, is advised by Professor Siva Theja Maguluri. His research interests include queueing theory, game theory, and revenue management with applications in electric vehicles, online marketplaces like ride-hailing, load balancing, and stochastic processing/matching networks. Sushil was awarded the Stephen. S. Lavenberg Best Student Paper Award in IFIP Performance 2021 and the Alice and John Jarvis Best Student Paper Award in 2022.

We extend our wishes for success to both of these remarkable students. Their dedication, hard work, and commitment to their research have already set them on a remarkable path. Regardless of the outcome, their recognition is a testament to academic excellence.

Preference for the fellowships is given to students choosing the new Systems Design track, which incorporates two courses from mechanical engineering – robotics and mechatronics, in addition to a new ISyE course on supply chain systems design. The purpose of the track is to prepare students for roles in supply chain facilities’ engineering and design, as well as a broader range of supply chain systems design roles.

Priority is also given to underrepresented minorities and female students. Amazon is supporting ISyE and the SCL to reach out to students in transfer programs with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or schools that are otherwise are majority minority.

About the Fellowship Recipients

Gil Malengreaux, who hails from Belgium, did both his undergraduate – in electromechanical engineering – and master’s work – in industrial engineering and operations research (IEOR) – at Ghent University. He is in ISyE’s in the Master of Supply Chain Engineering (MS SCE) program on a Fulbright scholarship to the U.S.

Malengreaux said that he chose the supply chain engineering program because ISyE has one of the top programs internationally. “With a generic, broad master’s degree in IEOR, I wanted to learn how I can apply these techniques within a supply chain setting,” he explained. “My IEOR background provides me a multidisciplinary view on businesses and industry, but I believe that there’s so much exciting innovation in the world of logistics and fulfilment, that highly specialized profiles are indispensable to optimize these systems, and make them more efficient, durable, and sustainable. The sustainability aspect is what really interests me.”

Angela Moore completed her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, MA.

“I'm fascinated by the interconnectivity of complex systems within the global supply chain,” Moore said. “From my experience in production, inventory management, system implementation, and procurement, I've seen how a small decision in one department can have a large impact on the entire system. I'd like to use my industry experience with the supply chain engineering curriculum to help strategically plan out future supply chain systems.

“When I graduate from the MS SCE program, I want design innovative supply chain systems that reduce waste while being agile and responsive. I'd like to work with a group of people that are interested in challenging current processes.”

Kiara Moore received her bachelor’s degree in computer science with a mathematics minor from Atlanta, GA’s Spelman College. Spelman is an all-women’s college and the No. 1-ranked HBCU.

She selected Georgia Tech for her master’s degree because “it has been a dream school for me. Georgia Tech is known for educating some of the top professionals in the industry. Not only is Tech ranked highly for engineering, ISyE is the No. 1 school in its field.

“Further,” she noted, “ISyE offers programs that partner with different companies to provide real-world experience. Without hesitation I knew Tech and ISyE would be the best choice for me.”

Following this dream education experience, Moore’s dream job will be working on the business side of supply chain engineering.

Krithika Srinivasan comes to ISyE from India, where she received her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). Srinivasan said that “VIT is known worldwide for its cosmopolitan atmosphere and its beautiful campus. I enjoyed my four years there, where I made the best of friends and worked with some of the best faculty.

“I believe supply chain engineering plays an important role in any industry, as it involves optimization of processes, customer satisfaction, and employee welfare,” she explained. “It is central to the holistic development of a company, as well as the idea that a small, seemingly insignificant change can change the fortunes of a company. Also, any supply chain connects people around the world, giving it a global reach that enriches numerous cultures.”

Her dream job, she says, “is one that would let me be creative and provide solutions to problems that would result in the satisfaction of the end user. Supply chain engineering brings together my passion for engineering as well as my problem solving skills, and I hope to help as many people as I can.”

For more information on ISyE’s MS SCE program, visit https://www.isye.gatech.edu/academics/masters/supply-chain-engineering.

For questions or if you are interested in applying for an Amazon Fellowship, visit https://www.scl.gatech.edu/outreach/amazonfellow.

The annual event is scheduled to be held from the 18th to the 21st of May in Montreal, Canada.  

Widely considered the largest industrial and systems Engineering event of the year, it attracts the participation of leading industry professionals.  

With various paper presentations from reputable teaching institutions worldwide, the IISE Conference is popular among students and faculty eager to present their research work. 

In conjunction with his role as the chair professor, Dr. Montreuil holds pivotal positions as the Director of the Physical Internet Center and Co-director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at ISyE. 

Dr. Montreuil’s prolific research endeavors center around the formulation of techniques, methodologies, and concepts for optimizing, transforming, and enabling businesses, supply chains, and value creation networks to excel in our dynamically evolving hyperconnected global landscape. 

Throughout his four decades of research, Dr. Montreuil is credited with introducing a set of paradigm-challenging leading-edge contributions that have and continue to reform the industrial engineering industry.  

Having contributed to and published more than 250 scientific publications and communications, Dr. Montreuil is a renowned industry professional, academician, and researcher who continues to transform and nurture the aspirations of future scholars and industry professionals. 

Yao Xie

Sequential Predictive Conformal Inference for Time Series | Chen Xu, Yao Xie

We present a new distribution-free conformal prediction algorithm for sequential data (e.g., time series), called the \textit{sequential predictive conformal inference} (\texttt{SPCI}). We specifically account for the nature that time series data are non-exchangeable, and thus many existing conformal prediction algorithms are not applicable. The main idea is to adaptively re-estimate the conditional quantile of non-conformity scores (e.g., prediction residuals), upon exploiting the temporal dependence among them. More precisely, we cast the problem of conformal prediction interval as predicting the quantile of a future residual, given a user-specified point prediction algorithm. Theoretically, we establish asymptotic valid conditional coverage upon extending consistency analyses in quantile regression. Using simulation and real-data experiments, we demonstrate a significant reduction in interval width of \texttt{SPCI} compared to other existing methods under the desired empirical coverage.

Xiaoming Huo

Conformalization of Sparse Generalized Linear Models | Etash Guha, Eugene Ndiaye, Xiaoming Huo

Given a sequence of observable variables $(x_1, y_1), \ldots, (x_n, y_n)$, the conformal prediction method estimates a confidence set for $y_{n+1}$ given $x_{n+1}$ that is valid for any finite sample size by merely assuming that the distribution is permutation invariant. Although attractive, computing such a set is infeasible in most regression problems. Indeed, in these cases, the unknown variable $y_{n+1}$ can take an infinite number of possible values, and generating conformal sets requires retraining a predictive model for each of them. In this paper, we focus on a sparse model with only a subset of variables for prediction, and we leverage numerical continuation techniques to efficiently approximate the solution path. The key property we exploit is that the set of selected variables is invariant under a small perturbation of the input data. Therefore, it is sufficient to enumerate and refit the model only at the change points of the set of active features and smoothly interpolate the rest of the solution via a predictor-corrector mechanism. We show how our path-following algorithm accurately approximates conformal prediction sets and illustrate its performance using synthetic and real data examples.

Tuo Zhao

Effective Minkowski Dimension of Deep Nonparametric Regression: Function Approximation and Statistical Theories | Zixuan Zhang, Minshuo Chen, Mengdi Wang, Wenjing Liao, Tuo Zhao

Existing theories on deep nonparametric regression have shown that when the input data lie on a low-dimensional manifold, deep neural networks can adapt to the intrinsic data structures. In real world applications, such an assumption of data lying exactly on a low dimensional manifold is stringent. This paper introduces a relaxed assumption that the input data are concentrated around a subset of $\RR^d$ denoted by $\cS$, and the intrinsic dimension of $\cS$ can be characterized by a new complexity notation — effective Minkowski dimension. We prove that, the sample complexity of deep nonparametric regression only depends on the effective Minkowski dimension of $\cS$ denoted by $p$. We further illustrate our theoretical findings by considering nonparametric regression with an anisotropic Gaussian random design $N(0,\Sigma)$, where $\Sigma$ is full rank. When the eigenvalues of $\Sigma$ have an exponential or polynomial decay, the effective Minkowski dimension of such an Gaussian random design is $p=\cO(\sqrt{\log n})$ or $p=\cO(n^\gamma)$, respectively, where $n$ is the sample size and $\gamma\in(0,1)$ is a small constant depending on the polynomial decay rate. Our theory shows that, when the manifold assumption does not hold, deep neural networks can still adapt to the effective Minkowski dimension of the data, and circumvent the curse of the ambient dimensionality for moderate sample sizes.

Less is More: Task-aware Layer-wise Distillation for Language Model Compression | Chen Liang, Simiao Zuo, Qingru Zhang, Pengcheng He, Weizhu Chen, Tuo Zhao

Layer-wise distillation is a powerful tool to compress large models (i.e. teacher models) into small ones (i.e., student models). The student distills knowledge from the teacher by mimicking the hidden representations of the teacher at every intermediate layer. However, layer-wise distillation is difficult. Since the student has a smaller model capacity than the teacher, it is often under-fitted. Furthermore, the hidden representations of the teacher contain redundant information that the student does not necessarily need for the target task’s learning. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Task-aware layEr-wise Distillation (TED). TED designs task-aware filters to align the hidden representations of the student and the teacher at each layer. The filters select the knowledge that is useful for the target task from the hidden representations. As such, TED reduces the knowledge gap between the two models and helps the student to fit better on the target task. We evaluate TED in two scenarios: continual pre-training and fine-tuning. TED demonstrates significant and consistent improvements over existing distillation methods in both scenarios.

LoSparse: Structured Compression of Large Language Models based on Low-Rank and Sparse Approximation | Yixiao Li, Yifan Yu, Qingru Zhang, Chen Liang, Pengcheng He, Weizhu Chen, Tuo Zhao

Transformer models have achieved remarkable results in various natural language tasks, but they are often prohibitively large, requiring massive memories and computational resources. To re- duce the size and complexity of these models, we propose LoSparse (Low-Rank and Sparse ap- proximation), a novel model compression tech- nique that approximates a weight matrix by the sum of a low-rank matrix and a sparse matrix. Our method combines the advantages of both low- rank approximations and pruning, while avoid- ing their limitations. Low-rank approximation compresses the coherent and expressive parts in neurons, while pruning removes the incoherent and non-expressive parts in neurons. Pruning enhances the diversity of low-rank approxima- tions, and low-rank approximation prevents prun- ing from losing too many expressive neurons. We evaluate our method on natural language under- standing, question answering, and natural lan- guage generation tasks. We show that it signif- icantly outperforms existing compression meth- ods. Our code is publicly available at https: //github.com/yxli2123/LoSparse

Machine Learning Force Fields with Data Cost-Aware Training | Alexander Bukharin, Tianyi Liu, Shengjie Wang, Simiao Zuo, Weihao Gao, Wen Yan, Tuo Zhao

Machine learning force fields (MLFF) have been proposed to accelerate molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, which finds widespread applications in chemistry and biomedical research. Even for the most data-efficient MLFFs, reaching chemical accuracy can require hundreds of frames of force and energy labels generated by expensive quantum mechanical algorithms, which may scale as $O(n^3)$ to $O(n^7)$, with $n$ proportional to the number of basis functions.To address this issue, we propose a multi-stage computational framework — ASTEROID, which lowers the data cost of MLFFs by leveraging a combination of cheap inaccurate data and expensive accurate data. The motivation behind ASTEROID is that inaccurate data, though incurring large bias, can help capture the sophisticated structures of the underlying force field. Therefore, we first train a MLFF model on a large amount of inaccurate training data, employing a bias-aware loss function to prevent the model from overfitting the potential bias of this data. We then fine-tune the obtained model using a small amount of accurate training data, which preserves the knowledge learned from the inaccurate training data while significantly improving the model’s accuracy. Moreover, we propose a variant of ASTEROID based on score matching for the setting where the inaccurate training data are unlabeled. Extensive experiments on MD datasets and downstream tasks validate the efficacy of ASTEROID.Our code and data are available at \url{https://github.com/abukharin3/asteroid}.

Score Approximation, Estimation and Distribution Recovery of Diffusion Models on Low-Dimensional Data | Minshuo Chen, Kaixuan Huang, Tuo Zhao, Mengdi Wang

Diffusion models achieve state-of-the-art performance in various generation tasks. However, their theoretical foundations fall far behind. This paper studies score approximation, estimation, and distribution recovery of diffusion models, when data are supported on an unknown low-dimensional linear subspace. Our result provides sample complexity bounds for distribution estimation using diffusion models. We show that with a properly chosen neural network architecture, the score function can be both accurately approximated and efficiently estimated. Further, the generated distribution based on the estimated score function captures the data geometric structures and converges to a close vicinity of the data distribution. The convergence rate depends on subspace dimension, implying that diffusion models can circumvent the curse of data ambient dimensionality.

SMURF-THP: Score Matching-based UnceRtainty quantiFication for Transformer Hawkes Process | Zichong Li, Yanbo Xu, Simiao Zuo, Haoming Jiang, Chao Zhang, Tuo Zhao, Hongyuan Zha

Transformer Hawkes process models have shown to be successful in modeling event sequence data. However, most of the existing training methods rely on maximizing the likelihood of event sequences, which involves calculating some intractable integral. Moreover, the existing methods fail to provide uncertainty quantification for model predictions, e.g., confidence interval for the predicted event’s arrival time. To address these issues, we propose SMURF-THP, a score-based method for learning Transformer Hawkes process and quantifying prediction uncertainty. Specifically, SMURF-THP learns the score function of the event’s arrival time based on a score-matching objective that avoids the intractable computation. With such a learnt score function, we can sample the arrival time of events from the predictive distribution. This naturally allows for the quantification of uncertainty by computing confidence intervals over the generated samples. We conduct extensive experiments in both event type prediction and uncertainty quantification on time of arrival. In all the experiments, SMURF-THP outperforms existing likelihood-based methods in confidence calibration while exhibiting comparable prediction accuracy.

Juba Ziani

Sequential Strategic Screening | Lee Cohen, Saeed Sharifi-Malvajerdi, Kevin Stangl, Ali Vakilian, Juba Ziani

We initiate the study of strategic behavior in screening processes with multiple classifiers. We focus on two contrasting settings: a “conjunctive” setting in which an individual must satisfy all classifiers simultaneously, and a sequential setting in which an individual to succeed must satisfy classifiers one at a time. In other words, we introduce the combination of strategic classification}with screening processes. We show that sequential screening pipelines exhibit new and surprising behavior where individuals can exploit the sequential ordering of the tests to “zig-zag” between classifiers without having to simultaneously satisfy all of them. We demonstrate an individual can obtain a positive outcome using a limited manipulation budget even when far from the intersection of the positive regions of every classifier. Finally, we consider a learner whose goal is to design a sequential screening process that is robust to such manipulations and provide a construction for the learner that optimizes a natural objective.

Santanu Dey | Anderson-Interface Professor 

As the accomplished A. Russell Chandler III Professor and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, Dr. Santanu Dey was appointed to the endowed professorship position as ISyE’s next Anderson-Interface Professor. Dey brings an extensive amount of knowledge in the area of non-convex optimization, and in particular mixed integer linear and nonlinear programming. 

Xiaoming Huo | A. Russell Chandler III Professor 

Dr. Xiaoming Huo is an admired professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and also serves as the Associate Director for Research in the Institute for Data Science and Engineering (IDEaS). Huo has recently been appointed the professorship and will continue his research work spanning statistical theory, statistical computing, and data analytics, with significant contributions in areas like sparse representation, wavelets, and statistical problems in detectability. 

Mohit Singh | Coca-Cola Foundation Professor 

As an Associate Professor and Director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC), Dr. Mohit Singh was appointed to the professorship as a Coca-Cola Foundation Professor. He brings expertise in discrete optimization, approximation algorithms, and convex optimization. His research focuses on optimizing cloud computing, logistics, network design, and machine learning. 

Kamran Paynabar | Fouts Family Professor 

Dr. Kamran Paynabar has become the Fouts Family Professor and Associate Professor at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research interests lie in the integration of applied and theoretical aspects of data mining and statistical modeling. Prior to this appointment, Paynabar was the Fouts Family Early Career Professor from 2018 to 2023.  

Joel Sokol | Harold E. Smalley Professor 

Professor Joel Sokol is renowned for his work in sports analytics and applied operations research, as the next Harold E. Smalley Professor. Additionally, he serves as the Director of Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary Master of Science in Analytics degree program (MSA). His LRMC method for predictive modeling in the NCAA basketball tournament is widely recognized, and his non-sports research has received prestigious accolades. 

We extend our warmest congratulations to these exceptional individuals on their well-deserved appointments and look forward to their continued contributions to the field of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Karan Agrawal, Chris Carter, Jing Li, Kaibo Liu, Kendall Tyson, and Tuba Yilmaz Gozbasi were all recognized for their great achievements. This annual program showcases how Georgia Tech alumni impact every field worldwide and work to improve the way we live through their diligence and expertise from an early age.
 

