Departmental Kudos

Dr. Griselle Centeno:

Won the competitive WIRES travel awardto Barcelona, Spain

Vishnu Nanduri:

Tenure track position at the University of Wis-consin-Milwaukee.

Patricio Rocha:

Appointed Co-Editor of “

OR/MS today”

theINFORMS national chapter newsletter.

The INFORMS@USF chapter had a successful 2008-2009 academic year that was full of ideas and activities. Our chapter has experienced a tremendous increase in member-ship; which is evident in the new participants who fairly gotelected into the 2009-2010 chapter committee.I encourage all of us to make 2009-2010 a year of oppor-tunity seeking and grasping. The O.R. community offersnumerous opportunities. For instance, INFORMS offers anumber of prizes and awards that span our research areas.The Health Care Applications section offers the Bonder Scholarship for applied Operations Research in Health Ser-vices, the Quality Statistics and Reliability section awardsthe best student paper; and the Energy, Natural Resourcesand the Environment provides prizes for outstanding publi-cations. By participating, we disseminate our research, learnto communicate our knowledge and share our potential to awider audience, whether we win the awards or not. We alsoestablish our presence in the O.R. community and enhancethe name of our department and our school.The ongoing endeav-ors of our chapter arerelevant to the accom-plishment of our goals.The INFORMS andIMSE Lecture Seriesfacilitates learningabout research effortsfrom other institutions,and broadens our network. Similarly, we are plan-ning to initiate the "Graduate Research Exchange" series,where invitees will be graduate students from other IN-FORMS student chapters.Finally, all members are welcomed to actively participatein our volunteering initiatives: the YEA after school program,the USF’s Stampede of Service, and the Metropolitan Minis-tries holiday tent improvement, as ways of reaching out tothe Hillsborough community while enhancing our interper-sonal skills. We welcome all ideas we can get that will fur-ther our mission of creating an environment which will pro-mote academic and professional excellence in all areas of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (OR/MS).Congratulations to the INFORMS@USF committee andmembers.

By Laila Cure, IMSE PhD. StudentIncoming INFORMS@USF Chapter President

A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF

Message From the Incoming Chapter PresidentIncoming Chapter Committee

K ud o s t o t he o ut go i ng and t he i nc o mi ng c o mmi t t e e me mbe r s i nf o r ms st ud e nt c hapt e r o f f i - c e r s.

W i l k i st ar O t i e no E d i t o r

V olu m e 4, Issue 1 F all 2009

I nsid e t his iss ue:

I MS E Students at t he o peration roo m …………………….2 Are We Ready to Fig ht “T he Swine Flu”? …..…….3 W hy s hould I Join I NFO R MS@ USF? ………………………………….4 I NFO R MS@ USF S pring 2009 Lecture Series ………...4

Laila Cure

President

Wilkistar Otieno

Vice President

Dayna MartinezOguz Cimenler

Treasurers

Anahita Hassanzadeh

Secretary

Athina Brintaki Andres Uribe

Lecture Series coordinators

Fethullah Caliskan

Logistics

Patricio RochaDiana Prieto

Webmaster

Courtney FelicianiMeredith Bounds

OR Times Editors

Ozan OzcanRamzi SinokrotQingwei Li

Publicity team

To all students, faculty and staff. To the new professors of the IMSEdepartment::

Dr. Bo Zeng

, Assistant Professor(Spring 2009)

Dr. Hui Yang

, Assistant Professor(Fall 2009)

Dr. Patricia Zarate

, MSEM Coordinator(Fall 2009)

The editor can be reached at wotieno@mail.usf.edu

My tenure as the President of the INFORMS Chapter @ USF is coming to an end and all I can say is that it wasa great experience. At first, I was a bit skeptical about the way things were going to work, I was scared of not being ableto motivate people to help with the organization of activities and events or even get my fellow students to attend theseevents. Little by little this skepticism disappeared and I realized that I had a very nice group of people always there, will-ing to help me and to take responsibility for the tasks involved in the events the chapter planned to organize.We certainly could have done more than what we did. It was hard for all of us to meet certain deadlines, par-ticularly for releasing newsletters. Sometimes I felt that our chapter meetings could have been much better organizedwith more people attending, or even that we could have done more activities (more talks and more socials). However, atthe same time I feel content because we were able to keep the chapter running in good shape: we increased theamount of guest speakers, thanks to the INFORMS-IMSE Lecture Series program; we got involved with the YEA after school program where several of our members volunteered to help K-5 students from an economically disadvantagedschool with their homework; we developed a manual for new graduate students for the IMSE department; we success-fully organized a new edition of the INFORMS International Potluck and several social events; we implemented a tutor-ing session for undergraduates; and also released several issues of

