In his strategic vision and plan for Georgia Tech, President G. P. “Bud” Peterson said that as Georgia Tech defines the research university of the 21st century, it will lead in influencing major technological, social, and policy decisions that address critical global challenges. Recognizing that technological change is fundamental to the advancement of the human condition, Georgia Tech is committed to improving the human condition at home and around the globe. To achieve this vision, five strategic goals were developed, one of which is to expand Georgia Tech’s global footprint and influence to ensure that we are graduating good global citizens.  

 For more than twenty years, Georgia Tech has fostered international alliances to enhance learning experiences, build research collaborations, and promote economic development. In that same period, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) has been ranked the number one graduate school for industrial and manufacturing engineering by U.S. News and World Reports. Drawing top students and faculty from around the world and fostering its own international relationships through operations research to logistics and supply chain innovation and strategy, ISyE has proven itself a true global academic unit.

To illustrate this, ISyE tracked some faculty and student activity during a four-month period, from May to August 2010, and found that they moved back and forth between six of seven continents – Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America.  In that time, ISyE faculty and students conducted applied research projects around the world, participated in a variety of educational opportunities, gave invited keynote presentations, took part in conference leadership roles, and performed outreach that has a positive international health and humanitarian impact.  

 ISyE engaged in numerous ongoing international programs. The Executive Masters in International Logistics & Supply Chain Strategy (EMIL-SCS) held its European residence this summer, visiting the Netherlands, Poland, and Germany.  Professors were in Shanghai to teach the Dual Masters with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Thirty-two undergraduate students participated in the Beijing/Singapore study abroad program, along with fifteen students from the National University of Singapore and twenty-four students in Tsinghua University.  

Increasingly international institutions are seeking ISyE faculty experts to assist them in developing their programs.  For instance, one faculty member traveled to Israel to chair an international review team, commissioned by the Israel Council of Higher Education, to evaluate each of the industrial engineering and management programs at universities and colleges throughout Israel. Another was selected to spend a year as the founding department chair for the industrial engineering department at the University of Science, Technology and Research in Abu Dhabi.

While some of ISyE’s faculty and students were invited speakers and teachers, others collaborated on a variety of research projects and collaborations from supply chain optimization in Australia to a project in Abu Dhabi evaluating renewable and distributed energy options for countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

ISyE, through the Georgia Tech Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL), added Panama to the established networks of Logistics Innovation Centers in Latin America.  The new Georgia Tech Panama Logistic Innovation & Research Center has three core thrusts -- applied research, education, and competitiveness -- and three primary objectives -- to improve the logistics performance in Panama, to establish Panama as the trade hub of the Americas, and to increase human capital with regards to logistics competency.  The SCL team continued their research as part of the Georgia Tech Trade, Innovation & Productivity Center in Costa Rica and began work to add two more centers to the Latin America network – one in Mexico, scheduled to open at the end of this year, and one in Chile, scheduled to be launched in 2011.

Some highlights on ISyE’s efforts in international health and humanitarian response include teams working in Haiti on debris collection and management issues, in Central Africa on efforts to distribute five million textbooks to schools throughout the county, in Singapore on issues in hospitals, and in Italy working with the World Food Programme. 

As they engage in these global activities, ISyE faculty gain a broader understanding surrounding different world issues, which they can covey to their students who are heading into the global economy.  These faculty not only teach their students what is in the text book, they also tell them from personal experience how to apply the methodologies, frameworks, and strategies they teach in the classroom.  ISyE faculty also bring back a world of personal networks that they share with their students in both classroom lectures and through Skype. This sharing of knowledge and experience helps students prepare to lead effectively in an increasingly global marketplace.   And those students learning, working, or living in a foreign country gain a distinct advantage, having many opportunities to conduct real-world global research that better positions them to contribute early on to the international companies that will employ them.

For an ISyE global tour featuring activities from May through August 2010, read the list below, which is divided into four sections (Global Logistics; Health & Humanitarian Outreach; International Education and Outreach; and Scholarly Work, Presentations and Collaboration):

Global Logistics

Continent of Africa

• John Bartholdi, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management and Research Director, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, was in Zimbabwe in June as part of a UNICEF effort to distribute five million textbooks to schools throughout the country.

Continent of North America

• H. Donald Ratliff, executive director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL) and UPS and Regents' Professor, and Jaymie Forrest, SCL managing director, traveled to Panama City, Panama, in preparation for the inauguration ceremonies of the newly established Georgia Tech-Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center.  They also began strategic meetings to establish a third Logistics Innovation Center, this time in Mexico. This center is scheduled to open at the end of this year.