Karan Agrawal, IE 19
Senior Manager, Supply Chain | Peloton Interactive

An award-winning supply chain practitioner and thought leader with four years of experience across the U.S., U.K., and Canada in Fortune 500 companies and tech startups, Karan Agrawal currently serves as senior manager, supply chain at Peloton. He has led multiple strategic supply chain initiatives, focused primarily on manufacturing and sourcing with multimillion-dollar scale and impact. Prior to Peloton, he worked at Dell, where he played a critical role in its supply chain digital transformation journey and strengthened the corporate brand through numerous external academic and industry partnerships. Passionate about building diverse communities from the ground up, Agrawal initiated the American Production and Inventory Control Society, or APICS, at Georgia Tech, launched an innovative TED-like storytelling platform at Dell called “Talks @ Dell,” and recently founded Toronto’s first supply chain community.

Favorite Tech Memory: Emceeing the largest cultural show on campus in front of 1,200 attendees at the Ferst Center for the Arts.

Chris Carter, IE 07
Chief Engineer, Executive GM | Toyota Motor North America (HQ)

Chris Carter has 15 years of experience in portfolio management, leadership, instruction, team building, and people development worldwide. Through Georgia Tech Professional Education, he became a Project Management Professional (PMP) & Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP). As chief engineer for Toyota Motor North America, Connected Technologies division, Carter is responsible for portfolio management for all Toyota and Lexus new model infotainment systems, including various technology life cycle management activities. He facilitates a team, leading tech strategy, market research, and global tech life cycle planning. During his tenure, he also worked abroad in Japan for Lexus International, leading midsize segments model years for RX, NX, and ES. Carter is also the academic program director over Project Management and Professor of the Practice candidate at Georgia Tech.

Favorite Tech Memory: Junior’s Grill. I used to have the French Toast Special and chicken finger basket every week.

Jing Li, IE 10
Product Management Sr. Principal | Accenture

With a non-traditional journey from Peace Corps Ukraine to product innovation, Jing Li blends her unique skills and experiences to lay the foundation for the next generation of leaders through education, technology, sustainability, and diversity. She founded the nonprofit Project Ollie to provide Ukrainian educators and learners with humanitarian support and tools to thrive. She helped reduce food waste through IoT sensors, and she advocates for inclusion and diversity in the workplace as well as in the open water swimming community. She was a four-year letterwinner in swimming at Georgia Tech and the former president of the NorCal GT Alumni network.

Favorite Tech Memory: Standing on the 50-yard line as a finalist for Ms. Georgia Tech in fall 2009.

Kaibo Liu, MS Stat 11, PhD IE 13
Professor | University of Wisconsin–Madison

Kaibo Liu is a professor at UW–Madison’s ISyE department and associate director of UW-Madison IoT systems research center. He received a bachelor’s in industrial engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and a master’s in statistics and PhD in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech. His research focuses on system informatics and industrial big data analytics for quality improvement in complex engineering systems. He has won prestigious career awards, including the Innovations in Education Award and the Award for Technical Innovation in Industrial Engineering from the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Favorite Tech Memory: I cherish having earned two degrees in four years and having my first child during my Georgia Tech PhD program.

Kendall Tyson, IE 11
SVP, Finance and Business Intelligence | Seattle Kraken

Kendall Tyson is the senior vice president of finance and business intelligence for the Seattle Kraken, the city’s professional ice hockey team. She oversees the strategic planning, data management, and financial affairs of the Kraken and its affiliates. Before joining the Kraken, Tyson led corporate development at Topgolf, where she evaluated mobile apps, entertainment venues, and golf technology. Earlier in her career, she advised state government agencies on business transformations as a management consultant at Accenture. In addition to her degree from Georgia Tech, Kendall holds a bachelor’s from Emory University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and two children.

Favorite Tech Memory: Walking on the Great Wall of China while studying abroad in Beijing and Singapore.

Tuba Yilmaz Gozbasi, MS OR 11, PhD IE 13
COO & Cofounder | Optiyol

Tuba Yilmaz Gozbasi worked as an operations research consultant at Solvoyo and an assistant professor of operations management at Özyeğin University Faculty of Business. She is currently cofounder and COO of Optiyol, a delivery management SaaS, offering a route optimization engine and a mobile driver app with live tracking capabilities to increase delivery efficiency and improve customer service.

Favorite Tech Memory: I started dating my husband (and partner at Optiyol) while studying for a comprehensive exam in the grad lab.

Michael Biehler (advisor: Professor Jianjun Shi)

• Mary G. and Joseph Natrella Scholarship, American Statistical Association (ASA) (2023)
• Best Student Paper Award (Winner) Quality Control and Reliability Engineering (QCRE) Division, IISE (2023)
  • For the paper: M. Biehler, D. Lin , J. Shi (2023): “DETONATE: Nonlinear Dynamic Evolution Modeling of Time-dependent 3-dimensional Point Cloud Profiles” IISE Transactions
• Best Student Paper Award (Finalist) Data Analytics and Information Systems (DAIS) Division, IISE (2023)
  • For the paper: M. Biehler, A. Kulkarni, J. Li, J. Shi (2023+): “MULTI-MODAL: MULTI-fidelity, multi-modality 3D shape modeler:” submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
• Phillip J. and Delores A. Scott Graduate Student Health and Wellness Award, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Tech (2023)
• IHE-LeaD Fellow, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Interdisciplinary and Health and Environment Leadership Development (2022-2023)

Alina Gorbunova (advisors: Professor Jianjun Shi and Professor Kamran Paynabar)

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2023)

 Shancong Mou (advisor: Professor Jianjun Shi)

• Best Track Paper Award (Winner), Quality Control and Reliability Engineering (QCRE) Division, IISE (2023) 
  • For the paper: Mou, S., Gu, X., Cao, M., Bai, H., Huang, P., Shan, J., Shi, J.*, 2023 “RGI: Robust GAN-Inversion for Generic Pixel-wise Anomaly Detection and Mask-free Image Inpainting”, The International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2023).
• John S.W. Fargher Jr. Scholarship, IISE (2023)
• Angela P. and Reed J. Baker Research Excellence Award, School of ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology (2023)

 Zihan Zhang (advisors: Professor Jianjun Shi and Professor Kamran Paynabar)

• Aerospace and Test Measurement Division Scholarship, ISA (2023)
• ISA Scholarship, ISA (2023)
• Gilbreth Memorial Scholarship, IISE (2023)
• NCORE Student Scholar, National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (2023)

Sustainability Research + Innovation Congress 2023 is the world's largest gathering for the global sustainability community, and for the first time, the event took place in the Latin American and Caribbean Region. SRI unites more than 2000 global sustainability research leaders, government and civil society experts, funders and innovators to inspire action and promote a sustainability transformation. The global and annual event elevates diverse knowledge on sustainability, provides an inspiring platform to share innovative ideas, and creates an inclusive space for collaboration and action. SRI is a joint initiative of Future Earth and the Belmont Forum.

As part of the Fri Jun 30 panel session "Reducing Emissions from Logistics", Thomas discussed "Life-cycle Approaches to Assessing Emissions from Logistics." To help provide the academic perspective, she was joined by Marilyn Brown, Regents' and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy,  who spoke on "Three trends challenging U.S. and global emissions reductions from logistics." The private sector perspective was provided by Alex Rodriguez, Regional Head of Energy Transition Execution - LAM with A.P. Moller - Maersk. Rodriquez provided a broad and interesting discussion of air-water-land logistics, its impact on the environment, and possible future solutions. The session was organized by Jorge Barnett Lawton, Managing Director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center, who also moderated the session from Panama City.

To learn more about the annual event and view available recordings, please visit https://sricongress.org/.

Mei was chosen for his path-breaking research in sequential analysis and change-point detection, seminal contribution to streaming data analysis in machine learning and data science, and outstanding service to the profession.

The ASA will honor him at an awards ceremony on August 8, 2023, during the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Toronto. Professor Mei's nomination was put forth by Roshan Joseph, the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and a professor in ISyE.

Mei received his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a minor in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2003 and a B.S. in Mathematics from Peking University, China in 1996. He has also worked as a Post Doc in Biostatistics for two years in the renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle before joining ISyE in January 2006.

His research endeavors primarily revolve around the development of practical (bio)statistical, machine learning, and data science theories and algorithms, for efficient real-time or online data-driven decision-making with applications to engineering, operation research, and biomedical and health sciences.

Mei’s honors include:

• 2021 Star Research Achievement Award in the Virtual Critical Care Congress
• 2020 Best Paper Competition Award in the Quality, Statistics & Reliability (QSR) of INFORMS
• 2010 CAREER Award from National Science Foundation
• 2009 Abraham Wald Prize in Sequential Analysis
• 2008 Best Paper Award of the 11th International Conference on Information Fusion.

He is an Associate Editor of Technometrics, Statistica Sinica, Journal of Applied Statistics, and Sequential Analysis. He was the past president of the ASA Georgia Chapter.

Engineers who are performing exceptional research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the two-and-a-half-day event. The participants — from the industry, academia, and government — were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations.  

Ayer also serves as the research director for healthcare analytics and business intelligence in the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech and holds a courtesy appointment at Emory Medical School. 

Ayer's contributions to the field have also led to his role as a senior advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as his position as an associate editor for Operations Research, Management Science, and MSOM. Additionally, he has served as the past president of the INFORMS Health Application Society. 

His research focuses on healthcare analytics and socially responsible business analytics with a particular emphasis on practice-focused research. His research papers have been published in top tier management, engineering, and medical journals; along with being covered by popular media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News, and NPR. 

The symposium will be hosted by the University of Colorado, Boulder, September 10-13, 2023, and will explore four themes: 

•     Engineered Quantum Systems 

•     Mining and Mineral Resource Production 

•     Resilience and Security in the Information Ecosystem 

•     Complex Systems in the Context of Health Care 

Since the program’s inception in 1995, more than 5,000 early-career engineers have participated in previous symposia, many of whom have gone on to become national leaders in the engineering community. Georgia Tech is proud to partner with organizations like The Grainger Foundation to promote a vibrant engineering profession and public appreciation of engineering. 

Read the article in its entirety within the Scientific American website.

1.  “The Increasing Necessity for Integrated Food Chains” by Don Ratliff, UPS and Regents’ Professor and executive director of SCL and IFC, April / May 2010.

2.   "Making the Case for Cold Chain" by David Sterling, an IFC partner, June 2010.

3.   “Carefully Manage Temperature-Controlled Space” by John J. Bartholdi III, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management and Research Director, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, July/ August 2010.

4.   “Predictive Modeling for Food Safety”  by John J. Bartholdi III, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management and Research Director, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, September 2010.

5.   "Quality Sell-Time’ Of Perishables” by Don Ratliff, UPS and Regents’ Professor and executive director of SCL and IFC, October 2010.

6. "Sensing For Logistics Throughout The Food Chain"  by Gary McMurray, division chief for the Food Processing Technology Division at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and IFC partner, November / December 2010.

Gathering together in New Orleans for their exciting achievements, four of our H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Engineering (ISyE) members united to celebrate their papers and research studies.

This included two current faculty members: Chuck Zhang, Harold E. Smalley Professor, and Lauren Steimle, Assistant Professor. Joining these esteemed faculty members were two remarkable ISyE Ph.D. alumni who have carved out their own paths of excellence. Reem Khir, currently an Assistant Professor at Purdue University, and Dan Li, now an Assistant Professor at Clemson University.

The conference had two paper sessions: Best Application Paper and Best Paper. Both sessions featured representation from members within the Georgia Tech ISyE community, covering various studies ranging from Markov decision processes to cell manufacturing.

Best Application Paper Session:

IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Supply Chain and Logistics
Reem Khir, Alan Erera, and Alejandro Toriello, "Two-stage sort planning for express parcel delivery"

IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Design and Manufacturing
Jialei Chen, Zhaonan Liu, Kan Wang, Chen Jiang, Chuck Zhang, and Ben Wang, "A Calibration-free Method for Biosensing in Cell Manufacturing"

IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Data Science, Quality, and Reliability
Dan Li, Kamran Paynabar, and Nagi Gebraeel, "A degradation-based detection framework against covert cyberattacks on SCADA systems"

Best Paper Session:

IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Operation Engineering and Analytics
Lauren N. Steimle, Vinayak S. Ahluwalia, Charmee Kamdar, and Brian T. Denton, "Decomposition methods for solving Markov decision processes with multiple models of the parameters"

*bolded: GT ISyE members

Through the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, Georgia Tech has been providing research and training support to personnel at the base, which supports the USMC mission worldwide. Activities under the new contract will be managed through the Albany installation, which has approximately 3,000 civilian staff and slightly more than 400 military personnel, making it one of the largest employers in Southwest Georgia.

The new Information Analysis Center Multiple Award Contract (IAC MAC) was competitively awarded through the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center. In all, the task order contract specifies 22 areas where GTRI, Georgia Tech, and partner organizations can support the USMC, and is the largest contract ever awarded to GTRI from the USMC.

“This award will continue the applied research efforts that support the analysis, assessment, and integration of technologies and methods to enhance the operations of the Marine Corps logistics, storage, and maintenance capabilities, while also providing potential support to the broader Marine Corps and DoD requirements,” said Larry Kimm, manager of GTRI’s Quantico Field Office and project director for the new contract. “This contract builds upon a nearly five-year partnership between Georgia Tech and the U.S. Marine Corps to provide ‘white-hat’ research and analysis support.”

Research projects conducted under earlier contracts have included the development and demonstration of robotic platform prototypes for improved ground vehicle autonomous inventory operations, and the development of a software tool that rapidly collates disparate inventory information to simplify tracking procedures. Additionally, ongoing workflow optimization modeling and simulation, and analytical studies of MARCORLOGCOM parts, repair, paint, and back-shop maintenance operations are supporting enhanced efficiency and mission readiness requirements. 

Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain and Logistics Institute provides research and education in the application of scientific principles to optimize the design and integration of supply chain strategy, infrastructure, processes, and technology. It has taught courses to hundreds of civilian employees and military personnel at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, providing advanced training and certification in logistics operations and industrial engineering principles. 

“The Supply Chain and Logistics Institute is pleased to continue engaging with GTRI on Marine Corps Logistics Command’s innovation and improvement needs,” said Timothy Brown, managing director of the Institute. “We look to continue delivering professional education programs, applied research by our Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty and graduate students, and operations improvement efforts by our affiliate researchers.”

Graduate and undergraduate programs at Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) have been ranked first in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for more than a quarter century. The school is the largest of its kind in the United States.

In addition to its Georgia Tech collaborators, GTRI has also worked with multiple subcontractors to collaboratively conduct detailed business case analyses and change management support activities to optimize reorganization decisions and processes for MARCORLOGCOM. Georgia Tech has also involved interns from Albany Technical College and Albany State University in serving the organization’s needs.

In addition to supporting MARCORLOGCOM in Albany, the task order contract will allow GTRI and Georgia Tech to serve the broader needs of the USMC in such areas as automation, airborne networks, command-and-control systems, communications, cybersecurity, data exchange standards, electronic combat, human systems integration, manufacturing optimization, modeling and simulation, secure information systems, software assurance, systems engineering, technology insertion, and technology analysis.

GTRI’s connection to Georgia Tech academic colleges and research institutes makes it attractive to organizations interested in promoting innovation and changing organizational approaches. “Agencies gain access to the world-class expertise we have at Georgia Tech, both within GTRI and on the academic side,” Kimm said.

Located on Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, MARCORLOGCOM provides worldwide, integrated logistics, supply chain, and distribution management; depot-level maintenance management; and strategic pre-positioning capability in support of the operating forces and other supported USMC units to maximize their readiness and sustainability and to support enterprise and program-level total life cycle management.

The DoD IAC collects, analyzes, synthesizes, produces, and disseminates scientific and technical information (STI) to DoD and federal government users. IACs support The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (R&E) in carrying out the R&E community's three strategic guiding imperatives: 1) mitigating new and emerging adversary threats that could degrade U.S. (and allied) capabilities; 2) enabling affordable new or extended capabilities in existing military systems; and 3) developing technology surprise through science and engineering applications to military problems. 

Before joining Steelcase, Mr. Verbraska worked as a supply chain consultant at Accenture and held IT, finance and logistics roles at Whirlpool. Mr. Verbraska earned his bachelor’s degree in Information Systems at Ferris State University and his MBA from the University of Chicago. 

Additionally, Becky plans and coordinates economic and business development activities with a variety of state and local organizations. From 2008 to 2012, Becky directed the market research program to understand customer’s preferences and needs, which led to expanded product and service offerings and increased non-aeronautical revenue by 40 percent.

We are very excited to have Becky join our board, lend us her expertise, and continue ATL's participation and support of SCL programs.

