Faculty Column Alumni Q&A Session

Supercomputer: the solution to NP-hard problems? The following is a Q&A session was held with Mr. Abhik
Bhattacharya, an alumnus of USF-IMSE
Optimization problems exist everywhere in real appli-
(Graduated in May 2009).
cations, including operating room scheduling in hospitals,
vehicle routing in transportation, and protein folding pre- Could you tell us which company you currently work for, your
diction in computational biology. Many of them are NP- position and briefly what your responsibilities are?
hard, i.e. the computational time increases exponentially I recently joined Massachusetts General Hospital (part of the
Partners Health System) in Boston, MA as an electronic inpatient
with the size of problem. You may think, as the computa-
record system (EMR) workflow analyst. My first/current project is
tional power of computers developed so fast, we could be geared towards helping to ensure that the planned partners (who
able to solve many problems that were impossible to include MGH, BWH & other hospitals) transition entirely to an
solve in a reasonable amount of time. However, the evo- EMR is at least time-neutral from the existing system
lution of modern sciences and technologies also lead to (combination of paper & electronic) and identify workflow
the demand of solution methods for large-scale systems, changes/issues arising from the change.
such as those in computational biology and in transporta- What were the motivating factors for you to join the health care
tion systems. As you may know, the “deep blue” (from industry?
IBM) and more advanced computing machines have I always wanted to be in the service industry since I was a
been applied in major airline companies. However, we kid, and health care came as a natural progression. Let's just say
still may have unpleasant experiences in our trips due to I like assisting people to help other folks...and making the form-
the bad operation planning and scheduling. Clearly, the ers’ lives easy…
supercomputer is not an all-cure solution and a powerful What are the courses that you have found most applicable in
algorithm is more cost-effective than any supercomputer. your career so far?
Different from computer scientists, operations re- Quite a few: Analysis of Health Care Issues (it gave a really
great overview of the US health care industry), Advanced TQM (I
searchers study and develop many advanced algorithms
believe that course is very important for someone pursuing this
for NP-hard optimization problems with solid mathemati- career path), Simulation (DES is incredibly useful along with a
cal analysis. The most famous is the branch-and-cut al- wow factor for non-technical audiences), Industrial Information
gorithm, which combines the classical branch-and-bound Systems (for its great overview of a mixed bag of tools), SAS,...
scheme and cutting planes to reduce the solution space
What advise can you give to the current IMSE graduate stu-
in the solution procedure for mixed integer programs. dents?
In the past 15 year, the use of cutting planes theoreti- USF-IMSE is a great department, with some of the most
cally and computationally has been fruitful. Cutting wonderful people. There are some great things going on that
planes have proven to be very effective in deriving the really help you in your career. I've known & met people from
optimal solutions within reasonable times. Many challeng- other schools and was amazed at how much more professional
ing real problems have successfully been solved using exposure & career development was available at USF-IMSE. So,
commercial solvers based on branch-and-cut algorithms, you are at the right place, at the right time… However, I don't
such as CPLEX and Xpress. These solvers are becoming think I'm qualified to advise other people, since I'm still in the
learning phase of my career, but I'll share what has worked for
the industrial standards—large oil companies, airline
me so far (it might very well be the worst attitude to have!) - Do
companies and a majority of the Fortune 500 have im- your own thing (be impervious to pressure). Make sure you enjoy
plemented CPLEX in their decision support systems. As what you do - so it never seems like work, and most importantly,
a result, there exist many opportunities for operations never forget to have fun... Live your life your way!
researchers/industrial engineers with good skills on This interview was carried out by Wilkistar Otieno (OR
CPLEX. Times Editor) via email. INFORMS USF would like to thank
Currently, more and more attention has been put on Mr. Abhik Bhattacharya, for his contribution to
complicated stochastic and fast real time/online optimiza- Volume 4, the OR Times.
Issue 2
tion problems, such as those arising from airport control Fall 2009
and service system scheduling. Some interesting ques-
s issue:
tions naturally follow: How can we develop fast algo- Inside thi Service………
…………………………
….2
y
rithms for these applications? Can we extend the wonder- F Communit Management
of
INFORMS@US Inventory
ful work on cutting planes to them? We, operations re- -i n- Time rtia l
screte Product wi
th Pa
Optimal Di riorating 3
searchers, will provide the answers ■ ng le De te ………… …… ………………….……….
a Si …… …… …… …… ……
gging ………… …………………………
….3
By Dr. Bo Zeng Backlo lc om e social……
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S and II …………………………
…….4
IMSE Assistant Professor INFORM nu al Meeting…
FO RM S An
IMSE at IN

A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF

Community Service
INFORMS@USF and Metropolitan Ministries of Tampa: IEs at your service!