• H. Donald Ratliff and Jaymit Forrest began two research projects as part of the Georgia Tech Trade, Innovation & Productivity Center in Costa Rica – the Produce Traceability Initiative and the Global Procurement Analysis Global Trade Initiative.   The Produce Traceability Initiative was designed to demonstrate the significance of leveraging value chains to facilitate participation of small and medium sized enterprises, the challenges they face in the food export market, and the need for supporting infrastructure to standardize processes in order to remain competitive in global markets.  The purpose of the Global Procurement Analysis research project was to develop metrics for the Costa Rica Digital Government Technical Secretary for assessing the implementation of a new system providing a mechanism to assess the improvements expected as a result of system implementation. The research focused on the definition and quantification of key performance indicators, along with summary statistics on government spending. The study also focused on the potential savings opportunities arising from more efficient procurement processes, including price variability analysis.

Continent of South America

• H. Donald Ratliff, executive director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL) and UPS and Regents' Professor, and Jaymie Forrest, SCL managing director, began work to establish a fourth Logistics Innovation Center in Chile.  This center is scheduled to be launched in 2011.

Health & Humanitarian Outreach

Continent of Asia

• Jim Dai, Edenfield Professor, was in Singapore visiting NUS while working on a hospital project.

Continent of Europe

• Mallory Soldner, a PhD student working with Ozlem Ergun, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, worked as a consultant in Rome, Italy, at the headquarters of the United Nations’ World Food Programme.  Her work was funded through a partnership with the UPS Foundation.

 Continent of North America

• Ozlem Ergun, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, and Julie Swann, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, traveled to Haiti in May to investigate debris collection and removal issues that are blocking the road to recovery in Haiti. Ergun and Swann were joined by ISyE graduate students Jessica Heier Stamm and Kael Stilp, as well as Professor Reginald DesRoches, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE), and CEE graduate student Josh Gresha. The team is currently putting together their findings and will actively begin the process of lobbying for more strategic leadership in this area.

International Education and Outreach

Continent of Asia

• Jane C. Ammons, professor and associate dean of engineering, spent two weeks in Israel in May as chair of an international review team commissioned by the Israel Council of Higher Education to evaluate each of the industrial engineering and management programs at universities and colleges throughout Israel. 
• John Bartholdi, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management and Research Director, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, was in residence at the University of Stellenbosch (near Cape Town) in South Africa where he holds an honorary appointment as “Extraordinary Professor of Operations Research” in the Department of Logistics within the Faculty of Economics. Bartholdi will hold the title for the next three years. 
• Shijie Deng, associate professor, was in Shanghai teaching Financial Engineering at Jiao Tong University as part of the GT-SJTU Dual Masters Program.
• Ellis Johnson, Coca Cola Chair and professor, is in Shanghai teaching at Shanghai Jiao Tong University as part of the GT-SJTU Dual Masters Program. Johnson teaches both Deterministic Optimization and Computational Methods.
• Chelsea C. “Chip” White, Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics, is in Abu Dhabi where he is spending the year as the founding department chair for an industrial engineering department at the University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR). While there, White will also help develop a logistics institute similar to ISyE’s Supply Chain & Logistics Institute.
• Chen Zhou, associate chair for undergraduate studies and associate professor, participated in the 9th Beijing / Singapore summer study abroad program from May until August. Thirty-two ISyE juniors and seniors participated in the program, along with fifteen students from National University of Singapore and twenty-four students in Tsinghua University. Valarie DuRant-Modeste, ISyE academic advisor, was also on-site for two weeks.

 Continent of Europe

• The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute team designed a company-specific executive education program for Coca-Cola Spain that responded to the unique needs of the company and provided them with specific and in-depth knowledge of supply chain engineering and management.
• Julie Swann, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, taught in a humanitarian master's program in Lugano, Switzerland, in August.
• John Vande Vate, professor and executive director of EMIL-SCS, led the 2011 Executive Master’s in International Logistics & Supply Chain Strategy class on its European residence, visiting the Netherlands, Poland and Germany.

 Continent of North America

• Alan Erera, associate professor, was invited to lecture on the topic of "Stochastic and Robust Optimization in Logistics" at the Spring School on Combinatorial Optimization in Logistics held at the University of Montreal in May.
• The Supply Chain & Logistic team launched a master’s program in Panama where students will come to Georgia Tech.  They also developed a professional education Lean Supply Chain Professionals Program in Panama for executives.

• The Supply Chain & Logistics team, in collaboration with the College of Management, designed an on-line international executive education curriculum to assist the Coca-Cola Company in developing leaders in the fields of logistics, manufacturing, supply chain and demand management across its base of experts and professionals in the bottling system.