Devyon applied and successfully enrolled in Juma, and found a path to earn money, build his resume, and pave his future. As part of the program, Devyon took Georgia Tech LEAP courses to learn more about supply and logistics and the career paths the field has to offer. His dedication to the job, his willingness to go above what was expected of him and his attention to detail were characteristics that made him stand out to Juma’s Enterprise Managers. After successfully completing Juma’s training program, Devyon secured a job at UPS, a Juma Atlanta job placement partner. Today, Devyon has stable employment and, after successfully passing UPS’ Supervisor Exam, became a Shift Manager.

Learn about Devyon Johnson's story in the Juma website.

Zuma promotes participants to earn while they learn, so while going to school during the week to pursue her GED, Zaria took GT LEAP courses at night and worked in the Juma Atlanta concessions operations group on the weekend. Through perseverance and her will to succeed, she later secured fulltime employment within the JUMA organization.

At the Future of Work 2017 summit sponsored by The Atlantic, Zaria was asked about her experience. She commented, “sometimes, people just need a second chance and an opportunity to take advantage of it.” The experience has opened her eyes to the possibilities and Ms. Walker has aspirations to be a crime scene investigator. Zaria plan to pursue further education and make that dream a reality some day.

“The courses have given me more tools towards helping build my critical thinking skills and the necessary skills and training to help me apply information about good supply chain management. It also gives me certainty in performing my duties as a Marines administrator to ensure required supplies and materials are delivered in a timely and right way.”

Corporal Davis commented that one day he would like to own his own business. By taking the LEAP courses, he has gotten closer to that goal through a better understanding of the importance of supply chain.  “It helps me think about how to have things ready when and before people need them, to meet and exceed internal and external customers' demands. Being an administrator, there are things that I need to stay informed about, and acquiring awards, certificates help me do that. Responsibility wise, I constantly keep track of what we use, have and when we are down to half supplies. I put in orders for new supplies and replacement. The courses that I have taken definitely help me perform my duties at a high level above expectation. Overall, this program has helped me add on to my organization and accounting skills as in the military accountability is a big thing.”

Todd has developed more than $2.5 billion in real estate with annual P&L responsibility of more than $500 million and developed turnaround programs for over 50 projects during the financial crisis. He has developed industry leading processes for scheduling, purchasing and trade relationships. Todd created the Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren branded home programs and has developed creative customer centric product designs and selling strategies. He has provided business and technology consulting for more than 200 builders and contractors of all sizes throughout North America. Todd has also served in numerous capacities constructing large scale commercial projects that include major medical research facilities, hospitals, dormitories, hotels and club houses. 

Todd has a B.S. in Building Construction from the Georgia Institute of Technology, is a licensed Florida general contractor and sales associate, certified in advanced design thinking through IDEO and is a certified leadership coach with John Maxwell. He is a former president of the Atlanta Homebuilders Association, was named as one of Seattle’s Top Business Executives Under 40 in 1999, received the Lee Evans Award for Management Excellence in 2012, was named America’s Best Builder in 2013 and currently serves on the Board of Governors for the non-profit Opportunity International. 

The conference, held from Oct. 16-19 in Indianapolis, Indiana, highlights research in the fields of operations research and analytics, proven scientific mathematical processes that enable organizations to turn complex challenges into substantial opportunities by transforming data into information, and information into insights that solve real-world problems.

Once again, ISyE researchers had a number of accomplishments at the meeting, being recognized for research on various topics. Explore the list below to see ISyE’s accomplishments.

If you or someone you know received an award or recognition but did not make the list, please email Communications Manager David Mitchell at david.mitchell@isye.gatech.edu.

• Mehran Navabi-Shirazi, Mohamed El Tonbari, Natashia Boland, Dima Nazzal, and Lauren N. Steimle were selected as finalists for the Service Science Best Cluster Paper Award for their work Multicriteria Course Mode Selection and Classroom Assignment Under Sudden Space Scarcity.
• Ph.D. student Meghan Meredith received first place in the Minority Issues Forum student poster competition.
• Ph.D. student Zihan Zhang won the INFORMS QSR Section Best Student Paper Award for work titled Tensor-based Temporal Control for Partially Observed High-Dimensional Streaming Data. This is a joint work with Shancong Mou, Kamran Paynabar, and Jianjun Shi.
• Guanghui Lan, along with colleagues Saeed Ghadimi and Hongchao Zhang, earned the INFORMS Computing Society prize for pioneering work on nonconvex stochastic optimization methods, as detailed in three papers, which have a total of over 1,800 citations:
  • Stochastic First- and Zeroth-Order Methods for Nonconvex Stochastic Programming
  • Mini-Batch Stochastic Approximation Methods for Nonconvex Stochastic Composite Optimization
  • Accelerated Gradient Methods for Nonconvex Nonlinear and Stochastic Programming.
• Former ISyE Ph.D. student Sebastián Pérez-Salazar, now an assistant professor at Rice, received an honorable mention in the INFORMS Optimization Society student paper prize. He was co-advised by Alejandro Toriello and Mohit Singh.
• Henry Yuchi received a certificate for QSR Best Student Paper award finalist.
• A paper co-authored by Debankur Mukherjee and Ph.D. student Dan Rutten was a finalist in the INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition. It was titled Online Capacity Scaling Augmented with Untrusted Machine Learning Predictions.

Ferrell’s commute to and from work had become a slog. She was getting up at 4:30 a.m. on weekdays to catch a bus and train to get to her job in downtown Atlanta by 7. She had to walk uphill and several blocks to the bus stop, wearing a brace for a worsening knee issue. Her knee hurt, and on days when the heat descended on Atlanta like a stifling blanket, she’d arrive home soaked in sweat. The one-way trip took 45 minutes on a good day but sometimes up to an hour and a half, versus the 15 minutes it would take to drive to work if Ferrell had a car. 

MARTA Reach, a six-month pilot launched in March by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology, offered both convenience and a shorter commute. Each weekday morning, Ferrell called for a ride through an app on her phone, and a MARTA Reach shuttle picked her up across the street from her home and took her to a MARTA train station. 

On the way home, she’d call for another ride from the train station and usually got picked up in less than five minutes, instead of waiting sometimes an hour for a bus.

“MARTA Reach really came in handy for me,” says Ferrell, an administrative assistant at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s great for me. It works well.”

Improving Convenience

MARTA and Georgia Tech launched the pilot to address what’s known as the “first-mile, last-mile” issue facing many residents like Ferrell, who don’t have easy access to a bus stop or train station. During the pilot, which ran from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday through August, users could call for a MARTA Reach ride by app or phone. A ride cost $2.50, the same as a regular MARTA fare, and transfers were free. All MARTA Reach vehicles, repurposed from the agency’s paratransit service for people with disabilities, are wheelchair accessible. 

The pilot was initially launched in three zones and expanded in May to include several other neighborhoods. In collaboration with Georgia Tech, MARTA chose zones that were different from each other, seeking to determine how on-demand transportation would work in a residential area versus a mixed-commercial one or a more industrial location. Would riders be using the service mostly to get to work? To go shopping? Meet friends? The goal was twofold: to improve service for existing MARTA users and ideally, attract new users who might opt for transit over driving if it’s convenient enough. 

Demand grew quickly, from fewer than 100 rides weekly when the pilot launched to more than 600 in early August. By late August, when the pilot ended, MARTA Reach had served more than 8,300 passengers and was projected to hit 1,250 rides weekly if the service had continued into September. 

MARTA is now evaluating data from the program to understand how riders used it and determine, as the agency undertakes a redesign of its bus network, whether to extend the pilot or make the service permanent. Anthony Thomas, MARTA’s program manager for customer experience innovation, says preliminary data showed that many riders, like Ferrell, were using the service regularly.  

“People are really excited about the program,” he says. “And we have been very excited about the uptake in service. We see lots of riders as well as very committed riders, individuals that were taking multiple rides a day, every day.” 

And though MARTA Reach was designed to carry passengers relatively short distances, that convenience can make a profound difference in people’s daily lives, Thomas says.  

“On paper it might look like, oh, that bus is pretty close. It’s only a 10-minute walk,” Thomas says. “But when you’re on the ground and it’s 95 degrees or you have groceries or you have kids with you or a stroller, that 10-minute walk becomes a barrier for folks, and they might just decide to hop into a car. 

“For people who are on the lower-income spectrum, having to afford a car is a big burden. So being able to replace that trip with a $2.50 trip with MARTA is, I think, something that is extraordinarily powerful and very beneficial to the communities we operated the service in.” 

Thinking Bigger

The origins of MARTA Reach date back a decade, when Pascal Van Hentenryck, now a Georgia Tech professor of engineering and computer science, was leading a group of researchers in Australia focused on using data science to solve major challenges in areas including public transportation. Working in Canberra, Australia’s capital, the team at NICTA — Australia’s national information and communications technology research center — noticed taxis going back and forth from the airport to the Parliament building and many buses that were running empty or with few passengers. 

The researchers envisioned a system that would remove some of the empty buses and instead use taxis to connect passengers with high-frequency buses. The group did some early planning, and when Van Hentenryck returned to the U.S. to work at the University of Michigan, he launched a ride-share pilot that offered free transportation on shuttle vans around campus and to several surrounding neighborhoods. Van Hentenryck and a team of students built an app for the service, which ran for four months in 2018. 

“It was amazingly successful,” says Van Hentenryck, now the A. Russell Chandler III chair and a professor of industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Tech. “It was only running from 6 p.m. to midnight, but we had 400 students using the system every day.”

That success led Van Hentenryck to think bigger — about combining public transit with an on-demand ride-share service for Atlanta residents lacking access to transit. A sprawling metropolis with the ninth largest metro area population in the country, Atlanta has a network of MARTA bus routes linked to a rapid transit train system with 38 stations. But providing transit access for the region’s nearly 6.1 million residents is a pressing challenge as Atlanta continues to grow. Buses don’t serve the entire region, and some routes are underutilized. 

Leaders at MARTA had been thinking about how to address the first-mile, last-mile issue when Van Hentenryck approached the agency in 2021 with a potential solution. He and his students had secured a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an on-demand ride-share system. Drawing on the University of Michigan pilot, Van Hentenryck’s team would build out the technology and apps needed for the service and partly subsidize its operation. 

“Clearly, it was a no-brainer at that point,” Thomas says. “It’s something that we’d wanted to test out in our system for a while. The stars had aligned, and it was a great opportunity to explore it at this time.” 

Building a Solution

Van Hentenryck and a team of about seven Ph.D. students developed an Azure-based suite of technology for the pilot, including a routing system and separate apps for riders, drivers, and the administrative system.

The team started with the app developed for the Michigan pilot but building out technology designed for a college campus to serve a complex urban transit system spread out over a much larger geographic area proved challenging.

So the students worked closely with Microsoft to implement and optimize the app on Azure. They leveraged several key Azure capabilities to quickly build apps, improve data processing, and enhance the security of user data. Azure allowed the Ph.D. students to quickly set up and scale their app so they could focus on what mattered most — building a solution to increase mobility in metro Atlanta.

Azure enabled the automation of some tasks that would have been difficult to build from scratch, but since the system was new, there was no data to inform machine learning algorithms. The team quickly learned there were variables they hadn’t accounted for — in particular, driver behavior.  

For one thing, MARTA Reach drivers drove more slowly — much more slowly — than Van Hentenryck had anticipated. That was great from a safety perspective, but it required the team to adjust the system accordingly. And in the early days of the pilot, drivers had few passengers and would sometimes not be paying attention to alerts about ride requests, so the team added functionality to quickly reallocate another vehicle when a driver was unresponsive. 

“It’s human nature that if you’re sitting idle for 20 minutes, you’re going to zone out,” says Connor Riley, a former Georgia Tech student who worked on the pilot with Van Hentenryck and fellow Ph.D. student Anthony Trasatti and has since graduated. 

“We had to do things to make sure that when a request came in, a driver had the information and was alerted to that request so that performance didn’t suffer,” Riley says.

As the pilot got underway and drivers got to know their regular passengers, another wrinkle developed. Drivers would sometimes drop passengers off at home or at non-designated stops, providing exemplary service while inadvertently mucking up the system.

“The drivers will go a long way to make sure the riders are happy. But at the same time, obviously that completely changed the optimization,” Van Hentenryck says. “At the end of the day, these are systems that are operated by people, and who are serving people in a human environment. And those factors are really difficult to predict.”

In response to feedback from passengers and MARTA, Van Hentenryck’s team added additional shuttle stops to the system and several new features, including a trip history so riders can easily repeat a route by clicking a button, and the ability to enter an address and find the nearest stop. The team also developed functionality for MARTA dispatchers to request rides for passengers who wanted to call rather than using the app. 

“We wanted to make sure that people who either can’t afford a smartphone or maybe prefer not to use technology have access to the system as well,” Thomas says. 

Emerging Patterns

Over time, patterns emerged. Rising before 6 a.m. to monitor MARTA Reach rides real-time on a dashboard, the Georgia Tech team noticed many passengers traveling the same routes daily; Van Hentenryck estimates about 60% to 70% of MARTA Reach trips were commutes to work. Other regulars used the service for shopping, with Walmart and Kroger stores among the most popular destinations.

With MARTA Reach, “People don’t have to wait a long time for a bus and also don’t have to walk from the grocery store, carrying their packages to the bus stop,” says Hongzhao Guan, a member of the Georgia Tech team. “They could take their shopping cart to the parking lot, then take their bags and move right onto a shuttle. It’s very convenient.”

Transit agencies around the country have grappled with a shifting landscape impacted by competition from ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft, lower ridership during the Covid-19 pandemic, and labor shortages. Agencies in several other cities, including Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, have also launched on-demand ride-share services.

Van Hentenryck believes the MARTA Reach model could be replicated in other cities to connect riders with rapid transit bus or train service, in large part because it was achieved by just a handful of students working in cooperation with Microsoft. The application architecture is ready to scale to other metro systems if and when needed, without the need for a huge investment in staff or infrastructure. 

“I think the biggest potential is going to be in mid-size cities, where you can connect people with a backbone of rapid transit using shuttles,” Van Hentenryck says. “I think that’s where the market is.”

For Guan, seeing how people used MARTA Reach, and the service the pilot provided, was gratifying. 

“As Ph.D. students, normally we spend our days in front of a computer, running computational experiments and checking our results,” he says. “But MARTA Reach gave us an opportunity to test our idea in the real world. We received a lot of positive feedback from customers and see that they really rely on this service. I feel really proud that we helped local communities.” 

Ferrell, for her part, hopes MARTA Reach will continue. She became friendly with her drivers, who would sometimes drop her inside her housing complex. She was an informal ambassador for MARTA Reach, putting flyers around the complex and in her office break room to let people know about it. 

“I told a lot of people about it,” she says. “I love the service.”

Among schools in Georgia Tech's College of Engineering, all 10 were ranked in the top five for the fifth consecutive year, and ISyE was joined by the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the top.

Overall, the College is ranked No. 4 in the country, its seventh straight year in that spot, where it is tied with the California Institute of Technology. Among public universities, the College is ranked No. 2.

Individual engineering discipline rankings are based solely on surveys of deans and faculty members at other universities. The U.S. News rankings are one indicator of the quality of an institution and can influence undergraduates, professors, prospective students, peer institutions, and the media.

The rankings were released on Sept. 12, 2022.

Team "SAIA. SAIA-ZING UP: Evaluation of Terminal Expansion", a senior design technical competition finalist, was recognized with an Honorable Mention. The team worked with the Industrial Engineering team at Saia LTL Freight to aid in their terminal expansion implication process. Saia has set out an aggressive growth goal of opening 10-15 terminals in the next year. The model simulated a quantification of network changes as a result of additions to Saia’s network, including operational, freight flow, and cost. The system model provides Saia with proactive, data-driven insight to the impacts on their network during their terminal expansion.
 
Team Members: Joey Abi-Sarkis | Abhishek Mattipalli | Maya Menon | Jay Patel | Santhosh Saravanan | Abhinav Sehgal | Pooja Sharma | Yashovarman Singh
Client Contact: Ryan Madura
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Anton Kleywegt
 
Congratulations to both teams, their clients, and their faculty advisors.

Mr. Shaver brings a wide array of executive supply chain experience to SCL. Prior to joining Dematic in 2020, he built and ran the omni-channel operations organization for Chico’s FAS, a multi-billion dollar women’s apparel retail organization. Prior to his time at Chico’s FAS, Mr. Shaver spent over a decade in the management consulting industry delivering both strategic and operationally-focused supply chain initiatives to Fortune 500 organizations.  Mr. Shaver is a graduate of Georgia Tech and currently resides in Atlanta, GA.

The goal of the ETCs is to reduce recidivisms and enable participants with the tools, training, and opportunities to move forward as a productive member of society with sustainable employment and a rewarding career. LEAP is a fast-paced certification program that prepares secondary education students to compete for successful high-growth jobs in the supply chain and logistics field, an outcome that is a natural component to the mission of the ETCs.

