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8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
1/8
Monica Puertas:A moving spirit at USF A note from the presiden
Monica Puertas, a doctoral candidate in the IMSE
Department, received the prestigious Judith Liebman
Award at the INFORMS 2013 Annual Meeting on
October 7th, 2013.
The Judith Liebman Award is presented to
INFORMS chapter members who have been a
moving spirit in his or her chapter. Recipients
are student chapter leaders who have pushed their
chapters to achieve extraordinary performance and to
engage with the local and university communities.
Monica most certainly has been a moving spirit within the USF INFORMS
student chapter, serving on the chapter committee from 2010 through 2013, most
recently as Chapter President (2012-2013). Previously, she served as Lecture Series
and Events coordinator (20102011) and Secretary (20112012).
Monica began her doctoral studies at USF in the Fall of 2009, after serving as
the deputy director of the Institute for Quality at the Pontifical Catholic University
of Peru. There, she developed and taught graduate and undergraduate programs,gaining valuable teaching and consulting experience.
Monicas research interests lie in the areas of systems modeling and optimization,
data analysis, process optimization and resource management, particularly in
healthcare environments. In pursuit of these interests, she has worked on modeling
and optimizing resource management practices at the polytrauma unit of the
James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, FL. In addition, she has developed
data mining approaches to analyze physiologic signals and has participated in
interdisciplinary collaborations
As the coordinator of the Lecture Series program, she invited 34 distinguished
scholars and industry leaders from 2011 to 2012 to share their expertise with USFstudents and faculty. She is also a passionate promoter of community service,
and lead the chapter to participate in the Great American Teach-In in 2012 at a
local Hillsborough County elementary school. Likewise, she participates in USFs
yearly Engineering Expo, encouraging K12 students in both venues to pursue an
education in the fields of science and engineering.
Thanks to her hard work, dedication and leadership, the USF student chapter
has been nationally recognized every year since 2009 and has received cum laude
and summa cum laudehonors in the past three years.
As the number of graduate stude
continues to grow and the INFORM
USF student chapter expands with n
members, others are ready to contin
their professional careers somewh
else. The 2013-2014 academic y
promises to be an exciting year, build
on previous successes with acade
and community engagement activitie
New exciting ventures are com
ahead such as mentoring high sch
and middle school students in O
and training undergraduates in
tools and software. And we have a n
newsletter design!
The success of the INFORMS@US
only possible through your involvem
an important effort we apprecimmensely.
Florentino R
Fall2 0 1 3 INFORMS
University of South Florida Student Chapte
INFORMS@USF
Department of Industrial and
Management Sciences Engineer
College of Engineering
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL
President:Florentino Rico
Vice-President:Yazhuo Liu
Newsletter Editors:
Garrick Aden-Buie
Walter Silva Sotillo
http://informs.eng.usf.edu
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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INFORMS Lecture Series: Dr. Eva Lee
Dr. Savachkin Receives IIE Excellence in TeachingAward
We are happy to have had Dr. Eva Lee visit us, as part of
our INFORMS@USF lecture series, on Friday, November
15th, 2013. Dr. Lee is a Professor at the H. Milton StewartSchool of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the
Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Lee is also the director
for Center for Operations Research in Medicine and
HealthCare.
The title of the presentation was Modeling and
Optimizing Emergency Department Workflow. Dr. Lee
presented a new emergency department decision-support
system that couples machine learning, simulation, and
optimization to address these improvement goals. Lee works
in the area of mathematical programming, information
technology, and large-scale computational algorithms,
and tackles challenges arising from real-world problems
through systems modeling, algorithms and software design,
predictive analytics, and risk and decision theory analysis.
During Dr. Lees visit to USF, she met with several IMSE
faculty members and enjoyed a productive and informative
discussion with INFORMS student members over lunch.
Alex Savachkin, associate professor in the IMSE
Department, received the 2013 Annual Award for
Excellence in Teaching Operations Research from the
Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). The award recognizes
outstanding educators in the field of operations research
and was presented to Dr. Savachkin at the IIE Annual IE
Conference and Expo held May 18-22 in San Juan, Puerto
Rico.
