USF-INFORMS’ Reflections about the year gone by…

It is that time of the year when the USFChapter of INFORMS members elect anew committee to take office for the com-ing 2008-2009 academic year. It is worth-while at this point in time to reflect uponthe activities of the Chapter, to not only portray the accomplishments of the chap-ter but also to acknowledge and encouragethe continued involvement and support of all USF-INFORMS members.

The following are some of the activities that the Chaptersuccessfully accomplished

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The Chapter hosted renowned professors from Universi-ties across the country for research presentations,

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launched a successful research newsletter “The OR Times,” currently in its 5

issue,

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compiled academic job placement news on theINFORMS student chapter website,

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compiled and displayed posters of departmental re-search

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participated in Stampede of Service (SOS), a commu-nity volunteering effort organized by USF

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organized several fund raisers and multiple social eventsto enhance the camaraderie in IMSE department,

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represented IMSE department in the INFORMS South-west Regional Conference at Texas A&M University,

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coordinated simulation demonstrations for EngineeringEXPOOn a personal note, I would like to thank each andevery one of the committee members for their strong com-mitment, dedication, and undying enthusiasm. Through thischapter we have all been able to build strong friendships andmemories that will last a lifetime. I encourage all the newstudents to take advantage of such a vibrant student chapter by becoming members and urge the “not-so-new” studentsto keep up their continued involvement.We would like to specially thank Dr. José Zayas-Castro, our Chapter’s faculty advisor for being incrediblysupportive of all our activities. We owe him a debt of grati-tude. We thank all the faculty and staff of IMSE for their continued participation in all our activities and constant support and encouragement. Sincerely,Vishnu Nanduri

President, USF-INFORMS Chapter (2007-2208)Enabling Bionanoscale Design through Computer-AidedDesign (CAD) and Haptics

Bionanotechnology is a key emerging scien-tific and technological area of nanotechnol-ogy that aims to identify biological mole-cules and to utilize them to create bionano-scale products with unimaginable applica-tions in every aspect of life. The ability tomanipulate and assemble biological mole-cules can lead to the advancement of scienceand engineering in areas as diverse as biosensors, discovery of new pharmaceutical drugs and diagnostics, and drug delivery.For example, it can be used to invalidate cancer viral material,design chips for gene sequencing and engineering, and createnanodevices with new capabilities for diagnosis and treatmentof diseases.Research has recently begun towards the identifica-tion of biological molecules so that they can act as motors,mechanical joints and sensors. As the fabrication techniquesto create bionanoscale products are still under research anddevelopment, evaluating potential designs for bionanoscale products requires new design approaches and virtual hapticinterfaces that consider the different physical phenomena en-countered at the nanoscale level. The modeling of molecular interactions is a very challenging task as most molecules haveflexible bodies that can adopt many different conformations(or shapes). Moreover, interactive forces created betweenmolecules play a major role in determining whether the mole-cules can successfully assemble together to form a bionano-scale product. Tools that provide real-time force feedback of virtual objects such as haptic devices can greatly increase our understanding of key molecular forces by providing the“feeling” of these forces to facilitate the testing and assemblyof possible bionanoscale designs.Our laboratory, BioNanoCAD Lab, addresses the cur-rent limitations in bionanoscale design by investigating andcreating computational geometric-based algorithms for effec-tively modeling flexible molecules and their interactions usinghaptic devices. Haptic devices are electromechanical devicesthat exert forces on users giving them the illusion of touchingsomething in the virtual world. These devices enable peopleto manipulate, visualize and interact with simulated environ-ments of complex engineering systems and have been widelyused in various applications such as virtual prototyping, shapesculpting, and surgical simulation and training. In bionano-scale design, haptic devices can enable researchers to manipu-late and assemble molecules that will serve as building blocksfor the bionanoscale product.(See Haptics on page 2)

V olu m e 2, Issue 2 S pr ing 2008

I nsid e t his iss ue:

O R i n H u m a nitaria n Iss ues, Patie nt A p poi nt m e nt Policies..

A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF

Faculty Corner…………….. Message from the outgoing president

News Feature

The engineering toolbox

There is an old Mexican proverb thatsays “the hammer thinks everythinglooks like a nail”. As highly specialized professionals we can face the same trou- ble. The more we study a tool or tech-nique, the more we want to apply it toevery single problem. Sometimes ithelps us to find newer approaches to traditional problemsthus creating new research topics. However, we at timestend to solve easy problems the harder way.As Industrial Engineers, we have a very rich back-ground of engineering and managerial tools. During our undergraduate years we learn the basics of an array of quantitative and qualitative techniques. This wide array of techniques narrows down as we advance academically.One researcher told me once that the more youstudy, the more you know about fewer things. Conse-quently, you have interesting conversations with fewer andfewer individuals, to an extent of having to travel to confer-ences to explain about what you do for a living. I think agood researcher should balance an extraordinary and deepknowledge of his own discipline, an understanding of other fields of study and an understanding of the general culture. Nowadays research is becoming not only interdiscipli-nary, but intercultural. When did you attend a conferencenot related with your research? Which was the last non-technical book you read? How much do you know aboutthe culture of your coworkers, classmates or professors?Did you participate regularly in community activities? Per-haps it is time to start enriching our toolbox with somethingmore than a hammer.