“I want to thank Georgia Tech for being a great corporate partner in rehabilitating our justice-involved youth,” said Tyrone Oliver, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. “The LEAP program will help our youth gain valuable skills to aid them towards a brighter future.”

Initially, this partnership began with a pilot program in July of 2019, and culminated when the DJJ’s Chatham ETC hosted their Award Certification Ceremony on the Georgia Tech’s Savannah campus. Expanding this program in 2022 will equip students not only in Chatham County, but now in Bibb and Muscogee Counties with the knowledge, skills, and credentials for careers in the fast-growing Supply Chain and Logistics industry. All the funding for the LEAP program comes from industry partners like the GA Power Foundation, Schneider Foundation and JP Morgan Chase & Co. In addition, DJJ also contributed funding for this successful partnership with the ETCs.

The LEAP program initially covers understanding with the Supply Chain Management Principles course and then the various domains within the supply chain through three other optional courses (i.e., Customer Service, Warehousing Operations, and Transportation Operations). It also explores with students how the supply chain supports organizations’ strategic and financial goals, and current events through subject matter lectures and simulation exercises.

After completing the program, students receive an official GTPE Certificate of Completion for each completed pass/fail LEAP course (Supply Chain Management Principles, Customer Service Operations, Transportation Operations and Warehouse Operations), that are all sanctioned by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. Typically, at their end-of-program, there is an Award ceremony where they receive their professional education certificate from Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE). 

“While earning GT Professional Education credentials, attending fieldtrips to Gulfstream, GA Ports Authority, Amazon, or Dynacraft and improving their potential to secure employment in the exploding Savannah Supply Chain Industry, may have served as the initial motivation to attempt the program, the impact was immeasurable. Our students grew in areas that enhanced their self-confidence, work ethic, and intrinsic motivation. As a result, our students view themselves as productive citizens with credentials for quality jobs or careers in their future,” said ArtLisa Alston-Cone, Lead Teacher, DJJ Chatham ETC.

Students have a working knowledge of the fundamentals of Supply Chain and Logistics and will be immediately prepared for internships and job opportunities. Two students completed more than one course, indicating their interest and aptitude in this field. One student who was already working in a distribution operation actually completed four courses, earning a Logistics Fundamentals Program Certificate. After the program in December of 2019 with the DJJ’s Chatham ETC, seven of the eleven graduates received job offers, and another two were scheduled for interviews, making the program a great success. The students in the ETC’s have completed all requirements from the juvenile system. They are in transition to becoming productive members of society. At this point, many students are completing their High School Diploma requirements for graduation or getting their GED. They are typically living with family, a guardian or in a transition home.

“We’ve all had times in our lives when someone has discounted us, intentionally or unintentionally. There will always be that student in the corner who you think couldn’t care less, but given the proper attention and care, they can become a star. It’s easy to predetermine what someone is capable of doing; but when these students take this program, the lightbulb goes off, and they become interested and develop a passion and confidence because of this course,” said Charles Easley Jr., GT-SCL Project Director and Instructor.
 
The program is delivered in a cohort format so that the students always feel supported not only by the instructors but by their classmates as well. Students receive educational content but also learn how to integrate their training in the real world, so they are prepared to perform in the workplace. Students are taken on field trips with the support of community partners to learn how to apply their knowledge and see first-hand how the supply chain operates. In previous years, students were taken to Georgia Tech’s Atlanta campus to explore The Ferst Center for the Arts, The Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, and The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) so they could see what options are open to them for their future working careers. During these visits they were able to participate in student information sessions, see the innovative technology in the ISyE Physical Internet Lab and interact with faculty like Benoit Montreuil, Tim Brown, GT-SCL, and role models like Gen. Ron Johnson, Professor of the Practice, and ISyE Student Ambassadors. Students were also taken to Gulfstream in Savannah and The Georgia Fair where they participated in a hands-on project to map out the supply chain process for food.

About the LEAP Program
GTSCL created LEAP in 2015 through a grant from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to further the financial services firm’s “New Skills at Work” initiative that promotes workforce development to bridge the gap between the talent employers need and the qualifications of the local talent pipeline. The curriculum and content were developed by The H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech. In August 2018, JPMorgan Chase & Co. continued once again committed to supporting LEAP with an additional grant. The Georgia Tech LEAP program has been delivered throughout Georgia to Schools, Cohorts, and Individual Students in 18 School Districts or Systems, at 46 different schools public and private, in 13 colleges and universities, and across several well-known organizations and employers. This includes schools like Maynard Jackson HS, Grady HS, North Atlanta HS, Effingham College Career and Career Academy, Fulton Schools College and Career Academy, Newton College and Career Academy, Social Circle HS, Griffin Region College & Career Academy, New Manchester HS; non-profit organizations like Goodwill, United Way(Career Rise), Scouts BSA(Crew 2421), The Latin American Association; and businesses like Sysco, and Mohawk Industries. The program has been continuously supported by generous donations from schools, civic organizations including Effingham College and Career Academy, Fulton Schools College and Career Academy, foundations including Home Depot Foundation, Fulton Education Foundation, Schneider Foundation, Georgia Power Foundation, Regions Foundation, and employers including companies like HMTX Industries, Inc.

For his submission, "Interactive Decision-making and Resilient Planning for Safe Legged Locomotion and Navigation", Professor Zhao, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project award that will support his research that aims to bridge fundamental gaps between state-of-the-art robot task and motion planning and the ultimate goals of safe and autonomous robot locomotion. The work will resolve major computational hurdles that have hindered the use of symbolic planning and decision-making methodologies on the highly nonlinear, hybrid, and under-actuated legged systems, reducing their ability to reliably operate in unstructured environments, efficiently collaborate with robot teammates, and safely interact with humans.

Specific long-standing challenges to be addressed are robustness to contact terrain uncertainty, locomotion task generalization, navigation safety coupled with complex locomotion dynamics, and proactive interaction with pedestrians to avoid collisions. This project will move legged robotic systems from the research laboratory, and into challenging application domains such as disaster first responders, surveillance in civil and mechanical infrastructures, and planting in agricultural environments.

The research is complemented by education activities to (i) integrate undergraduate students into a new experiment-focused research program through the multi-semester Vertically Integrated Program (VIP) at Georgia Institute of Technology; (ii) host high school students from Atlanta minority-serving public schools to perform research and enhance underrepresented population participation in the greater Atlanta area; and (iii) broaden the societal impact by disseminating the integrated robotics research through an interactive workshop.

The project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Jingze is first author of the paper "Trucker-sensitive Hyperconnected Relay-based Transportation: An Operating System", coauthored by doctoral student Miguel Campos and Professor Benoit Montreuil. Li commented, "In line with the concept of Physical Internet, we want to provide efficient and sustainable solutions from a new transportation paradigm to alleviate worldwide truck driver shortage and detention issues. I would like to give credit to my team, including PhD colleagues Katja Meuche, Yujia Xu, Onkar Kulkarni, faculty members Mathieu Dahan, Leon McGinnis, Yao Xie as well as our automotive manufacturer collaborators Brandon Walker, Ryan Purman, and Mark Owen." 

Yujia is first author of the paper "Dynamic Workforce Management in Hyperconnected Parcel Logistic Hubs", with Montreuil as coauthor. "It's my great honor that our work was selected as the second-place winner and I am grateful to my co-author Yiguo Liu and my advisor Benoit Montreuil for their great support and help."

Also of note, Reem Khir, NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT) postdoctoral fellow, received the 2022 IISE Best Paper Award for her work "Dynamic Workload Balancing with Limited Adaptability for Facility Logistics" with Alan Erera and Alejandro Toriello in the Facilities Design and Planning Track, Supply Chain and Logistics Division.

Keskinocak has long served as a leader with the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). A fellow with the institute, she has served as president, vice president of membership and professional recognition, and is the co-founder and former president of the INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service, and Needs, and the president of the INFORMS Health Applications Society.

At Georgia Tech she has also served as the College of Engineering Advance Professor for six years and was a leading voice over the past three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to working with the Georgia Department of Public Health, she served on the Institute’s Covid task force helping to establish an institutional approach to the pandemic.

“It’s an honor, first of all, to have had the opportunity to serve,” she said. “Our communities at Georgia Tech and beyond are wonderful, so to be recognized among all of these outstanding contributors is a great honor.”

Keskinocak’s research focuses on the application of operations research and management science with society impact, particularly regarding health and humanitarian applications, supply chain management, and logistics. She is the director of ISyE’s Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems. Recent work has focused on infectious disease modeling in response to Covid-19.

Read more about Keskinocak’s latest research here: New Study Shows Hybrid Learning Led to Significant Reduction in Covid-19 Spread

The top team for ISyE, however, was a group of seven seniors working with Tiffany and Co., one of America’s largest luxury jewelry retailers under holding company Louis Vuitton, on a project intended to improve fulfillment goals for both domestic and international orders. Upon examination, the team, cheekily named “Put a Ring on It” after the hit Beyoncé song, identified a cause for delays in the value-added services station of their warehouse where orders go through necessary alterations such as laser engraving and price-tagging.

For the project, the team proposed a proposed two solutions: re-slotting items in the warehouse and wave planning.

“We created an optimization model with 1.6 million decision variables and 1.7 million constraints, and a heuristic model to allow the client to dynamically find the most optimal location for each item,” said Shreya Desai, a senior Industrial Engineering student on the team. “After re-slotting items based on their frequencies of getting picked, we created an application for the client to run these models themselves once a year.

“Alongside re-slotting in the picking zones of the warehouse, we recommended additional criteria for the waves of items moving through the warehouse at a time such as grouping by shipping carriers and adding a capacity on the number of items that need to go through value-added services.”

Each of these conditions were consolidated into a simulation that mimicked the current warehouse setup, and the team found that models would reduce the cycle time by 21 percent, with an average reduction in the queue at value-added services at 1.5 hours.

“This senior design project truly allowed us to amalgamate what we have learned for the past four years as industrial engineers at Georgia Tech,” Desai said. “Even with the ups and downs of the project, having a great team and supportive advisor allowed us to push through and provide our client with results that we are very proud of.”

Gunter Sharp, an ISyE professor emeritus, was the advisor for the team’s project. The project was titled Diamonds & Distribution: Improving the Order Fulfillment Process.

In addition to Desai, the full team included Asli Yucebilgin, Fares Hasan, Neha Srivatsa, Ozashwee Ghimire, Saman Muhammad, and William Reich. For their school win, the team was awarded $1000.

The overall winner for the expo was Tired Techies, a team comprised of computer, electrical, and mechanical engineers who created a sleep-monitoring mask and smart alarm that reduces drowsiness by waking the sleeper during the correct stage of the sleep cycle. That team was one of three that focused on getting a good night’s rest, perhaps a sign of the high-achieve college students’ daily struggle.

To learn more about the expo – including how to attend, judge, or suggest a project for future editions – head over to expo.gatech.edu.

To be awarded one of these fellowships, applicants must apply and be accepted into the Georgia Tech Master of Science in Supply Chain Engineering (MSCCE) program on the Supply Chain Systems Design Track, which prepares students for roles in supply chain facilities’ engineering and design, as well as a broader range of supply chain systems design roles. Amazon recognizes the importance of developing a demographically diverse leadership team, and thus priority for the fellowship is given to underrepresented minorities and female students.

About the Fellowship Recipients

Ajinkya Rege completed his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Vellore Institute of Technology in Vellore, India. He was exposed to the transportation and freight logistics industry while working at Volvo-Eicher Commercial Vehicles. In one of his roles as a business analyst in process and IT, he primarily developed data-driven solutions to optimize vehicle performance and customer productivity, including differentiated service delivery for e-commerce vehicles based on driving patterns.

Working with Volvo Eicher is what initially triggered his interest in supply chain. “With the evolution of e-commerce, the expectations of customers have changed, and reduced delivery timelines have drastically altered the landscape of the quintessential supply chain,” Rege explained. “It has now become imperative for organizations to focus on a higher level of customer orientation.”

When asked about his career goals, Rege said, “My dream job is one where I would be able to work on new technologies, innovate, and explore new solutions to satisfy the changing needs of the end user. I believe the business exposure that I have gained during my work tenure, coupled with the academic knowledge I will gain at Georgia Tech, will help me deliver customer-centric solutions in line with the mission and vision of the industry.”

Yesh Shah also completed his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Vellore Institute of Technology and has several years of experience in supply chain working at Decathlon.

“Decathlon gave me an opportunity to explore the intricacy and depth of global retail supply chain, all the way from component sourcing to finally getting the product on shelves of the retail stores,” said Shah. “From my experience in production, procurement, supplier management, and demand planning, it was fascinating to understand the interconnectedness of supply chain functions and the far-reaching impact on the entire ecosystem of the company. With a focus to make supply chain systems more resilient and sustainable, every day was an exciting challenge to be solved and an opportunity to learn.”

With supply chain being a key focus for companies, Shah says now is a critical time to be in the field.

“The supply chain engineering program at ISyE provides the right opportunity to partner with distinguished companies and gain real-world experience,” he said. “After graduation, I look forward to being a part of a creative and challenging space where I am able to design and optimize supply chain systems, making them more sustainable and adaptable to the growing needs of the customer.”

Pavitra Tagore earned her undergraduate degree in industrial engineering and management from the RV College of Engineering in Bangalore, India, and she previously worked at Intel as a supply chain solutions analyst.

“I’ve always been fascinated with how large, complex systems function,” she said. “Through my industrial engineering and supply chain management background, I’ve analyzed global supply chain systems and investigated the interactions between their constituent elements. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering how the elements influence each other, and how their interactions could be optimized to produce agile, responsive supply chains.”

Always on the lookout for ways to improve her supply chain knowledge, Tagore has also earned her Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) certification, which she chose to improve her knowledge on essential technology, concepts, and strategies in end-to-end supply chains.

“The CSCP modules ensured I am equipped with the required skills to work on various aspects of today’s supply chains – design, planning, execution, and improvement – all of which came in handy during my work at Intel, where I was involved in improving various aspects of diverse supply chains,” said Tagore. Her future goal is to design, build, and manage global supply chains.

Jamel Thompson, who is finishing up his undergraduate degree at ISyE, decided to enroll in the MSSCE program because he found supply chain classes to be the most fulfilling. “I enjoy the interactive classroom style many of the classes have,” he said. “We have visited warehouses and had many guest speakers, which helps because we get to see what we are being taught in the classroom actually put the practice. Through MSSCE program, I want to broaden my understanding of the field and better understand the global supply chain and ways I can impact it.”

Thompson likes interacting with people and wants to eventually work in the business side of supply chain. In addition to the Amazon fellowship, he is also a recipient of the Matson Scholarship for Leadership Diversity, designed to encourage underrepresented students to consider careers in the transportation, supply chain management, and logistics fields, increasing diversity in leadership positions.

On campus, Thompson is president of the Men’s Club Basketball team, the director of professional development for the Society of Health Systems, and a member of the Sports Business Club. He’s also involved with Mission Possible, an organization that introduces industrial engineering to high school students through summer camps, workshops, and outreach programs.

Léo Pham Van, who hails from France, completed his undergraduate studies in mechanical and industrial engineering at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers in Paris. He also earned a master’s degree in innovation, design, and engineering with a concentration in interaction design. The program was focused on project management methodologies and human-centric design for products, services, and systems.

“During my undergraduate studies in France, I acquired a strong base in science and industrial engineering,” said Pham Van. “I worked on projects covering a wide scope of engineering such as manufacturing, design, supply chain, and programming. These projects allowed me to develop my problem-solving skills. With the MSSCE offered by Georgia Tech, I will also develop further skills and knowledge in supply chain engineering that will help me become a great supply chain engineer.”

Being able to work on real-world cases at Georgia Tech is important to Pham Van, who aims to work at a company in the U.S. that has challenging and innovative projects.

“I would like to work on the optimization of systems for the supply chain to help my company reach their business objectives while becoming more sustainable and efficient,” he said.

Benjamin Fan studied at ISyE as an undergraduate student and knew that he wanted to continue his education at Georgia Tech because of ISyE’s rigorous and practical education in supply chain engineering.

“My passion for supply chain made me choose to further pursue a master’s degree to be able to make the best supply chain decisions backed by mathematical principles,” said Fan.

His past experience in supply chain includes interning at Höganäs Taiwan, where he worked on a demand forecasting project. “I analyzed company sales data and modeled the trendlines in Python,” Fan explained. “On top of that, I also researched and utilized a Python library to automate Python scripts in Excel VBA to make the results presentable for managers. Through the project, I was able to gain analytical and coding experience.”

After graduating from the MSSCE program, he wants to design innovative fulfillment systems with technologies that assist employees by enabling them to be more efficient and enjoy their daily operations.

For more information on ISyE’s MSSCE program, visit https://www.isye.gatech.edu/academics/masters/supply-chain-engineering.