Dr. Savachkin garnered this highly competitive national
award for his teaching of the undergraduate course
Probabilistic Operations Research, a course he has taught
frequently during his 9 years at USF. As described by one
of his students, USF IMSE students really enjoy his classes
because of his remarkable presentation of the material.
For Dr. Savachkin, the most rewarding aspect of teaching
is finding ways to motivate the students. I try to balance
strictness and informality, rigor and usability, he explains.
Students agree. He uses real-world and interesting
examples that illustrate probabilistic concepts and inspire
students to think more
deeply about the material,
confirmed another student.
In addition to the IIE
Award for Excellence
in Teaching Operations
Research, Dr. Savachkin
was a recipient of the
USF Outstanding
Undergraduate Teaching
Award in 2012.
2
Dr. Eva Lee
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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Mehrnaz Abdollahian awarded poster prize
Mehrnaz Abdollahian, USF IMSE
Ph.D. student, won first place at
the INFORMS annual conference
poster competition for her poster
entitled:A MDP Model for Breast and
Ovarian Cancer Intervention Strategies for
BRCA1/2 Mutation Carriers.
Mehrnaz competed against sixteen
semi-finalists from around the
globe at the Interactive Sessions
Competition at the INFORMS 2013
Annual Meeting, held in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
Her poster exhibits her research indecision models for breast and ovarian
cancer treatment from the past two
years in collaboration with Dr. Tapas
Das, IMSE Department Chair, and
Dr. Rebecca Sutphen of the USF
Health Department of Genetics.
More than 300,000 women in the
United States carry breast cancer
mutation genes BRCA1 or BRCA2.
Sadly, up to 85% of these women will
develop breast cancer and up to 65%
will develop ovarian cancer in their
lifetime.
The poster presents the teams
work building a decision model to
recommend effective intervention
strategies for carriers of the BRCA1/2
mutations. The model considers
drastic risk reduction actions, such
as prophylactic mastectomy or
oophorectomy, as well as screening
and monitoring actions to help guide
physicians and patients to select themost cost-effective course of action
with the greatest probability
of a positive health outcome.
The model could
potentially be used in a free,
user-friendly online platform
for patients, physicians and
policy makers.
For Mehrnaz, the poster
competition was an excellent
experience. In addition to confirming
that her research topic is both
important and impactful, it provided
a chance to present her work, receive
useful comments from the judges
and audience, and connect with
fellow researchers in the INFORMS
community.
To fellow young women considering
a career in a STEM field, she has this
advice: Dont be afraid to speak up
about your ideas.Congratulations again to Mehrnaz!
Last year (2011-2012) the USF INFORMS Student
Chapter received the Summa Cum LaudeINFORMS
Student Chapter Annual Award. This year (2012-2013) the
chapter was again awarded the highest recognition among
all INFORMS Student Chapters worldwide.
The award recognizes the achievements of the student
chapter regarding its commitment to the promotion of
Operations Research and Management Sciences and to the
community in terms of communications, newsletters, guest
speaker presentations and social activities.
The chapter was honored to receive the award at the
Student Awards Ceremony at the INFORMS Annual
Meeting, in Minneapolis, October 7. After receiving the
Award a reception took place at the Hilton Hotel.
USF INFORMS Student Chapter is committed to win
again this award next year and to continuously improve and
increase the quality of their work.
Chapter members receive award from INFORMS President Anne Robinson
USF Chapter HonoredSumma Cum Laude
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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4
USF Students and Faculty Attend Annual MeetingThis year marked another successful,
eventful and productive trip of USF
faculty and students to the INFORMS
Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN.
In the annual departmental tradition,
18 students and 5 faculty members
traded the comfort of Floridas 80
October weather for four intense days
of scholarship and networking in
the legitimately crisp fall weather of
Minneapolis.
Together, faculty and students
presented more than 25 presentations
and chaired 10 sessions, making
this trip the most successful USF
representation since the author has
been attending the annual meeting [Ed:
this was his first time].