On late February of 2009, our IN-

FORMS chapter received an invitation
from Metropolitan Ministries (MM) to help
them review their layout and operations
flow for their 25,000 sq. ft. holiday tent.
Every year in November and December,
MM hosts a tent for distributing food and
toys to those in need in Tampa (24,000
people served in 2008). Due to the eco-
nomic situation around the country, they Holiday tent under construction. Taken from www.metromin.org
expect a significant increase in solicitants
and perhaps a decrease in donations for the 2009 holiday season. Consequently, there is only one solution: to become
more efficient.
After our first meeting, the indications were clear: people crowding at some specific points, not enough storage
space, long distances walked by volunteers carrying diverse heavy items, and some activities that seemed not to add
value to the process, but were needed for various reasons. We analyzed their current layout and detected a lot of oppor-
tunities to improve their distribution and simplify their process. After using traditional layout-distribution heuristics and
discussing our with them, we were able to improve their layout.
In the new layout, new queue areas were included, more flexible storage space was added, distances between client-
customer areas were reduced, a single flow for the customer was designed, less volunteer workers are needed to deal
with more clients, and safety for children and supplies were enhanced. You may want to stop by and see how good it
looks now, so please go to Hillsborough Avenue in downtown Tampa to volunteer or donate this year, helping MM give
others a moment of hope and joy. ■
By: Alfredo Santana-Reynoso, IMSE PhD. student

INFORMS@USF and the YEA After School Program: There is always a way to give!
During the summer of 2008, a group of INFORMS colleagues and I were
thinking on different ways to give back to the community. We decided that
the best alternative was to offer tutoring and mentoring services in settings
with limited assistance. We commented the initiative to Wilkistar O. who,
due to her attitude towards service and involvement with several community
initiatives, cheerfully embraced the idea and proposed the Youth Empow-
ered to Achieve (YEA) program, which offers after-school services to low income students
from underperforming elementary schools in the county.
Since August 2008 to date, a group of INFORMS members including Chaitra G.,
Vishnu N., Patricio R., Laila C., Wilkistar O., Diana P. and Anahita H. have been spending two
hours every week in helping the K-5 graders accomplish their mathematics, reading and writ-
ing homework. In the summer of 2009, INFORMS supported five of the students to participate
in the STARS science summer camp—a one week camp organized by the Industrial Engi-
neering department using an NSF grant. In this event, children were able to learn and re-
create some of the most famous inventions of all-time.
Also, in July 2009, the YEA program had a month of multicultural emphasis, where INFORMS
members presented different aspects of their countries and cultures. We made presentations
about the countries of Colombia (Laila C. & Diana. P.), India (Chaitra G. & Vishnu N.), Turkey
(Fethullah C. & Ozan O.), Puerto Rico (Dayna M.), Kenya (Wilkistar O.) and the culture of Chero-
kee Indians (Courtney F.).
This academic year, INFORMS@USF plans to continue and
enlarge the support to the YEA program by encouraging new
members to participate. The YEA program is a unique opportu-
nity to share and enjoy with the children and to assure that,
even with a small contribution, young citizens are encouraged
to enjoy learning, develop critical thinking and become more
tolerant to the diversity in their community.