For questions, or if you are interested in applying for an Amazon Supply Chain Systems Design Fellowship, visit https://www.scl.gatech.edu/outreach/amazonfellow.

A new study published in BMC Public Health shows that hybrid learning utilizing alternating school days for children offers a significant reduction in community disease spread. Total closure in favor of remote learning, however, offers little additional advantage over that hybrid option.

This research will help decision-makers in the event of another Covid-19 outbreak or one from a similar infectious disease.

“Early in the pandemic when school closures were becoming the norm, many debated the pros and cons of this measure,” said Pinar Keskinocak, the William W. George Chair and Professor in ISyE and the principal investigator on the study. “Do we get enough benefit to offset the social costs and impacts on education? This research shows that there is a benefit in infection reduction, especially in the absence of effective pharmaceutical interventions, and most of the benefits can be attained with a hybrid approach.”

This study is particularly relevant for the early days of an infectious disease outbreak when policymakers face the difficult decision of enacting school closures in their respective districts. Using an agent-based simulation model of Covid-19 spread, researchers projected the impact of various school reopening strategies: complete closure, alternating school days where one cohort attended in person twice a week and another cohort on the opposite days, younger children only, and regular (i.e. all students return to in-person learning).

Results showed that compared to schools reopening with regular attendance, the percentage of the population infected reduced by 13, 11, 9, and 6 percent with each respective strategy. The conclusions were that some level of closure – younger children only, alternating days, and completely remote – offers significant reduction in community-wide infections. The benefit of complete closure over a hybrid approach, however, was minimal.

The assumption in all cases was that individuals who contracted the virus would remain at home.

“The additional benefit of complete school closure compared to hybrid was relatively small,” Keskinocak said. “The implementation of an alternating day model can be challenging but could have public health benefits early in the pandemic or during a new wave, providing social and learning benefits as well.”

Other challenges remain that were not investigated in this particular research – costs on families in the event of school closures, learning tradeoffs, properly equipping students for virtual learning, and others. This is just one element of many for policymakers to consider, Keskinocak said.

CITATION: Arden Baxter, Buse Eylul Oruc, John Asplund, Pinar Keskinocak, Nicoleta Serban. Evaluating Scenarios for School Reopening under Covid-19. BMC Public Health. March 14, 2022.  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12910-w

To carry on his legacy, former Ph.D. students helped to establish a fellowship in his name, fundraising for an endowment fund that has surpassed $170,000 to date. That money will fund fellowships that will be awarded to students on an annual basis for years to come. It’s an appropriate way to honor Nemhauser, who said it’s the students who have been his greatest accomplishment. 

“All of my Ph.D. students, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “The whole career, having all these great students and seeing that they’ve appreciated me as well – that’s what it’s all about.” 

With more than 60 years of experience in research and higher education, Nemhauser has served various roles and committed his career to the betterment of his students, staff, and community. Throughout his career, he supervised almost 90 Ph.D. students and continued to explore his research in solving large-scale mixed-integer programming problems.  

Nemhauser’s career is connected with some of the best top-performing institutions and partnerships in the industry, including John Hopkins University, Cornell University, Oregon State University, University of Leeds (U.K.), University of Louvain (Belgium), University of Melbourne, (Australia), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Research Council (NRC). Along with his long-term academic investment, Nemhauser has over 200 publications on topics such as optimization, programming, algorithms, transportation, structural properties, and operations research.  

After nearly 40 years of dedicated service to Georgia Tech, Nemhauser decided it was time for him to retire and was honored for his achievements by the school. Many of his students and colleagues highlighted their most memorable moments with Nemhauser and expressed their gratitude for his continued contribution to ISyE and beyond.  

As for Nemhauser, aside from staying in touch with his students, he said he plans on taking his retirement day by day.  

For more information or interest in contributing to the fellowship fund, please contact Senior Director of Development Nancy Sandlin at nancy.sandlin@isye.gatech.edu. 

In addition to participating in the honors and awards banquet, Nazzal’s award will be published in the ISE magazine, as well as be featured on the IISE website.

The award is for developing an early design course, titled Cornerstone Design, which focuses on “framing the problem” without solving it. 

“The course lays out the foundation for design thinking using a project‐based learning approach, interactive sessions with instructors, and a goldmine of past capstone senior design projects that ISyE has kept for years organized in a database,” Nazzal explained. “That includes all the relevant data files, original team notes, deliverables, and code.”

Design aims to address the engineering design skill gaps by offering a learning environment that utilizes multiple past capstone senior design projects complemented with lessons on key engineering design and industrial engineering principles, Nazzal said of the study.

“Through multiple diverse projects, students develop the skill to structure the way they approach complex undefined problems that are fraught with data gaps, uncertainty and ambiguity in objectives, and conflicting priorities,” she said. “Students learn how to communicate the motivation effectively and succinctly for solving a problem and the scientific evidence supporting their design solution hypothesis.”

Nazzal has additional research that focuses on the control of discrete event logistics systems such as distribution systems, healthcare delivery systems, and manufacturing systems.

Current Ph.D. students Arden Baxter and Daniel Kim join Akane Fujimoto and Melike Yildirim as admits to the ORISE Research Participation Program at the CDC, an educational and training program designed to provide college students, recent graduates, and university faculty opportunities to connect with the center’s unique resources.

“These are all such fantastic students,” said William W. George Chair and Professor Pinar Keskinocak, advisor to all four students. “It’s a competitive program and for all four to be recognized in consecutive years, it says a lot about their work.”

Baxter, who will graduate in the summer, plans to join the ORISE program immediately and work with the CDC for the next year. Her work has included Covid-19 disease modeling and evaluating intervention strategies, as well as modeling for decision-making in humanitarian systems such as emergency response for resource coordination.

Kim will take a year off for the fellowship before returning to finish his thesis. He, too, has recent work on Covid-19. Other work includes incentive mechanisms to increase post-disaster debris recycling and analysis of data on mental health medication prescribed to children.

Fujimoto will complete the ORISE program this summer and return to ISyE to finish her Ph.D., with research focusing on various topics in health systems, including pre-natal screening for Down syndrome and Covid-19 modeling and dashboards..

Yildirim finished her degree in Jan. 2021, took a postdoctoral position at Harvard, and then joined the ORISE program in Dec. 2021.

Shi, the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), was awarded the George Box Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Industrial Statistics by the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS). He is the second ISyE faculty member in the past five years to earn the honor, joining Professor Jeff Wu, who received it in 2017.

“I am extremely honored to receive this recognition named after a pioneer and leading scholar in quality science and industrial statistics,” Shi said. “This achievement could not have been reached without the tireless efforts of my students and collaborators, and persistent support from industrial sponsors.”

Each year, the medal recognizes an extraordinary statistician whose work has contributed to the development and application of statistical methods in European business and industry. Shi’s efforts in developing the “in-process quality improvement” methodologies has had broad impact in manufacturing quality and engineering statistics. His breakthroughs have gained widespread attention in the manufacturing and automotive communities, being implemented in over 40 steel mills worldwide and numerous major auto companies.

“The impacts of his work on industrial practice and financial savings are enormous,” Wu wrote in a recommendation letter for the award.

Shi is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, and the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Science, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has published over 180 papers on projects funded by the National Science Foundation, NIST Advanced Technology Program, Department of Energy, General Motors, Ford, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and more.

As an educator, he has advised 38 Ph.D. graduates, seven of home have received NSF CAREER Awards and one the NSF PECASE Award.

The awards are sponsored by both alumni and corporate partners, among others. To learn how to get involved, contact ISyE’s Senior Director of Development Nancy Sandlin at nancy.sandlin@isye.gatech.edu.

Explore all award winners below.

Graduate Awards for Excellence in Research

The Shabbir Ahmed Research Excellence Award

Jiaming Liang (Optimization)

Sebastian Perez-Salazar (Optimization)

The Atlanta Air Cargo Association Research Excellence Award

Jana Boerger (Supply Chain Engineering)

The Robert Goodell Brown Research Excellence Award

Liyan Xie (Data Science and Statistics)

The Anderson-Interface Research Excellence Award

Amin Gholami (Energy and Sustainable Systems)

The Thos and Clair Muller Research Excellence Award

Zhaowei She (Health Analytics and Health Systems)

The Angela P. and Reed J. Baker Research Excellence award

Jialei Chen (Advanced Manufacturing and SIAC)

The Margaret and Stephen Kendrick Research Excellence Award

Keyu Zhu (Analytics and Machine Learning)

The Ed Iacobucci Research Excellence Awarc

Daniela Hurtado-Lange (Applied Probability and Simulation)

Additional Graduate Awards

ISyE Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor of the Year Award

Shangcong Mou

Tyler Perini

ISyE Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year Award

Xinyu Liu

ISyE Outstanding Master’s Teaching Assistant of the Year Award

Lucienne Loo

The Phillip J. and Delores A. Scott Graduate Student Health and Wellness Award

Nidhima Grover

Miguel Campos Murcia

Katja Meuche

Vinaya Krishna

Ritesh Ojha

Yassin Watson

Undergraduate Awards

ISyE Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant of the Year Award

Pratyush Agrawal

Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Excellence in Leadership Award

Dany Shwayri

The Evelyn Pennington Outstanding Service Awards

Duncan Siebert

Hung Doan

The Evelyn Pennington Student Health and Wellness Award

Noah Mitchem

Christina Collins

Elizabeth Schupp

Quentin Mot

ISyE Alpha Pi Mu Academic Excellence Award

Oscar Aguilar

Xufei Liu

COE Honors Day Award

Zhiyi Li

COE Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Madeleine Pollack

Adam Profili

Kurt Salmon Associate Scholarship in Industrial and Systems Engineering

Maxim Geller

Michael Cho

Hope Williams

Fuad Hossain

KS2 Technologies, Inc. Entrepreneurship Award

Christophoros Kontomaris

Min Sol Lee

Nicolas & Aurora Suarez Condezo International Award

Dewang Agarwal

The award recognizes a senior member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) community with impactful contributions in innovation and service to industrial engineering. No more than 20 fellows can be named each year. IISE is the world’s largest professional society dedicated to the support of industrial and systems engineers.

Gabraeel’s research interests lie at the intersection of predictive analytics and machine learning, repair and operations, and service logistics. His key focus is developing fundamental statistical learning algorithms specifically tailored for real-time equipment diagnostics and prognostics, and optimization models for subsequent operational and logistical decision-making in Internet of Things ecosystems. From the standpoint of application domains, his general interests lie in manufacturing, power generation, and service-type industries.

Gabraeel leads the Predictive Analytics and Intelligent Systems research group in Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain and Logistics Institute.

It is the 32^nd consecutive year ISyE has topped the rankings in the industrial, manufacturing, and systems category.

“It’s an honor to be recognized as a leader amongst such prestigious schools throughout the country,” said Edwin Romeijn, the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair. “Our faculty, staff, and students are diligent in their efforts to maintain and grow ISyE’s reputation as a leader in education and research at the graduate level.”

ISyE’s undergraduate program has topped its rankings for 27 consecutive years, as well.

Overall, Georgia Tech’s came in at No. 7 overall in engineering, No. 4 among public universities. All 11 of the College of Engineering’s schools were ranked in the top 10 in their respective programs.

Complete rankings for Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering can be found here.

Li, also core faculty in the Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech, currently focuses on the developments of machine learning algorithms for precision medicine specifically with regards to the brain. She leverages collaborations with radiologists and neurologists to investigate brain diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, and post-traumatic headache after brain injury.

Today, technology advances have produced more data than ever before, imaging, genomics, mobile health data, etc., which allow researchers to develop more personalized algorithms for diagnosis and prognosis.

“What disease do they have? How severe is it? How will the disease change in the future? Are they on the track of recovery, or are they going to get worse,” Li said.

Using the available datasets from imaging, genomics, clinical records, and mobile apps & wearables, they are building personalized models for diagnosis and treatment in each of these areas that can lead to early detection and more effective outcomes.

Ayer, who also holds an appointment from Emory Medical School and serves as a senior advisor to CDC, focuses on health care analytics and socially responsible business analytics with an emphasis on practice-focused research. In recent work, he has attempted to build up more robust and effective virtual trials for medical screening, diagnosis and treatment using large-scale mathematical models.

If you look at the gold standard in medicine and clinical science – randomized control trials – it generally utilizes A/B testing strategies. But what if there are thousands of strategies to compare, not just Strategy A and Strategy B?

“In a recent study, we looked at multi-modality cancer screening strategies for cancer detection in gene mutation carriers,” Ayer said. “You ask questions like: Should you use ultrasound screening or MRI screening? How about mammography screening? Or maybe mammography plus ultrasound screening? At what age should you start – 25 to 30? Or 35?

“At what age should you transfer from a less intensive screening to another? Is that cost effective? And what if we are solving this problem for the United States versus sub-Saharan Africa where resources are more limited? There are millions and billions of scenarios, and you can’t design a randomized control trial that would effectively compare those.”

Ayer’s work has spanned long-term chronic disease, both communicable and non-communicable – diseases like COVID-19 for the former and different cancers for the latter.

Both Li and Ayer said the chair appointment would assist in their work.

“It’s a great honor and recognition,” Li said. “I think going forward this will help me to pursue bigger efforts and initiatives, engaging people with a variety of expertise. This research needs collaboration across different descriptions. ”

“It helps to bring more visibility to the work,” Ayer echoed. “This will also help us scale up the resources that we have within our communities and reach out to more collaborators.”

For Georgia Tech industrial engineering professor Pascal Van Hentenryck, it started four years ago: an idea to tackle one of the biggest challenges for America’s eight largest rapid transit systems.

“One of the big issues is connecting to and from the system. First and last mile,” Van Hentenryck said.

So, during the pandemic, Van Hentenryck decided to contact MARTA officials directly, and, with his team of student researchers at Georgia Tech, he developed a system to make MARTA more efficient and able to better serve communities that have a vital need for reliable transit.

That’s how MARTA Reach was born.

“We were contacted by Pascal in late 2020 about the possibility of an on-demand network,” said MARTA Interim General Manager and CEO Collie Greenwood.

Van Hentenryck describes MARTA Reach as an on-demand multimodal transportation solution — smartphones and shuttles outfitted with tablets connected to an app that helps riders find a quick route to their nearest MARTA station. Think ridesharing platforms like Lyft or Uber — except this ride is a flat, low-cost fee. MARTA says this program is meant to work with the city of Atlanta’s existing transportation services and will help minimize waiting and walking, eliminating the inconvenience of users having to walk a mile or more to their nearest MARTA station.

“Public transit is the most cost-effective way to move people,” says Van Hentenryck.

“But in Atlanta, some people may face challenges getting to the MARTA station.” Thanks to this new pilot program, they can download the smartphone app and request a ride.

On March 1, MARTA and Georgia Tech will begin pilot testing this program in three strategic neighborhoods: West Atlanta, Belvedere Park, and Fort Gillem. Van Hentenryck says there’s never been a piloted on-demand public transit system like this in a major U.S. metropolitan area like Atlanta.

The chosen neighborhoods were selected not only because they are lacking in transportation options but because of the different communities they serve. Fort Gillem is an area with a high number of distribution centers with employees who could use more efficient transportation. West Atlanta is highly residential, with roads often too narrow for MARTA’s full-sized buses. And Belvedere Park is a mixed-use neighborhood that combines business and residential zoning.

During the pilot test, folks in these areas can use the MARTA Reach app to call for a shuttle to pick them up and take them to the nearest MARTA transportation hub.

When users call for a pickup, their requests will be routed through a server at Georgia Tech that connects to the drivers on MARTA’s new fleet of Reach vehicles.

“We developed the cloud computing platform, connected riders and drivers, and we’re making sure the whole system is synchronized,” said Van Hentenryck.

“We couldn’t be happier they are willing to study our ridership to see what the needs are and tailor a solution,” said Greenwood.

For the Georgia Tech researchers, it’s a perfect partnership as well.

“We’ve been thinking about transportation for years. It connects people to everything from jobs and education to groceries,” explained Van Hentenryck. “It’s amazing that a large agency like MARTA would allow us to come in and test this.”

The pilot has been funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and from March until August, the service will be available from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. every weekday.

“Georgia Tech’s mission calls us to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. To use our research and expertise to improve lives and livelihoods. That’s why we’re here. We’re grateful for the opportunity, for the support of MARTA and the National Science Foundation, and for the great work by Professor Van Hentenryck’s team.”

MARTA officials will be looking to see how many users take advantage of this new first-and-last-mile option. Georgia Tech’s researchers will be watching closely, too, analyzing data including how long it takes to fulfill riders’ requests.

MARTA officials say if the data shows positive impacts, the pilot could expand to other parts of the city. Georgia Tech researchers say this on-demand project could also serve as a model for more major metropolitan areas to follow.

“We can take on projects that are not just technologically cool and exciting, but at the same time they also have a big impact on society,” said Van Hentenryck.