Scholarly Work, Presentations and Collaborations

Continent of Asia

• Jim Dai, Edenfield Professor, participated in two conferences, one in Beijing and another in Tokyo.
• Xiaoming Huo, associate professor, has been working with researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Image Communication and Information Processing. He co-authored the conference paper, “Image denoising using local tangent space alignment,” for the 2010 Visual Communications and Image Processing in Huang Shan, An Hui, China.
• Alex Shapiro, professor, was an invited speaker at the prestigious Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) held in Hyderabad, India, August 19-27, 2010. Convening once every four years, the ICM is the largest meeting of mathematicians from around the world.
• Sobeil Shayegh, a PhD student being supervised by Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems, was in Abu Dhabi for the summer for a project evaluating renewable and distributed energy options for countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. This project is in collaboration with INSEAD, the French business university, and is based at INSEAD’s Abu Dhabi campus.

 Continent of Australia

• Martin Savelsbergh, Schneider Professor, worked in Australia this summer on a project related to optimizing the export coal supply chain. 

 Continent of Europe

• Ton Dieker, assistant professor, spent the month of May at the University of Cambridge where he was a visiting fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, a national and international visitor research institute. While in the UK, Dieker also delivered talks at the University of Warwick and in Edinburgh. Dieker and his student, Xuefeng Gao, who traveled with him, are working on service allocation rules in networks of queues.
• Ozlem Ergun, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, was in Tromsø, Norway, in June for the Seventh Triennial Symposium on Transportation Analysis (TRISTAN), an international scientific conference that provides a high-quality forum for the presentation of mathematical models, methodologies, and computational results, and for the exchange of ideas and scientific discussions on advanced applications and technologies in transportation. Ergun gave a talk titled, “Managing Debris Collection and Disposal Operations,” which she co-authored with Jose Antonio Carbajal; Pinar Keskinocak, professor, co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, and associate director of Research for the Health Systems Institute; Kael Stilp; and Monica Villarreal.
• Pinar Keskinocak presented the “Catchup Scheduling for Childhood Vaccinations” paper at the EURO INFORMS conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in July. The paper won the EURO Excellence in Practice Award 2010.
• Eva Lee, professor and director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare, was in France and Sicily in June and July presenting talks at two conferences. In June she spoke at the International Workshop on the Role and Impact of Mathematics in Medicine, which was held in Paris. Lee’s talk was titled, "Operations Research in Medicine and HealthCare." In July, Lee gave the keynote talk, titled "Machine Learning Framework for Classification in Medicine and Biology," at the International School of Mathematics’ 52nd Workshop: Nonlinear Optimization, Variational Inequalities and Equilibrium Problems in Erice, Sicily.
• Julie Swann, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, and Pinar Keskinocak participated in the invitation-only Supply Chain Thought Leaders Roundtable in Breda, Netherlands in July.
• Roshan Joseph Vengazhiyil, associate professor, gave an invited presentation titled "Multi-Layer Designs for Computer Experiments" at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics” in Gothenberg, Sweden, from August 9-13, 2010.

 Continent of South America

• John Bartholdi, Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management and Research Director, The Supply Chain & Logistics Institute and Greg Andrews, managing director of EMIL-SCS, spoke at the SALA Logistics Conference in Bogota, Columbia, in August.
• Julie Swann, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, attended the ALIO/INFORMS Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in June. Swann gave a talk titled, “Modeling Seasonality and Strain Mutation in a Pandemic Influenza,” which she co-authored with ISyE professor Pinar Keskinocak, professor, co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics, and associate director of Research for the Health Systems Institute as well as Bruce Lee from the University of Pittsburgh and  Pengyi Shi from Georgia Tech.

• H. Donald Ratliff, executive director of the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute (SCL) and UPS and Regents' Professor, and Jaymie Forrest, SCL presented to the Inter-American Development Bank and IIRSA committee in Lima, Peru, on the design and development of training programs for public sector logistics and hosted a technical discussion on data collection and analysis for regional sector studies in May.

• H. Donald Ratliff collaborated with the WorldBank and forum on creating a new methodology for developing a Logistics Performance Index Global Indicator.

 Continent of North America

• Christos Alexopoulos, associate professor, and Dave Goldsman, professor, attended IIE Annual Conference and Expo in Cancún, Mexico, in June, where they received the IIE Transactions' Best Paper Prize in Operations Engineering and Analysis for their paper “Area Variance Estimators for Simulation Using Folded Standardized Time Series.” Alexopoulos and Goldsman co-authored the paper with their former doctoral student, Claudia Antonini, tenured associate professor at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela, and James R. Wilson, professor in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University.

• Carlo Davila, PhD student, gave a talk in at the Institute of Industrial Engineers Annual Conference in Mexico.

• Joel Sokol, associate professor, attend the Institute of Industrial Engineers Annual Conference in Mexico and presented the talk “A New Paradigm for Higher Quality and More Consistent Senior (Capstone) Design,” which he co-authored with Steve Hackman, associate professor, and Chen Zhou, associate chair for Undergraduate Studies and associate professor. While there, he received the Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Operations Research. 

• The Supply Chain & Logistic Institute team assisted the Cold Chain Secretariat of Panama to develop a cold chain strategy in June.  They will continue to support this initiative throughout the year.