Ph.D. candidate Javad Sajjadi
described the event, saying It is a
great opportunity to attend INFORMS
Annual Meetings to meet new people
and start collaborations, learn about
hot topics in the community and the
state-of-the-art research in your specific
field, and finally, get feedback about
your own research.
Healthcare and data mining
USF representation was strongest in
the intersection of healthcare and data
mining, a popular topic at the meeting
and the subject of Tuesdays plenary
speech by Dimitris Bertsimas, Co-
Director of the Operations Research
Center at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, titled Health Care
Analytics.
USF graduate students presented
research that will help physicians and
patients avoid hospital readmissions,
diagnose pelvic organ prolapse, improv
clinical trial screening in Alzheimers
studies, and to maximize the use of
data from patient monitoring systems.
Public Health and Simulation
Two students presented research on
the impact, treatment and prevention
of a pandemic outbreak using
simulation. For doctoral candidate
Sandro Paz, the best reason to attend
the INFORMS Annual Meeting is to
build his professional network. One of
his favorite moments from his time in
Minneapolis was answering questions
after his talk on treatment strategies for
pandemic influenza.
Optimization and Energy
INFORMS is a society for students,
professionals and experts in operations
research, so it should not be surprising
to find that a significant portion oftalks focused on novel optimization
techniques and applications. Overheard
conversations at lunch were more likely
to include phrases like branch and
bound, Benders decomposition,
or convexity than discussions of the
weather.
USF students presented talks on
robust optimization techniques as well
Fall Semester INFORMS Welcome Event
Student presentation topics at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2013.
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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StudentPresentations
Garrick Aden-Buie, Boosted Tree Ensembles for
Predicting Postsurgical ICU Mortality
Fethullah Caliskan, The Impact of Collaboration
Networking Formations on Invention Performance
Anna Danandeh, Robust Optimization for Fuel
Supply Chain; Robust Security-Constrained Unit
Commitment with Dynamic Ratings
Felipe Feijoo,A bi-level model approach for optimal
operation and interaction of micro-grids in deregulated
electricity markets.
Andres Garcia, Interventions as an alternative to
penalties in preventable readmissions
Alireza Ghalebani,A Cooperative Investment
Decision Model for Renewable Energy
Mona Haghighi, Cost-effective Enrichment
Strategies for Alzheimers Clinical Trial Screening by
Data Mining
Gang Liu, Modeling, Grouping and Monitoring of
Nonlinear and Spatiotemporal Profiles
Yazhuo Liu,Identifying Readmission-Related
Clinical Associations By a High-Dimensional Tree-
Embedded Graphical Model
Iman Nekooeimehr, Dynamic Feature Analysis for
the Classification of Pelvic Organ Prolapse
Sinan Onal, Combined Supervised and Unsupervised
Segmentation of Pubic Bone for Diagnosis of Pelvic
Organ Prolapse
Sandro Paz, Dynamic Treatment and
Chemoprophylaxis of Pandemic Influenza of Strains with
Antiviral Resistant
Monica Puertas, Data Mining Approach using
Hemodynamic Parameters
Javad Sajjadi,A Network-Based Method to Identify
Highly Discriminating Subsets of Biomarkers; A Branch-
and-Price-and-Cut Approach for Maximum Multiple
Weighted Clique Problem
Walter Silva Sotillo, Impact of a Potential H7N9
Pandemic Outbreak in the U.S.
Long Zhao, Solutions for Two-stage Robust
Optimization
as applications of optimization in integrating renewable energy
into the national electric grid.
This years meeting offered doctoral candidate Anna Danandeh
the opportunity to get to know the scholars working in my field,
learn about other hot topics, and strengthen weak ties from
previous conferences and lecture series.
For Long Zhao, now in the
final semester of his Ph.D.,
the focus of the meeting was
on the hunt for gainful future
employment. His favorite part
was having dinners with my old
and new friends from NationalLabs, the power industry and
universities from all over the
United States.