Learn more about the MARTA Reach program and download the app here.

In addition to $500,000 in funding, which will help support the faculty member as well as their team of Ph.D. students, Wang said it provided recognition and validation for their respective research agendas.

“It’s great because it helps fund our work and will provide opportunities to support our students in this continued research,” he said. “But it also helps us to build connections with industry partners, who see the importance of our work, and allow us to implement some of it into the real world.”

Wang’s research focuses on supply chain and logistics in transportation. This particular award will fund research that seeks to design digital marketplaces for the freight industry. Describing it as a rideshare, like Uber, for trucking, Wang said that the goal of the research is to design online digital marketplaces that help truckers connect with shippers, eliminating a brokerage process plagued by inefficiency that can cost drivers both time and money.

“The idea here is to improve supply chain efficiencies and also the earning reliability of these truck drivers,” he said.

For an industry that is among the largest in the country, and indeed the most popular in more than half the country’s states, the research could have far-reaching implications.

Maguluri’s research, meanwhile, addresses optimization challenges in reinforcement learning and cloud computing, both of which are key areas of progress in the ongoing artificial intelligence revolution. The revolution is powered by the development of novel algorithms and breakthroughs in cloud computing infrastructure that can collect, store, and process large amounts of data.

“Even though neural networks were known about 50 years ago, AI breakthroughs only happened in the last 15 years,” Maguluri said. “This is because computers weren’t powerful enough earlier, and it was hard to get access to large computing power.”

Now, AI researchers can utilize massive data centers run by companies like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.

Despite the progress, however, there are tradeoffs that affect optimal performance, and theory often lags behind practice. With this award, Maguluri and his lab will pursue studies in both reinforcement learning and cloud computing to develop optimal scheduling algorithms for cloud computing data centers that make both more efficient and, thus, further advancement in the field.

To read more about Wang’s and Maguluri’s research, follow the links below:

He Wang: Marketplace Design for Freight Transportation and Logistics Platforms

Siva Theja Maguluri: Lyapunov Drift Methods for Stochastic Recursions: Applications in Cloud Computing and Reinforcement Learning

In addition to the three faculty members, two additional alumni were honored. Nick Lappos (AE ’73), was also elected to the NAE Class of 2022. Lappos is a senior technical fellow (emeritus) of Sikorsky Aircraft Corp and serves on the Georgia Tech Aerospace Engineering School Advisory Council (AESAC). He was honored for “improving rotary wing flight performance and serving as test pilot, engineer, inventor, technologist, and business leader.”

Nathan Meehan (Phys '75), a member of the College of Sciences Advisory Board, was also elected. He is president of CMG Petroleum Consulting Ltd. and was recognized for "technical and business innovation in the application of horizontal well technology for oil and gas production."

They are among this year’s 133 new members (including international selections).

“On behalf of Georgia Tech, I extend my sincere congratulations to Chris, Sandy, and Nick for this incredible honor, which highlights a lifetime of achievement,” said Raheem Beyah, dean of the College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair. “Chris and Nick’s research have advanced their respective fields and left an indelible mark on their peers at Georgia Tech and around the world. Sandy, in addition to her service with NASA, is a tireless advocate of raising awareness of STEM and diversity within the aerospace industry in an effort to grow the next generation of the AE workforce. The College of Engineering is tremendously proud of this trio.”

Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE). He has been a faculty member at Georgia Tech since 2000, leading a ChBE research group that works in catalysis and adsorption, with a strong emphasis in materials chemistry. The NAE is honoring him for “contributions to the design and synthesis of catalytic materials and for advancing technologies related to carbon capture and sequestration.”

Jones is known in the field for his pioneering work on materials that extract carbon dioxide from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture technologies that have the potential to reverse climate change.

Magnus (MSE, 1996) is a professor of the practice with joint appointments in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. She is currently a principal at  AstroPlanetview LLC and is being recognized by the NAE for “national accomplishments in the U.S. civil space program and in Department of Defense engineering and technology integration.

As a NASA astronaut, Magnus flew to space three times and spent 157 days in orbit. Before joining NASA, Magnus worked for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company as a stealth engineer. After retiring as an astronaut, she served as executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She is now one of three Georgia Tech women in the NAE, joining Marilyn Brown and Susan Margulies.

Sahinidis is the inaugural Gary C. Butler Family Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a joint appointment in ChBE. In the NAE announcement, Sahinidis was selected for “his contributions to global optimization and the development of widely used software for optimization and machine learning.” His research activities are at the interface between computer science and operations research, with applications in various engineering and scientific areas.

During his career, Sahinidis developed BARON (Branch-and-Reduce Optimization Navigator), a global optimization software system that solves challenging, nonconvex optimization problems, including continuous, integer, and mixed-integer nonlinear problems. Sahinidis also created ALAMO (Automated Learning of Algebraic Models), a black-box modeling tool that generates simple, yet accurate, algebraic models from data. 

The Academy annual inducts new members, recognizing “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature.” The Academy also honors engineers for being instrumental in "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education." 

Georgia Tech now has 45 NAE members. This year's cohort will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting in October.

Dr. Wan has demonstrated intrapreneurship by building a profitable start-up department and mobilizing top-tier talent to create high performing cultures that consistently achieve business goals in a dynamic and volatile business environment. His primary responsibilities are to (a) improve network planning processes, (b) generate network efficiencies, and (c) support strategic initiatives across the enterprise through institution of an elastic and self-healing network optimization platform. Yentai joined UPS in 2007 as an Enterprise Network Planning Manager in Corporate Transportation and also served as Director of Transportation Operations Research & Analytics.

Yentai was born and raised in Taipei City, Taiwan. He came to the United States in 2000 to advance his education and later earn a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (ISyE) from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining UPS, he served as investigator of research projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation and as an R&D Scientist in an industry-leading supply chain software company. Dr. Wan lives in Alpharetta, Georgia and when not working, enjoys traveling across North America and Northeast Asia.

The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute is honored to have part of the Georgia Tech and ISyE family rejoin us to help shape our future.

“It was wonderful to see the senior design students develop and present their projects in person. They endured another stressful semester, but remarkably balanced quality and rigor with health and wellbeing,” said Director of Professional Practice Dima Nazzal. “Kudos to them for overcoming the challenges and delivering excellent work for a wide range of clients including government agencies, small non-profits, and large corporations. Congratulations to the faculty advisors, who coached the teams and kept them motivated and focused. A special recognition and appreciation to our Director of Technical Communication, Brandy Blake, for teaching the students how to communicate their engineering designs clearly and succinctly”

Senior Design team “Provision with a Vision” won the Capstone Expo award for Best ISyE Project. They worked with the on-board services group at Delta Air Lines to develop a data-driven methodology that determines the optimal amount of beverage items to load on a flight. The project motivation came from unused items adding extra weight to the aircraft resulting in excess fuel costs and carbon emissions. The team delivered an optimization model that takes into consideration passenger demand as well as an impact analysis tool which allows Delta to visualize how small changes in beverage quantities can have significant economic and environmental impact across the system.

The team included Anneliese Conrad, Carolina Howell, Niral Jagtap, Ellie Johnson, Nico Knutzen, Sofia Laval, Brad Peterson, and Libbee Stallone. They were advised by Associate Professor Anton Kleywegt.

From among the ISyE teams, three were selected as finalists for the Best of ISyE Senior Design Competition, which was held on December 14, 2021. Team “Shoulda Put A R(INGO)n i(T)” was selected as the first-place winner.

Team “Shoulda Put A R(INGO)n i(T)” partnered with Novelis, an aluminum manufacturing company, to improve ingot availability in its Oswego, NY, facility. The goal of the project was to ensure that when a customer makes an order, Novelis could supply the right ingots at the right time on hand to immediately start production. The team’s solution was to build an ingot “supermarket” that would increase ingot availability from 50% to 90% and reduce overall lead time by up to 40%. To achieve this, the team created an optimization model that recommended the best replenishment strategy for each ingot SKU and used a simulation model to measure the impact of the supermarket on the production process. With this new tool, Novelis can dramatically increase their operational efficiency and save millions of dollars per year.

Team Members included Tobin Abraham, Joseph Abrokwa, Elvin Chirackal, Joseph Cochran, Lorenzo Guerrero, Grace Anne Muller, and Tim Ryan. They were advised by Part-Time Lecturer and Tennenbaum Institute Principal Research Engineer Douglas Bodner.

Finalist team “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Bus Stop” worked with the Atlanta Department of Transportation (ATLDOT), a recently formed government entity tasked with promoting transportation infrastructure. The team worked to provide ATLDOT with a data-driven methodology to allocate funding to bus stop improvements and a platform for closer collaboration with MARTA. Only 7% of bus stops (out of nearly 4,000) in Atlanta have shelters, which provide riders with proper seating, protection from weather, and ADA accessibility. The team’s solution combines process design with an interactive web tool and a greedy heuristic web app. Through the team’s solution, an additional 1.5 million trips per year will now originate at a sheltered stop. The City of Atlanta voted to back the project with a $3.4 million non-fungible funding source, and the team will present their design to the new mayor in January.

Team members included Soobin Baek, Aaron Brown, Ananya Ghose, Sanghwa Lee, Sung Kyu Lee, Alea Legg, Hetu Patel, Tejas Santanam. They were advised by ISyE Lecturer Gamze Tokol-Goldsman.

Finalist team “Keep it Simply” worked with The Coca-Cola Company to minimize the overall cost of the distribution network of two recently acquired dairy brands: Fairlife and Simply Oat & Almond. The team provided a data-driven method of formulating network expansion plans and determining safety stock levels by building and validating a mathematical optimization model that recommends not only the optimal distribution center (DC) opening location and timeline, but also the capacity expansion and safety stock level at each DC over a given horizon. This provided an annual value of several million dollars across the two dairy brands. To help Coca-Cola design the network expansion of any brand in the future, the team generalized the model to a standardized template wrapped within a user-friendly graphical user interface with three different model options.

Team Members included Joseph Chanin, Yizhi Huang, Minrui Liang, Yufei Liu, Naren Reddy, Xinran Yu, and Emily Zhang. They were advised by Leo and Louise Benatar Early Career Professor and Associate Professor Alejandro Toriello.

In addition, two teams received honorable mentions and were contenders for the Best of ISyE Senior Design.

Team “Panic! at the Cisco” worked with Cisco on its Printed Circuit Board Assembly Component Allocation. Team Members included Anjana Anandkumar, Udisha Bhattacharyya, Grace Gilpatric, Katie Landers, Kat Pospichel, Briana Sims, Tan Tanthien, and Anna (Tu) Vu. They were advised by William W. George Chair and Professor Pinar Keskinocak.

Team “The Bee’s Knees” worked with Smith + Nephew on its production planning. Team Members included Leon Breaux, Sara Costello, Emma Jones, James McGregor, Georgia Warnock, and Delaney Wastler. They were advised by ISyE Lecturer Ethan Lee.

While many people have heard the term “supply chain” and know it is the reason behind many product delays, most do not realize the complexity — and fragility — of our global supply chains. Problems like these are at the heart of industrial engineering, and the experts at the No. 1-ranked H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech are sharing their expertise with companies and federal and state leadership to help remedy the current problem and help ensure it does not happen again.

“Supply chains are incredibly complex and completely international,” said Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor in ISyE. “They include container ships, warehousing, docking, trucks, trains, and planes, in addition to first- last- and middle-mile transportation. The current situation affects all these aspects. It is a massive problem. It’s not just one element.”

Behind the many systems involved, there are people making decisions and collaborating to ensure each segment is operating effectively and efficiently to keep the supply chain operating smoothly. This includes production, sourcing of raw materials, supply replenishment, and logistics. If one of these segments breaks down, the entire system will collapse. This process occurs for nearly every product available, leading to millions of supply chain transactions occurring globally each day.

Why are we Still Experiencing Delays?

When the Covid-19 pandemic took hold of the world in 2019, there were multiple disruptions to the system in addition to a dramatic increase in ecommerce, which created significant first- and last-mile issues. According to Van Hentenryck, this put additional strain on factories, ports, ships, and logistics companies that were already experiencing workforce shortages. In addition, many supply chains were highly optimized, just-in-time systems which allowed very little room for error or disruption. Nearly two years later, we are still feeling the impact.

“Everybody at every layer of the supply chain was hit by the pandemic in some manner,” adds Benoit Montreuil, Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and professor and co-director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute at ISyE. “Some companies still do not have enough employees to get the work done, while others have depleted their reserves or cannot source the necessary materials to manufacture their products. We have now seen that the lean approach has proven to be extremely dangerous.”

While this holds true for all supply chains, fresh foods and complex electronics are even more fragile.

The short shelf life of fresh goods, like meat and produce, collapses the entire process into the span of just a few weeks and adds another layer of complexity to the situation. Montreuil says that, for products like these, empty shelves are not necessarily due to a lack of supply, but rather a breakdown in processing plants or shipping.

Complex products have more complicated supply chains. For example, when it comes to electronics and cars, many of the components are being manufactured in different sites around the world before being sent to another location for assembly. If one of the many parts is missing, the product cannot be manufactured. This is the case with the current computer chip shortage that is affecting the supply of phones, appliances, computers, and other everyday items we take for granted. The shortage is a result of increased demand, depleted reserves, and lack of the manufacturing plants and workers to increase production.

“Like many other items, the demand for computer chips was increasing before the pandemic, and the industry was struggling to keep up,” said Chelsea White, Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics and professor at ISyE. “The increased demand for personal computers, video conferencing equipment, and other electronics that use hundreds of computer chips put an even greater strain on production. Unfortunately, this industry requires a large capital expenditure for a new foundry and is not agile. It takes years and billions of dollars of investment to build the specialized plants required to make more chips. This mismatch of demand and supply will not be remedied quickly.”

In addition to production issues, there is also an extreme worker shortage in shipping and logistics, making it difficult to get products to consumers once they are assembled. For example, the American Trucking Association said the industry has a shortage of 80,000 drivers and estimates this number could more than double by 2030. Similar issues at the ports and on container ships are also causing significant shipping delays. Lack of integration among the many shipping components intensifies the problem.

“Containers are coming into the ports, but there are no trucks there to pick them up, because they are not ready for them,” explained Van Hentenryck. “Meanwhile, these containers are taking up space in the storage yard, so additional containers cannot be unloaded, because there is nowhere to put them. These are the kinds of issues the lack of integration causes.”

Solving the Problem

While the intricacy of the current supply chain problem is making it difficult to fix, experts believe it can be done. Companies will need to look at their processes through a new lens and modify them to resolve the current situation and prevent similar disruptions from happening in the future.

“Historically supply chains were organized around cost, but that is probably going to change,” said Van Hentenryck. “They will be built for resilience and flexibility so that they do not get stuck so easily. My intuition is that organizations will start moving away from the just-in-time systems to become more reliable and resilient.”

Montreuil agrees. To increase resiliency, he says companies may want to keep additional stock of key resources, but that the solution is more about changing production capacity and finding creative ways to address transport, warehousing, and resource shortages. “All of this is shaping the ‘new normal’ in supply chain, which I believe will ultimately be much stronger than in the past.”

Technology, including automation, machine learning and optimization techniques, will also be an important tool to address the worker shortages, to increase efficiencies, and to integrate processes.

“Automation allows businesses to create new business models,” said Van Hentenryck. “It can increase efficiency at factories, warehouses, ports, and on the roads while addressing the labor shortages. And, while it will eliminate some jobs, it will also create new, higher paying jobs in their place.”

Van Hentenryck is currently collaborating with Ryder System, Inc. on the trucking industry’s first data-driven study of the potential impact of autonomous trucking and expects similar studies to take place in other areas of the supply chain.

“People are looking for easy solutions, but that is not how supply chains work,” said Montreuil. “The good thing is that the current situation has increased the awareness of the problem, so we can work toward a solution.”

What Will the Future Look Like?

Both Montreuil and Van Hentenryck believe that organizations now understand how fragile the current system is and are working to prepare for future catastrophic events like floods, hurricanes, and other disasters that will also disrupt the flow of goods. While it is impossible to prevent pandemics and disasters from occurring, our systems should be resilient enough to handle them and keep goods moving.

“Companies are starting to think about their supply chains in a different way,” said Montreuil. “They are thinking about agility, adaptability, and optionality which is necessary to prevent these problems from occurring in the future.

“What this has shown us is that supply chains are immensely critical to the wellbeing of society and the economy. It has been unseen for decades, and Covid has shown how important they are,” said Montreuil. “It is also important to understand that even though we are suffering, the disruptions we are experiencing are minor compared to the disaster that it could have been.”

“I am truly grateful and humbled for this huge honor,” said Keskinocak. “I am thankful to all my colleagues, students, friends, and family who have supported me and many others over the years, and it is the greatest gift for me to support others, even if only in a small way.”