By Alfredo Santana-Reynoso

PhD. Student, Industrial Engineering

It has been more than two years since aconversation I had with my former advi-sor regarding possible research topics.Like several first year graduate students, Ihad my own idea about what I wanted todo and I decided to talk it over with him.In hindsight, I admit it was pretty naïve tothink that I could convince him to let me work on the topicI was suggesting. After all, students have to take advan-tage of the experience, knowledge and contacts their advi-sors have accumulated over the years. Furthermore, theidea I had was pretty vague—I was concerned with the wayseveral rich countries and worldwide organizations had poured large quantities of money in Africa for povertyeradication without major results. After realizing that I had been absolutely unsuccessful persuading my advisor I triedto convince myself that the idea, a brainchild of the United Nations’ poverty relief efforts mattered to economists and politicians, and had nothing to do with operation research.Fortunately, during the last weeks I have realizedhow wrong I was. First, it was an e-mail forwarded by oneof my colleagues; Diana Prieto about a signed petition or-ganized by some people from Georgia Tech with the objec-tive of creating the INFORMS Humanitarian ApplicationsSection. Then it was the February Edition of the ORMSToday magazine titled “Doing Good with Good OR.”, thathad articles covering community-based opportunities inOR, OR applied to disaster relief and human rights. Actu-ally, here in our Department Diana Prieto and AndresUribe; both PhD. Students, led by Dr. Das and Dr.Savachkin have been working on pandemic relief effortsfor several months now. Lastly, and what ultimately moti-vated me to write this column was a one-hour tutorial sec-tion dedicated to Humanitarian and Public Applications of OR/MS during the last Southwest INFORMS Conferenceheld in College Station, TX on April 18-19 2008.Ideally we would not like to have to work on theseissues. Nobody likes to see natural disasters, wars, or po-litical crises happening around the world. However, onehas to pay attention to the news in the media for a few min-utes every day to see that more people are being displacedfrom their houses because of wars, more kids are still dyingfrom malaria and other preventable and curable diseases inAfrica, and nature around the globe is beginning to suffer the effects of global warming. Sadly, everything seems toindicate that this will not stop anytime soon.Coming back to my unsuccessful idea, nowadays Ifeel more than ever that it has a place within the O.R. fieldof action. Yet it needs to be narrowed down and I will probably have to wait until after my graduation to work onit. I am positive that you, my colleagues, and the facultyalso have your own ideas regarding humanitarian issues, asubject whose challenges I believe should be accorded our attention.

NOTE:

In the coming months the Center for Humani-tarian Logistics from Georgia Tech will organize a confer-ence that will cover this topic in great details.

By Patricio Rocha

PhD. Student, Industrial Engineering

What is the Role of O.R. in Humanitarian Issues?

Haptics (Continued from Page 1)

In this way, researchers can gain deeper understanding of key forces at the nanoscale while also directing the simula-tion based on their expertise through the haptic device.Therefore, the development of a bionanoscale computer-aided design system with haptics will provide a fast andinteractive design tool to virtually test bionanoscale designs prior to fabrication for the rapid realization of bionanotech-nology into actual usable products for the society.

By Susana Lai-Yuen, Ph.D.

Asst. Professor, Industrial Engineering

The Healthcare industry faces the challenge of improving the patient’s satisfaction while keeping low opera-tional costs. Near to 20% of the patients that use Medicare receive inpatient care and more than 60% are serviced inoutpatient facilities. This situation resulted in an increase in healthcare expenditures, from $89 billion in 1993 to $135 billion in 2002. Outpatient clinics, which in 2002 received over 83.3 million patient visits, have to abide by operationalscheduling policies and practices determined by the clinic managers.To design an effective outpatient scheduling system, one must consider several system variables that lead to sys-tem variability. However, most of the appointment systems only consider doctor’s availability when planning the sched-ule, ignoring other factors that affect patient satisfaction and the clinics’ operational performance. The availability of resources, (e.g., number of doctors, nurses, and rooms) affect the number of patients that can be accepted and the kindsof procedures they can receive. Other sources of variability are the inaccurate or incomplete information flow, unique-ness of the patient’s medical condition, incorrect estimation of processing time, presence of walk-in patients, and patientno-shows. These and other factors must be addressed to design and implement a successful appointment scheduling pol-icy.Another main variable that is often ignored is the patient’s satisfaction. A certain survey of outpatients listedaffordability, waiting time and coordination of care as their measures of service quality. Patients’ dissatisfaction leadsto patient disenrollment which hurts the reputation. Research conducted by Picker Institute shows that, the likelihood of cancellation and no-show increases with the increase of waiting times. However, the definition of a unique quality meas-ure for the system is complicated, given the amount of variables that affect it and the different perceptions that patientsand managers have about quality service. Also, system managers need to define what the focus of their operations is; tooptimize system performance and/or optimize patient satisfaction or to find a balance between both.

By Alcides Santander

PhD. Student Industrial Engineering

Research corner

Patients’ Appointment Policies. Do you like to wait?

N = 7 4 9 1

Six. Four possible choices of seating-

case1:

2 choose odd and 1 even numbered seat;

case2:

1 chooses odd and 2 even;

case3:

all choose odd;

case4:

all choose even.Taking first two cases: the person has to replace the even(case1) or odd(case2) seated guy’s bottle to maximize thecount which is 6.For the last two cases, any one of the bottles could be re- placed, while the even(case3)/ odd(case4) numbered bottlesare never used, hence keeping the count at 7.Hence the least possible value is 6.

Solution to PuzzlesINFORMS Members at the Southwest Regional Conference at Texas A&M: April 18-19, 2008

“The last ball is white.The number of white balls in the urn is an odd number atthe beginning of the process. On each step, two balls aretentatively removed from the urn. But it is never the casethat this results in exactly one white ball being perma-nently removed; if a black and white are removed, thewhite is returned. If two whites are removed, both aretaken. In other words, if the number of white balls wasodd before a move, it is still odd after the move. Hence,since we started with an odd number of white balls, wemust end with an odd number of white balls. Since weonly have one ball left, that must be white.”