Written by: Diana Prieto. Graphic material: Wilkistar Otieno. IMSE

Ph D. students

2
 Research Corner
Optimal Discrete-in-Time Inventory Management of a Single
Deteriorating Product with Partial Backlogging
The implicit assumption in conventional inventory models is that the stored products maintain
the same utility forever, i.e., they can be stored for an infinite period of time without losing their
value or characteristics. However, generally speaking, almost all products experience some sort of
deterioration over time. Some products have very small deterioration rates, and thus the effect of
such deterioration can be neglected. Some products may be subject to significant rates of dete-
rioration. Fruits, vegetables, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and radioactive materials are examples
that can experience significant deterioration during storage. Therefore the effect of deterioration
must be explicitly taken into account when developing inventory models for such products.
In general, deterioration is defined as decay, damage, spoilage, evaporation, obsolesce or loss
of utility of an item such that it cannot be used for its original purpose. The inventory models deal-
ing with deterioration can be classified into two categories. The first category includes models with
age-dependent ongoing deterioration (i.e., the items have fixed life-times). Such models are re-
ferred to as perishable inventory models. The second category consists of models with age-independent ongoing dete-
rioration (i.e., the products have random life-times). Such models are called deteriorating inventory models. Milk, fish and
blood are examples of category one, while perfume, alcohol and gasoline are examples of category two.
It has been pointed out that due to spoilage the $1.7 billion apple industry in the U.S. loses as much as $300 million
every year and the top 40 retailers in the U.S. dump as much as 500 million pounds of food every year (Andrew Webb,
2006). Therefore, an essential analysis of the effect of deterioration for inventory management of products that deterio-
rate is required. The objectives of this research are two-fold: (i) to identify the optimal ordering policy structures for a sin-
gle deteriorating product over a discrete, finite/
infinite horizon under various conditions such
as different demand patterns, time-varying
deterioration rates and waiting-time-
dependent partial backlogging ratios, with
minimum expected overall ordering, holding,
deteriorating, backlogging and penalty costs;
and (ii) to build mixed-integer programming
models and develop efficient computational
algorithms to solve more general cases, with
fixed ordering costs, non-homogeneous de-
mands, and other characteristics.
Through computational experiments and
sensitivity analysis, a thorough and insightful
understanding of deteriorating inventory man-
agement will be achieved. ■
By Yang Tan, IMSE PhD. student
http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-inventory-management-systems-work.htm

3
 IMSE at INFORMS 2009, San Diego
Here is a summary of our presentations at the upcoming INFORMS annual meeting at San Diego, CA.

Tapas Das, Patricio Rocha, Ehsan Salimi Sunday Oct 11, 11:00 - 12:30
A Two-tier Matrix Game Approach for Obtaining Joint Bidding Strategies in FTR and Energy Markets
Wilkistar Otieno, Geoffrey Okogbaa Monday Oct 12, 08:00 - 09:30
Reliability Modeling of Ge/ High-k Based MOS devices 

Patricio Rocha, Tapas Das, Vishnu Nanduri Monday Oct 12, 11:00 - 12:30
Generation Capacity Expansion in Restructured Power Markets under a CO2 Cap-and-Trade Program 

Alcides Santander Mercado, Jose Zayas-Castro Monday 13:30 - 15:00

Identification of Patient Recovery Patterns after Cardiac Surgery based on Laboratory Tests Results
Diana Prieto, Tapas Das Monday 13:30 - 15:00
Volume 4, Issue 2

Real-time Applicability of Pandemic Modeling Approaches

Qingwei Li, Alex Savachkin Tuesday Oct 13, 13:30 - 15:00
The p-Median Location Problem: A Counter-measure Policy to Mitigate Random Facility Disruptions
Athina Brintaki, Susana Lai-Yuen Interactive Session Tuesday, Oct. 13 2009, 12:30 - 01:30 pm
Poster: “BioDE: A Novel Differential Evolution Approach for Molecular Conformational Search”
Andres Uribe-Sanchez, Alex Savachkin Tuesday Oct 13, 13:30 - 15:00
Developing Federal Resource Allocation Strategies to Mitigate Cross-regional Pandemic Outbreaks

Dayna Martinez, Tapas Das Wednesday Oct 14, 12:45 - 14:15

Impact of Social and Behavioral Issues on Pandemic Influenza Containment

Anahita Hassanzadeh, Bo Zeng Wednesday Oct 14, 14:45 - 16:15

Dynamic Ambulance Relocation Model
Laila Cure, Jose Zayas-Castro Wednesday Oct 14, 14:45 - 16:15
A Model for the Evaluation of Patient Safety Interventions
Andres Uribe-Sanchez, Alex Savachkin Wednesday Oct 14, 16:30 - 18:00
Fall 2009

Analysis of Stochastic Disruptions to Support: Design of Capacitated Engineered Networks

Upcoming Events
IMSE and INFORMS @ USF lecture series will welcome the following guest speakers:
Dr Joseph Hartman: - University of Florida Dr. Amy Cohn - University of Michigan
http://www.ise.ufl.edu/hartman/ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~amycohn/
Monday, October 5th 2009 TBA

Check out their research and come ready to learn and ask questions !

IMSE Editors:
4202 E. Fowler Ave. ENB 118
Tampa FL, 33620 • Meredith Bounds • Courtney Feliciani •
Tel: (813) 974-5591 • Wilkistar Otieno • Laila Cure•
Fax: (813) 974-974-5953

informs@eng.usf.edu http://informs.eng.usf.edu