Throughout her career, Keskinocak has been a leader in her field and has advocated for the advancement of women and minorities in engineering. She is an INFORMS Fellow, has served as president of INFORMS and the WORMS Forum, established the WORMS Award, and served as the co-founder and president of the INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group to help junior faculty develop their networks and grow professionally. During her term as INFORMS president, she helped further diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organization. She also spearheaded the establishment of a DEI Ambassadors Program to create a culture of inclusivity for all members within the INFORMS community.

At Georgia Tech, Keskinocak is the co-founder and director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems, and she has served as a College of Engineering (COE) ADVANCE Professor and interim associate dean for faculty development and scholarship. She has also made significant contributions to numerous programs at COE and the Institute, which include the Demystifying Tech Series, Adaptive Leadership Workshop, and Diversity and Inclusion Fellows Program. In addition, she was instrumental in the establishment of the COE diversity and inclusion council, resume speed meeting workshops, and other initiatives focused on equity, diversity, and excellence.

Keskinocak has made a lasting impression on many of the people she has worked with.

“I don’t know how my career and life would have turned out had I not had the chance to meet and work with Dr. Keskinocak,” said one person in their nomination letter. “I do know how grateful I am I did have that chance. She is and always will be a role model for me in servant leadership, an extraordinary mentor, and an exceptional teacher.”

“I am just an example of all the lives and careers of women in OR/MS who Pinar has touched, as an advisor, as a professor, as a colleague, and as a leader and role model in OR/MS,” said another. “Pinar represents exactly what this award is about.”

Keskinocak’s research focuses on the applications of operations research and management science with societal impact, particularly health and humanitarian applications, supply chain management, and logistics/transportation. Her recent work has addressed infectious disease modeling — including significant work related to the Covid-19 pandemic — and evaluating intervention strategies and resource allocation; catch-up scheduling for vaccinations; hospital operations management; and disaster preparedness and response.

In announcing Shapiro’s selection for the award, INFORMS cited his fundamental contributions to theory and computational methods for stochastic programming, as well as seminal contributions to nonlinear analysis: “The outstanding breadth and depth of Dr. Shapiro’s research, combined with his contributions to the mathematical optimization community, make him the outstanding recipient of this prestigious prize.”

The John von Neumann Theory Prize is the latest in a series of significant recognitions of the impact of Shapiro’s work. In 2013, he received the INFORMS Khachiyan Prize for Lifetime Accomplishments in Optimization, and in 2018, he was awarded the Dantzig Prize by the Mathematical Optimization Society and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In 2020, Shapiro was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Shapiro recently served as editor-in-chief of Programming Series A from 2012-2017.

In the letter nominating Shi for this honor, it was noted that he pioneered data-enabled manufacturing – an accomplishment for which he was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018. He has developed quality improvement algorithms implemented in over 40 steel plants globally, with hundreds of millions of dollars saved and over one billion KWh in saved energy, as well as tens of thousands of CO₂ emissions reduced.

Shi’s selection as an SME Fellow is the latest in a series of signal distinctions conferred in 2021: He received the Walter Shewhart Medal from the American Society for Quality, an award given “to individuals who have made outstanding technical contributions and leadership in the field of modern quality control and improvement.” He was also awarded the S.M. Wu Research Implementation Award, which “honors outstanding original research … that, upon implementation, has had a significant commercial/societal impact.”

Previously, Shi has also been named a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, a Fellow of INFORMS, an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, and an Academician of the International Academy for Quality. His work has also been honored with, among others, 11 best paper awards and nine international research awards.

Shi said, “I am honored to receive this recognition, and I greatly appreciate all my students, colleagues, and sponsors for their support throughout my many years of research in and implementation of complex manufacturing systems.”

Van Hentenryck and his team have spent years developing an On-Demand Multimodal Transit System (ODMTS) to address the first- and last-mile problems in public transportation and provide equitable, efficient, and low-cost public transportation options. The multimodal approach uses small on-demand vehicles to take riders to and from their locations to high-frequency bus and rail hubs. Increasing the use of public transit will not only decrease reliance on personal vehicles and reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions; it will also increase accessibility to jobs, healthcare, education, and fresh food.

However, when executives from Ryder, a leading logistics and transportation company with more than 235,000 vehicles and 8,600 professional truck drivers, reached out to Van Hentenryck about a collaboration, the research team began to look at the model through a different lens.

“We have been focusing on people mobility and had not looked at other types of transportation,” said Van Hentenryck. “So when Ryder came to us, we were very interested to see if the techniques that we were using for people could apply more generally to freight. In this project specifically, we are looking at how adding autonomous vehicles could unlock additional value.”

Van Hentenryck, who also serves as associate chair for innovation and entrepreneurship and leads the Socially Aware Mobility (SAM) Lab in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), and his team met with Ryder to better understand the company’s goals and to determine if this multimodal approach could be applied to another system. Working with a company like Ryder gave the team access to large amounts of data and to logistics experts who understand the industry’s current and future challenges.

“There is a lot of back-and-forth between researchers and company representatives in a project like this,” explained Van Hentenryck. “Sometimes the solutions we come up with in the lab will not work in the field, and so you have this iterative process in transforming the research idea into something that is applicable in the field.”

Ryder operates a network of dedicated fleets for its customers, and even with high levels of performance, inflexible transportation lanes and schedules often lead to inefficiencies.

“We learned that sometimes these trucks are traveling many miles completely empty, which is not cost effective,” Van Hentenryck said. “We started looking at how we can avoid these ‘empty miles.’”

To meet customer needs, Ryder must execute a large number of freight movements across the country. The team realized that by breaking each trip into three sections — origin-to-hub, hub-to-hub, and hub-to-destination — it could organize a network using both regular and autonomous trucks. The first and last segments would rely on smaller human-operated vehicles, since these will typically occur in more densely populated locations. Connections between hubs would rely solely on autonomous trucks (those without a human driver), generally in sparsely populated, controlled environments like highways and exit ramps.

“Safety is especially important to our researchers and to Ryder, and we take it very seriously,” said Van Hentenryck. “Keeping the autonomous trucks on the longer-haul middle leg, and human drivers in the first and final legs, schedules autonomy on lengthy, often overnight trips, and places drivers in dense environments where there are many other variables at play like left-hand turns, stop signs, pedestrians, etc.”

The autonomous hub-to-hub aspect allows Van Hentenryck’s model to be optimized in a whole new way because it doesn’t depend on having drivers available — autonomous trucks are extremely flexible. This can deliver significant projected savings for Ryder if the model is implemented.

“The whole team was stunned by the projected savings from this project,” said Van Hentenryck. “I have worked on many different transportation problems during my career, and 1% improvement is magical. In this case, improvement goes from 29% to 40%, depending on the price of autonomous trucks and the cost of operating them. Also, the flexibility to move these autonomous trucks around gave us the ability to optimize the business model in ways people didn’t even consider before.”

The agility of the new model also provides better reactions to supply chain disruptions, because it can adapt more quickly to a new situation.

“Autonomous driving technology is poised to be incredibly disruptive to our industry in safety, service, and cost. As such, it was clear to us that this was not something we could wait to figure out or be handed a playbook. This collaboration with Georgia Tech was an advancement in our commitment to becoming a leader in fostering innovation and bringing it to our customers,” said Michael Plasencia, group director of new product strategy at Ryder.

“We are designing a much more resilient supply chain logistics system, and that is because we are thinking differently,” Van Hentenryck added. “This technology provides more resilience, more flexibility, and is more affordable.

“This project is only a first step. The whole field of transportation, logistics, and supply chains is being transformed by technology, automation, and the changes in attitudes and expectations that emerged during Covid-19. We are looking forward to working with Ryder on many of these.”

View Ryder’s press release

The Impact of Autonomous Trucking: A Case Study if Ryder's Dedicated Transportation Network

“The biggest mistake consumers make is to think that the first step is to buy new equipment or technology,” said Thomas in the Q&A. “People can run their homes with energy efficiency in mind. Some big energy-saving tips: heating and air conditioning use a lot of energy, so look for ways to turn that way down.”

When asked if the government should continue to incentivize consumers and businesses to invest in energy-efficient projects, Thomas explained that energy efficiency standards for buildings should be included in building codes and appliance standards, but that government subsidies can support the testing and adoption of new technological innovations.

“Energy utilities can subsidize energy efficiency improvements because it saves money for the utilities,” said Thomas in the article. “By reducing demand, utilities do not have to buy the most expensive energy and they can save money and provide better service even in very hot or very cold weather.”

You can read the full interview here.

Advisor: Assistant Professor Mathieu Dahan
Focus area: Operations Research

Haden Boone is researching optimization techniques to solve a network inspection problem where a defender places a number of sensors according to a probability distribution to detect attacks on targets of varying criticality from a strategic opponent. The assumption is that detection is imperfect, and that detectors have a probability of failure associated with both the location of the sensor and the monitored target. To put it into perspective, this research could be used to devise a police patrol routing system with limited resources that minimizes the number of undetected crimes or attacks on critical targets such as banks, schools, or other high value/populated areas.

“The furthering of math and statistics, and in particular their practical application to unintuitive areas, has always been an aspiration of mine. From the moment I took my first ISyE class I fell in love with the major, and after realizing that I had the potential and the opportunity to make an impact in the field, the decision to stay at Georgia Tech — the most prestigious institution in optimization — was a no-brainer,” said Boone. “Perhaps more impactful, however, is my desire to teach at the collegiate level. After spending four years surrounded by some of the best and brightest engineers, how could I not want to stick around if it meant I had the chance to shape the most brilliant minds in the industry?  

“Receiving the inaugural Beerman Fellowship is a huge honor, and it serves to validate my hard work over the past four years at Georgia Tech. This fellowship will give me the opportunity to bring my passions and ambitions in the ISyE field to reality, and I hope to give back to the industry, the Institute, and the ISyE program what it has given to me tenfold.”

Jorge Huertas, Ryder Fellow
The Ryder Fellowship supports graduate students working on innovative ISyE efforts to analyze and address problems and challenges that affect the safety of autonomous vehicles.

Advisor: A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck
Focus area: Operations Research

Jorge Huertas is analyzing how to optimize middle-mile freight transportation with autonomous vehicles and coordinate it with first- and last-mile logistics. To accomplish this, potential transportation costs are reduced by using real-operations data as input to an optimization model that minimizes total empty driving miles. Research currently underway focuses on decomposing this optimization model into a column-generation algorithm that obtains high-quality solutions efficiently, and the ability to scale them nationwide.

Hanyu Zhang, Seth Bonder Fellow
The Bonder Fellowship supports graduate and postdoctoral students working with Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck’s outreach programs in ISyE, including the Seth Bonder Camp in Computational and Data Science for Engineering and associated activities.

Advisor: A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor Pascal Van Hentenryck
Focus area: Machine Learning

Hanyu Zhang is interested in modeling and forecasting large dynamic systems, particularly transportation systems and electrical grids. Her research includes ridership prediction and traffic flow prediction, capturing the intrinsic spatiotemporal behavior of transportation systems. She is currently working on forecasting renewable energy production for electrical grids.

“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.

According to Van Hentenryck, who also leads the Socially Aware Mobility Lab, mass transit has a significant first- and last-mile problem: Most people will only walk a quarter of a mile to and from public transportation. If the distance exceeds this threshold, ridership decreases by more than 90%. To address this, Van Hentenryck’s team has created an ODMTS, which uses small on-demand vehicles, in addition to buses and light rail, to take riders to and from their destinations. The on-demand vehicles act as feeders to and from the fixed routes, allowing the transit system to be essentially door-to-door.

Van Hentenryck, a world leader in the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research, began to tackle the first- and last-mile problems in mobility eight years ago in Canberra, Australia. He then conducted another successful case study in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In both midsized cities, the multi-modal approach resulted in a significant reduction in both cost and passenger wait times. In 2018, Van Hentenryck joined ISyE, shifted his focus to Atlanta, and began a collaboration with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). This winter, after more than three years of preparation, the team plans to pilot ODMTS in Atlanta areas with limited public transportation.

While ODMTS will improve the performance and efficiency of public transportation for everyone in Atlanta, the main objective is to provide cost-effective transportation to underserved communities and connect residents in underserved communities to jobs, healthcare, education, and healthy food. The ODMTS pilot will run in MARTA’s four jurisdictions: Clayton, DeKalb, and Fulton counties, and the City of Atlanta.

“It is almost impossible to do this with a traditional system, because these areas are very large and sparsely populated,” said Van Hentenryck. “It is not feasible to put buses in these areas, because they would run empty most of the time, and they require significant capital expenditures. On-demand vehicles, however, are inexpensive to operate and can reach a larger population, because they can be deployed as needed rather than following a set route.”

Though this is not the team’s first pilot, tackling a city like Atlanta is no small feat. Most of the algorithms used in Canberra and Ann Arbor had to be completely rewritten to account for Atlanta’s size and rail system, a component not part of the previous pilots. This creates a four-level system — trains, buses, on-demand vehicles, and walking — to get passengers to and from their locations.

“Atlanta is also a complicated city because it has multiple job centers. In addition to downtown, there are centers in Midtown, Gwinnett, Alpharetta, Buckhead, and near the airport,” said Van Hentenryck. “This makes for a much more complex design since we are taking people from their homes to one of many locations for work.”

Tickets will cost the same as the traditional MARTA system, just $2.50 each way, and riders will be able to purchase fare using the Breeze system. The team is also using a combination of machine learning and optimization techniques to predict rider behavior and ensure the system can scale accordingly.

“If we decrease transit time by 40%, more people will adopt transit because now it is much faster and more convenient than it used to be,” explained Van Hentenryck. “This will increase the demand, so it is important that we size the system correctly to account for this.”

ODMTS will also help decrease traffic congestion in Atlanta and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enabling more people to use public transportation in place of personal vehicles. The addition of on-demand vehicles will also create jobs since additional drivers will be necessary to operate them. No existing bus routes will be eliminated during the pilot.

Collaboration Leads to Success

“MARTA’s leadership is very forward thinking, and they are working to determine the future of public transportation,” said Van Hentenryck. “They have been extremely collaborative throughout the process and provided us with vast amounts of data and insights to drive the process.”

“We are grateful to the National Science Foundation for this grant and proud to partner with Georgia Tech,” said MARTA Deputy General Manager Collie Greenwood. “Exploring first- and last-mile connectivity options is important in providing transit service that meets the needs of everyone in metro Atlanta.” 

In addition to Van Hentenryck, the Georgia Tech team that will pilot ODMTS in Atlanta includes Professor Subhrajit “Subhro” Guhathakurta in the School of City and Regional Planning, Executive Director for Partnership and Inclusive Innovation Debra Lam, Associate Professor Christopher Le Dantec in the School of Interactive Computing, and Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor Kari Watkins in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The research team will partner directly with residents in pilot communities, as well as with the transportation advocacy organization Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, to ensure transit services and access address the real-world needs of underserved locations.

“Our long history of working directly with Atlanta communities, and with local partners like the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, will help us embed local expertise into the design of last-mile transit service for underserved locations in the city,” said Le Dantec.

The Stage 2 Civic Innovation Challenge grant is the latest in a series of awards to bring ODMTS to Atlanta. The team received the NSF Leap HI (Leading Engineering for America’s Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure) grant in 2019 in collaboration with the School of Civil Engineering, School of Urban Planning, MARTA, the Atlanta Regional Commission, and the City of Atlanta to scale the algorithms used in Canberra and Ann Arbor with hopes to eventually pilot the program in Atlanta. They were then awarded a Stage 1 Civic Innovation Challenge planning grant in January 2021 to model the mobility patterns in Atlanta in preparation for a pilot in Stage 2.

"Professor Van Hentenryck deserves much credit for having the foresight to bring multidisciplinary, applied research and external partners together to catalyze innovative responses to regional and urban mobility," Lam said. "We are excited to explore how this can be modeled for other communities for greater economic and social growth."

Of the 52 teams selected for Stage 1, only 17 were chosen to move forward with pilot projects in Stage 2. They will have 12 months to complete and evaluate their projects.

"We applaud the efforts of all the teams who worked tirelessly to build partnerships between researchers and community stakeholders" said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "We are excited to see the teams selected for the next phase begin their pilot projects and plant seeds of innovation across the country. This program demonstrates the value of research-community partnerships in rapidly translating cutting-edge science into community-based innovation, and we look forward to seeing its positive impact across urban and rural communities."

Van Hentenryck is eager to implement the pilot. “For me, this is the most successful research that you can have,” he said. “We started more than three years ago with an idea and now we get to make a difference in the lives of people.”

About the Socially Aware Mobility Project

The Socially Aware Mobility project is poised to have a tremendous impact on the metro Atlanta area, revolutionizing and modernizing the transit system for the 21st century. Funded in part by a grant by the National Science Foundation, the project aims to bring equitable accessibility, decreased congestion, and increased mobility to all MARTA users. Through optimization and machine learning, the project will create a scalable, On-Demand Multimodal Transit System model, which will be validated through implementation in the Atlanta region. By providing solutions to increase mobility while simultaneously decreasing congestion, the project stands to have a significant impact on how Atlantans navigate around the community.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

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?”