The OR Times

—the chapter’s newsletter.I believe the chapter is in a good position to continue doing good things for the IMSE department and the com-munity in general. A good sign of this good position is the interest that several of the students from the departmentshowed in becoming members of the committee during the most recent elections. Student chapters are sometimesoverlooked by students, viewed as a way of wasting our precious research time (here I talk from my experience, a fewyears back I was not a fan of participating on these things). While it is true that actively participating in a student chapter will consume a little bit of your time, what you get in return is worth the sacrifice. Working with people, coordinating ac-tivities, improving your written and oral skills, making new friends, getting to know more people from outside USF, diver-sifying your portfolio of activities, are things that you can do and get better at by taking responsibilities in a student or-ganization such as INFORMS.With regards to the new committee, I am sure you guys will do a great job. Laila Cure is an excellent choice for president but she will need our help. I hope all of us will be there when she needs us.

By Patricio Rocha, IMSE PhD. Student2008/2009 INORMS@USF Chapter President

Message From the INFORMS Chapter President

Pollo Guisado (Colombian)Ugali & Ndengu (Kenyan)Gelatina Mosaico (Pt. RicanVegetarian Pulao (Indian)Borek (Turkish)Mosxaraki kokkonisto(Greek)Pastel de carne (Mexican)

Featured cuisines:

IMSE students and faculty during the lecture by Benjamin Craig of Moffitt Cancer Center, on health care decision process reforms

The Informs Student Chapter at USF in January 2009launched the 2009 Annual Lecture Series event. Throughresearch presentations and discussions, academiciansfrom different departments, universities and/or researchcenters are brought to USF’s IMSE department to promoteengineering research in cross disciplinary domains.On January 23

2009, USF-INFORMS student chapter invited Dr. Yan Wang from the University of Central Flor-ida for a talk on Geometric Modeling in Computer-aidedDesign. Dr. Wang presented a periodic surface model,inspired by the minimal surfaces existing in nature in de-scribing structures for nanoscale molecular design. Anemphasis was given on the resourceful role of geometryfor improving the efficiency of phase transition simulationwhich is a critical step towards the design of functionalnanoscale materials.On February 27

2009, Dr. Cole Smith from the Uni-versity of Florida initiated a discussion about new ap-proaches to solve Bi-level problems. Bi-level optimizationalgorithms are commonly used in settings that involvemultiple decision-makers of stochastic processes. Dr.Smith presented a new cutting-plane algorithm that easilyhandles previously unsolved problems as well as a hybridinteger programming/constraint algorithm that substan-tially outperforms pure mathematical approaches.On March 9

2009, Dr. Benjamin Craig from MoffittCancer Center facilitated a discussion about integratingsocietal preferences into analytic decision models for health care reform. Emphasis was given on health carepolicies’ lack of a holistic approach that incorporates sys-tem’s productivity and efficiency. In addition, Dr. Craig pre-sented a review of the health care policies in the US andabroad, and discussed the emergence of the US FederalCoordinating Council for Clinical Effectiveness Research.In conclusion, Dr Craig highlighted the demand for engi-neering involvement in health care decision making, toguide health care reforms, improve population health andreduce cost particularly in cancer related cases.The establishment of interdisciplinary lectures andpresentations defines the transformative trend of scienceand engineering. Cross discipline discussions initiate thegeneration of novel ideas and provide seeds for re-searches’ innovation mill. It is of fundamental importancefor any academician to bear in mind that evolution appliesto all living organisms and knowledge should not be anexception.Therefore, one of the fundamental objectives of USF-INFORS chapter is to assist in the realization of knowl-edge not as a specialization tool but a means to achievingfathomless academic and intellectual perspective.

By Athina Brintaki, IMSE PhD. Student

Dr. Yan Wang of Uni. Central Fl shares insights aboutgeometric modelingLecture on Bi-level optimization by Dr. Cole Smith of the Uni-versity of Florida