Finally, a highlight for many
USF students is the yearly
tradition of gathering for dinner with attending faculty and
alumni. My favorite part of INFORMS is to meet with the USF
IMSE family both the current graduate students and the alumni
as well as my colleagues and friends from all over the US and the
world, said Fethullah Caliskan. This year, the dinner was held in
a cave-like room at The Local, an Irish restaurant.
Congratulations to the USF IMSE Department on another
successful attendance of the INFORMS Annual Meeting! Mark
your calendars for next years meeting: November 9-12, 2014 in San
Francisco, CA.
It is a great
opportunity to attend
INFORMS Annual
Meetings to meet
new people, startcollaborations, and get
feedback about your
own research.
Javad Sajjadi
Current students and alumni enjoying the yearly USF IMSE dinner.
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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Doctoral Candidates Earn Ph.D. Degrees
6
IMSE Department HighlightsMay, 2013:Dr. Grisselle Centeno received USFsWomen in Leadership and Philanthropy Awardfor
her outstanding achievements recruiting and retaining women in the fields of science and
engineering. She has served as a mentor, advisor or committee member for over 100 female
students and is an excellent role model for female students in engineering. Dr. Centeno intends
to use the WLP research award to provide female students with strategies to overcome potential
challenges and struggles they may encounter while in school or in their future careers.
September, 2013:IE professesors receive NSF grant award. Dr. Susana K. Lai-Yuen and Dr. Grisselle Centeno were awarded a
two-year grant of $200,000 from the National Science Foundation for suport of their project entitled Increasing Diversity in
Engineering through Healthcare Applications. The goal of this project is to develop active learning tools and evaluate their
efficacy at improving student understanding of engineering theories.
September, 2013:IE senior wins top spot in IEEE International Poster Competition.Jasper Quach, summer BSIE graduate, and
now PhD student in the IMSE Department recently won first place in the 2013 IEEE Power and Energy Society General
Meeting, held in Vancouver, Canada in July. The conference hosted a total of 193 students from all over the globe in the
poster competition, and included both graduate and undergraduate level students.
Three IMSE doctoral candidates successfully defended their dissertations this November and will earn their Ph.D. degrees
at graduation. Graduation will take place during the second week of December 2013. Congratulations!
Eleazar Gil-Herrera
Classification Models in Clinical Decision Making
Eleazar earned his B.S in Computer Science from the University San Antonio de Abad in his
hometown of Cuzco, Peru. He earned his M.S.I.E. from the University of Puerto Rico. Post-
graduation, he has accepted a post-doc position at Morsani College of Medicine, USF.
Long Zhao
Novel Models and Algorithms for Uncertainty Management in Power Systems
Long earned his B.S. in Engineering (2006) and M.S. in Computer Science (2009) at XianJiaotong University, China. He is from Shandong, China and plans to pursue a career in
industry upon graduation.
Fethullah Caliskan
The Impact of Organizations Collaboration Strategies and Alliance Network Positions on
Invention Performance
Fethullah earned his B.S. in Industrial Engineering (2001) and M.A. in Human Resources
Mgmt. (2006) from Marmara University, Turkey, and his M.S.I.E. from USF (2013). Upon
graduation he will move to Atlanta, GA with his family. He is from Denizli, Turkey.
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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INFORMS@USF OutreachGreat American Teach-In
INFORMS@USF participated in the 2013 Great
American Teach-in on November 21st, 2013 at the Ben HillMiddle School, Tampa, FL. It was a great opportunity for
us to share with the middle school students what Industrial
Engineering is and what kinds of jobs we do. A Lego
assembly line was simulated, and later the students came
up with ways to improve the process. This is now part of
the INFORM@USF student chapter on-going community
engagement activities.
Future City 2013
The INFORMS@USF will participate as coaches in
the Future City at Berkeley Preparatory School. TheFuture City Competition is a national, project-based
learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th
grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. This
competition engages students in engineering principles.
8/13/2019 2013 - Fall USF INFORMS Newsletter
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INFORMS @ USF | Fall 2013
Industrial and Managment Systems Engineering
University of South Florida
4202 E Fowler Ave, ENB 118
Tampa, FL 33620