Reaching the Community

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 smart phones 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 micromobility; 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.

Generating Solutions

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 multidimensional 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.

Creating a Framework

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.”

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.

During a typical semester, the teams devote 12 to 15 hours a week making multiple visits to their clients’ headquarters, defining the problem they will address with their industrial engineering skills, gathering data in order to devise a solution, and modeling and testing their solution. Clients frequently implement some or all of their team’s solution, saving considerable time and money as a result.

But in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with shelter-in-place orders implemented by state and local governments, and businesses and academia moving online, this is hardly a typical semester. So, how have this semester’s 30 ISyE Senior Design teams successfully adapted?

As it turns out, communication and flexibility – two qualities necessary for a successful Senior Design team during a normal semester – are even more crucial in the current situation.

 For Brice Edelman, whose team client is Kinaxis, a Canadian supply chain management software company, the adjustments made by his group have been close to home – literally.

“I live 40 minutes north of Atlanta, so my ‘isolation’ meant a short drive home to be with my family,” he says. “But I have groupmates whose closest family members are thousands of miles away – in India, in Brazil, or scattered across the U.S. – who have had to figure out what to do, where to go, and otherwise handle things that were easy for me. They are in stressful, scary situations, but even so, they've continued to exceed the standard and create excellent results.

“Earlier in the semester, we found that structure was important for our project – now, it’s absolutely critical,” Edelman continues. “Scheduling and adhering to regular check-ins, double-clarifying expectations, and setting deadlines for work are prerequisites to success in this new work environment. Our group is full of hard workers, but this structure and extra communication ensures that we're all doing the right work.”

Katie Neil’s team, which worked with Buffalo Wild Wings, had a similar experience.

“At the beginning of the semester, our team discussed what we wanted to achieve in Senior Design,” Neil explains. “Once we were all safely settled at home, we had an open and honest discussion about the ensuing changes. While it was a tough conversation, I think being candid about the situation and discussing its repercussions was important. Additionally, I think we've become quite creative when it comes to being productive and motivated - whether that's FaceTime calls to silently do work to stay accountable, BlueJeans meetings with our advisor so we all remain on the same page, and even Discord meetings to chat and remind ourselves that social distancing doesn't mean emotional isolation!” 

The team recognized the extremely unusual nature of the current situation, and in response, they built additional flexibility into the product they created for the restaurant chain.

“We have focused on what ‘sustainability’ means in a corporate setting, in other words the longevity of a product or model,” Neil says. “At the end of this project, our product needs to be useable years into the future. Our final deliverable is a demand forecasting and product mix optimization tool, which means the models are trained on historical data. Obviously, there’s a question as to the validity of historical data for the first few months – if not longer – of 2020 and how it could skew forecasts. In response, we built our product to be flexible when it comes to selecting which data to train our models on. That way, if the client chooses to forgo selecting certain time periods of data, they can do so.”

Another Senior Design team was able pivot in a few short days to address their client’s needs that arose specifically because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They worked with Goodr, a food waste management startup that recovers leftover food from food businesses and delivers it to either non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or farms.

Youngjoon Lim, the team leader, says, “Our team helped Goodr with three main deliverables: a logistics routing tool to reduce driving time for food pickups and deliveries, a new pricing strategy to maximize revenue and profit, and a carbon footprint tool to increase the visibility of Goodr's environmental impact.

“In this pandemic situation, Goodr has been delivering groceries to families in need in the Atlanta area. They reached out to our team and asked for a variation of the routing tool that could be used for these deliveries, as they had hundreds of different stops. We were able to shift gears in a couple days and provide a routing tool specifically for this situation. It was great to see one of our tools in action, especially in a way that was able to help the Atlanta community in this time of need.”

ISyE Director of Professional Practice and Senior Design Coordinator Dima Nazzal  says, "The hardships of delivering Senior Design projects during a pandemic equipped our students with a valuable skill; they’re more prepared today to deal with distant collaborations in the workplace, which could very well be a defining feature of future business operations.”

In other words, these Senior Design teams are doing exactly what they’ve been trained for: creating efficiencies and optimizing under constraints -- just what you would expect for students in the No. 1-ranked industrial engineering program in the U.S.

The Kinaxis team includes Nosrat Chowdhury, Brice Edelman, Osman Ghandour, Aniruddh Hari, Yash Lunagaria, Alice Pagoto, and Maria Yagnye.

The Buffalo Wild Wings team includes Diego Granizo, Ashwin Haritsa, Selin Karaoguz, Philip Murray, Katie Neil, Katie Wah, and Wilson Pu.              

The Goodr team includes Efe Birkan, Sarah Hamer, Youngjoon Lim, Ji Won Kim,  Ji Won Kim, Alejandro Sosa, and Da El Um. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has also resulted in the cancellation of the spring Capstone Expo, where Senior Design teams from across the Institute present their projects to the public. ISyE additionally hosts its own Best of Senior Design competition, which will still take place virtually on Tuesday, April 28. Three to five ISyE teams will be chosen to give their project presentation via BlueJeans to faculty and students, with one team selected as the semester’s most outstanding.

However, because composites are unique (combining different materials), it is difficult to model how they will degrade and fail during use. Also, impact damage may not be visible or may be barely visible, making it harder to detect than damage to metallic structures. Furthermore, repairing these materials and structures is both time-consuming and expensive due to the complexity of composite parts and lack of experience or knowledge and data.

Based at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Center for Composite and Hybrid Materials Interfacing (CHMI) intends to dramatically improve how composite and hybrid structures are joined and repaired. The Center is one of four active NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRCs) at Georgia Tech.

Funded for five years with an NSF IUCRC grant, the Center will work closely with an industry consortium of leading manufacturers and government organizations that will underwrite research projects.

Housed in the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), the Center incorporates three university research teams from Georgia Tech, Oakland University, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT). Each research and development partner brings decades of composite and hybrid materials research focus in specific industries: Georgia Tech in aerospace, Detroit-based Oakland University in automotive composite systems, and UT in infrastructure and medical devices.

“The study of the interface between composite, metallic and other electronic materials is really the future of manufacturing,” said Ben Wang, executive director of GTMI. “The Center amplifies the thought leadership of Georgia Tech advancement in composites. It also puts us in the nexus of three areas -- advanced manufacturing, innovative materials and data analytics.”

Improving Composite Repair Efficiency with Analytics and Automation

Center director Chuck Zhang, Harold E. Smalley Professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), will drive CHMI’s vision to transform the current labor-intensive, experience-based joining and repair practice into fast, automated and reliable processes.

“Using advanced computation, experimental data analytics, and digital techniques and tools, we hope to reduce by 50% the overall cost, cycle time and variation of these processes in the next 10 years,” Zhang said.

As an IUCRC, the Center will engage Georgia Tech and partner faculty and researchers and students, in addition to industry partners. Each university partner will rotate hosting in-person briefings with the consortium every six months, with the first meeting set for October at GTMI.

The frequent engagement between researchers and industry partners will “help ensure a strong understanding of the challenges and possible solutions. The outcome is really a very robust research agenda,” said Wang.

The Center will solve key challenges facing industries that rely on composite materials. To illustrate, a bird striking a plane can damage a composite structure on the wing of the aircraft. The airline company or maintenance provider must then deploy specialized, expensive patches – often to remote locations. There are training challenges with technicians, as well as the high cost of grounding a plane. Pulling an Airbus A350 out of service for a single day costs an airline an estimated $100,000 or more in lost revenue.

Repairing composites represents a supply chain challenge beyond one company’s capabilities to solve. 

“No company can do this on their own – it's too multidisciplinary,” said Rob Maskell, chief scientist of global composite manufacturer Solvay Materials. “Solving this challenge is critical to the increased adoption of composites, and I think Georgia Tech brings a lot of competencies that, when combined with Solvay’s expertise, gives us credibility.”

Solvay Materials: Finding Solutions to a Multi-Disciplinary Challenge

Solvay Materials has been involved from the beginning and is one of the Center’s eight founding consortium members. The Belgium-headquartered company is the leading supplier of structural adhesives for composite bonding on aircraft. It is estimated that 55% of all twin-aisle commercial jets contain composites.

“Joining industry and academia in this Center is an essential piece on the road to the increased commercialization and adoption of composites,” Maskell said.

Maskell noted that the current manual repair process for composites could be replaced with analytics, automation, and digital technologies. He also sees additive manufacturing – or 3D printing of composite parts – as a future key efficiency driver.

Building Future Workforce while Enhancing Skills of Current Engineers

The Center also will help support workforce development in the composite area, both to educate graduate and undergraduate students and create a funnel for future workers in the industry once they graduate. Wang said the Center will also create a technology and knowledge database of new tools for companies to use in their production lines. Georgia Tech leadership sees it as a win-win for researchers and industry.

“Getting this Center approved will benefit quite a few faculty members. We have expertise in trends and applications in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Edwin Romeijn, ISyE H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair and professor. “The Center also touches on issues of supply chain design and management, and transportation and autonomous vehicles, which are very big strengths of ISyE as well.”

Joining Zhang from Georgia Tech are co-principal investigators Christopher Muhlstein and Donggang Yao, both professors in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Yao focuses on creating materials and developing material systems to make and join composites together, while Muhlstein studies the mechanical behavior of these materials. Zhang’s background in multifunctional composites, additive manufacturing, and applications of data analytics ties it all together.

“As an engineer of composites, you need all these pieces,” explained Muhlstein, who strives to create a more predictable, reliable, and high-confidence bond between the composites and the structures. “The moment that you can use the composite all the way to its limit, and do that with confidence, now you enable whole new classes of airplanes and cars ― or even completely new applications.”

Guided by Technology Roadmap, Industry Engagement

The CHMI launches with a well-defined technology roadmap, having benefited from earlier grant and collaborative discussions with industry partners.

According to Zhang, the concept for the Center originated in 2015, when Georgia Tech received a National Institute of Standards and Technology grant to identify top challenges and R&D needs facing aerospace companies and then develop a 10-to-15-year technology roadmap focused on research in that area. More than 50 companies and government organizations, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, and component manufacturing suppliers were polled on their top five technology challenges, and “composite joining and repair was one of the top three technology areas cited,” Zhang recalled.

The Georgia Tech principal investigators consider the deep materials and analytics expertise at Georgia Tech a key strength of the Center. Having industry involvement ensures that “we as researchers get great problems to work on,” said Muhlstein. “This Center allows us to create a convergent platform where industry comes together with academia in both a structured and targeted way to advance manufacturing in the U.S.”

The CHMI’s founding industry coalition members are Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Boeing, Corvid Technologies, Hexcel, RUAG Space USA, Spirit AeroSystems, Solvay, and Top Flight Aerostructures.

*Editor's note: All photos and video for this story were taken in July 2021, prior to updated mask guidance issued by Georgia Tech. 

In an article published in a recent issue of the ISE magazine from the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, the moral complications of supply chain optimization are discussed by Chen Zhou, associate chair for undergraduate studies and associate professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

“Over the years, ISE has developed many tools for logistics and supply chain, analytics, manufacturing, ergonomics, quality improvement and work system design,” Zhou wrote in the article. “However, the challenge in modern society is that improvements in cost reduction and efficiency improvement are not sufficient to supply human needs.”

This misalignment is easily visible in the case of food deserts, where convenience stores and fast-food restaurants thrive because of their low costs and high efficiency. They do not provide sufficient nutrition, but supermarkets and family restaurants cannot compete against them because fresh produce has a shorter shelf life and is difficult to transport and store.

Another key example is the healthcare system, which is filled with invisible contracts that lead to high healthcare costs when pricing information is not transparent. Between hospitals and patients, there are other players – value added networks, group purchasing organizations, and pharmacy benefit managers – who are all optimizing their interests.

Georgia Tech Senior Design students have found a lot of waste in hospitals that arises when insurance companies are not concerned about product charges if their costs are covered by premiums, leading to potential overconsumption of medical services. This case of supplier-induced demand is just one instance of many moral hazards in the healthcare system.

To create supply chains designed to meet human needs, industrial engineers need to lead the way. “ISEs have an advantage to supplement their tools on cost and efficiency with a few more tools, such as a deterrent to moral hazards and the internalization of externalities, to address some of the most important social and environmental issues,” Zhou noted.

Read the article in its entirety.

This article is provided for informational purposes only with permission of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers from the July 2021 issue of ISE magazine, Copyright©2021. All rights reserved.

The camp’s curriculum featured several modules that were offered in four levels ranging from basic to advanced. The first module offered an introduction to the visual programming language Snap! and was followed by units in more advanced programming as well as computational data science, optimization, machine learning, and computational biology.

Van Hentenryck used a Marvel theme for the course material, which included a movie trailer-style introduction, the Avengers theme song as an intro to each lecture, and even wearing a Nick Fury costume while teaching. “The students become superheroes by learning how to code,” he explained.

Thanks to the flexibility of the online format, the program expanded to include five different versions of the camp. Two were were open specifically to students attending minority and rural high schools – one with Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta and a high school in Puerto Rico, and one with Banneker High School in Fulton County and Savannah High School.

Two other camps were offered in collaboration with Kids Teach Tech, a non-profit founded by Arjun Mulchandani, a student from California passionate about teaching other kids how to code. His team encompasses a community of children who create and teach programming classes to their peers, both in person and online, reaching youth not only across the United States but also internationally.

The first camp – exclusively for students from Kids Teach Tech – prepared them to deliver the material themselves. In the following camp session, those same students hosted their own Seth Bonder Camp, in conjunction with the Georgia Tech team, UC Berkeley Engineering and the Urban League of Greater San Francisco Bay Area. The camp was a huge success, and over 80% of the attendees were underrepresented students.

“The partnership with Kids Teach Tech enabled us to reach students in California and leverage the existing ecosystem there, indicating that the Seth Bonder Camp model is replicable and can grow organically,” said Van Hentenryck.

The final Seth Bonder Camp was open to all high school students. Total enrollment across all five camps reached 150 students, a huge leap from previous years that averaged 20-30 participants. To help with the camp, Van Hentenryck has a team of post-docs, Ph.D. students, and undergraduate students who serve as teaching assistants and are supported by Seth Bonder Fellowships.

Already, the camp has inspired high schoolers to pursue engineering. Neil Barry, who attended the camp in 2019, is now a rising second-year ISyE student conducting research with Van Hentenryck. “The Seth Bonder camp was a great experience for me because it showed me how useful and rewarding ISyE can be,” said Barry. “I grew more interested in the power of using data to make informed decisions, especially with computer programming. Professor Van Hentenryck was engaging as a teacher and is helpful as a research advisor.”

Next year, Van Hentenryck wants to transform the Seth Bonder camp into a longitudinal program that offers increasingly sophisticated camps by secondary school grade, with the goal of keeping high school students interested over time. He is also working on offering the camp throughout the school year and says that partnering with high schools and organizations like Kids Teach Tech is key to the future success of the camp.

To learn more about the Seth Bonder Camp in Computational and Data Science for Engineering and to partner with the camp, visit sethbondercamp.isye.gatech.edu.

The panel’s topic: “Can the Biden Administration Improve the Manufacturing Sector?”

Other panelists included: David Cicilline, member of the U.S. House of Representatives; Monica Gorman, deputy assistant secretary, manufacturing industry & analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce; Elisabeth Reynolds, special assistant to the President for manufacturing and economic development, National Economic Council, the White House; Darrell West, vice president and director governance studies, the Brookings Institution; and John Hazen White, Jr., executive chairman, Taco Family of Companies Trustee, the Brookings Institution.

During the panel’s second session, Wang emphasized, “advanced manufacturing is foundational to our [nation’s] economic prosperity, resilience and the national security.” He was previously involved with President Obama administration’s advanced manufacturing partnership from 2011 to 2013.

“Building a strong manufacturing base in the U.S. is a national imperative,” said Wang. “We know that technology-based innovation is the dominant driver of economic growth in the 21st century. Our national security, standard of living, and rebuilding the middle class in our society all depends on a strong globally competitive manufacturing base.”

Wang stressed the need to have a vibrant innovation value chain tightly coupled with a strong manufacturing ecosystem. “We cannot separate innovation from manufacturing,” said Wang.
“Some policymakers believed that we could continue to innovate and leave manufacturing to other nations. As it turned out, not only did we lose our ability to produce high tech products, we began to lose our ability to innovate.”

“If we want to compete well globally, we must maintain both the technological innovation leadership and advance manufacturing leadership [in the United States],” said Wang.

The need was also stressed to support small and medium-sized manufacturers who contribute to the nation’s supply chain and overall GDP in a significant way, but lack resources to evaluate and adopt new, state of the art manufacturing technologies.

National and state Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP) can play a critical role in helping these smaller entities with technology adoption.