Patients at Emory Winship have been experiencing long wait times resulting in low patient satisfaction scores. The team focused on improving process flow, communication, and visibility throughout the center. Deliverables consist of a simulation with a user interface, a real-time visibility tool, and a list of recommendations and policy changes, several of which were implemented. Patient wait times were reduced significantly, increasing patient satisfaction and allowing more patients to be treated, bringing in an additional $1.2 million annual profit.

Finalists in the competition were three senior design teams who worked with the CDC, Interface, and UPS.

The CDC Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition for their project titled Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Identification and Allocation of Increased-Risk Encephalitis Organs. Students Nishi Anand, Dylan Buczek, Nicholas Buczek, Timothy Lin, Tanay Rajore, and Muriel Wacker were guided by their faculty advisor William W. George Chair Pinar Keskinocak. Since 2002, 13 clusters of infectious encephalitis have been transmitted through solid-state organ transplantation. Currently, there is no standardized screening procedure to differentiate between infectious and non-infectious encephalitis. In this project, they developed two decision-support tools: 

1. An infectious encephalitis risk calculator for physicians to estimate the probability that a donor has infectious encephalitis.

2. A liver transplant decision aid for transplant doctors and patients to evaluate the trade-offs between accepting/rejecting an increased-risk encephalitis liver.

The Interface Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition. Students include Andrew Bedenk, Kaitlyn Castaneira, Margaret Massey, Jonathan Porter, James Tanzy, and Andrew Taylor. Their faculty advisor is Associate Professor Marc Goetschalckx. Their project focused on redesigning Interface's warehousing systems and strategies in order to reduce the excessive pick and stage cycle times, lost inventory, and high inventory levels. They developed a four-step solution to address all of these issues, including investments in more advanced Warehouse Management System software, reevaluation and reduction of inventory levels, racking and forklift upgrades, and internal process improvements. Their solution will save Interface an estimated $1.6 million annually, with an estimated 30% ten-year internal rate of return.

The UPS Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition for their project. Team members are April Ahn, Jessica Dow, Lucas Onsgard, John Rice, Philip Tylman, Song Wang and Jongkwan Woo. Their advisor is Stewart Faculty Fellow and Professor Shabbir Ahmed. United Parcel Service (UPS) is the world’s largest package delivery company. The project focused on optimizing UPS’s hub-to-hub routes for the peak holiday season. The team developed a systematic route planning approach that explicitly addresses uncertainty of load and driver availability during the peak season. The new approach is able to realize a reduction in unnecessary miles by an average of 3.4% with a potential savings of $12.1 M.

All senior students in ISyE culminate their undergraduate educational experience with the Senior Design course in order to provide firsthand experience at solving real world problems in a team environment. Students typically work in teams of six to eight individuals with 15-25 Senior Design teams running each semester. Each group is advised by an ISyE faculty member, and the faculty coordinator manages the overall course. Companies interested in submitting a project for consideration can either contact Joel Sokol, at 404 894-6484 or can post a project through the ISyE webpage at http://www.isye.gatech.edu/seniordesign/. Senior design teams look for projects before the start of the fall and spring semesters.

Boland's interest in applying mathematics in industry began as a Ph.D. student when she had the opportunity to design a program to automate the complicated task of airline crew scheduling. This pioneering work brought her under the wing of one of the founding fathers of integer programming, ISyE’s own George Nemhauser. Now, Boland is acknowledged as the Australian expert in the field of integer programming.

Boland was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Western Australia for her work on operations research using continuous optimization techniques in 1992. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Waterloo, Canada, in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization.

Boland’s consulting work has aided many business and government organizations to more effectively manage their resources, at both the operational and strategic levels. She has specific experience in the areas of transport logistics, supply chain management, inventory and production scheduling, across industries such as defense, mining, air transport and manufacturing. She has used her skills as a teacher in the development of workshops and in-house training seminars for companies, to bring them up to date with the latest tools and techniques in operations research.

“Edwin has a unique blend of research expertise, teaching excellence and national leadership, which is exactly what we need to maintain the finest industrial engineering program in the country,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “He has the vision, experience, temperament and outstanding reputation in fields critical to the school that make him ideally suited and prepared to keep our industrial engineering program at the forefront internationally.”

Previously, Romeijn was the program director for Service Enterprise Systems and Manufacturing Enterprise Systems at the National Science Foundation in Arlington and a professor and Richard C. Wilson Faculty Scholar in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan.

As the new chair, Romeijn will oversee a school that is consistently ranks as the No. 1 industrial engineering program in both graduate and undergraduate education according to U.S. News & World Report. The school was originally established in 1924, and it has become the largest industrial engineering program in the country with more than 2,000 students and 60 faculty members. 

"These are exciting times for the field of industrial and systems engineering,” said Romeijn. “I am looking forward to joining Georgia Tech and helping ISyE both continue and expand its tradition of excellence and leadership in research and teaching in this field."

Romeijn received his M.S. in econometrics and Ph.D. in operations research from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1988 and 1992, respectively.  

CQ: The Stewart School has been the top ranked graduate program in industrial and systems engineering for 24 consecutive years. The undergraduate program has been ranked number one for 20 years in a row. As an alumnus, how proud are you of this accomplishment?

MS & CS: Extremely proud! Number one status is not easily attained or retained. Holding at number one for a quarter of a century is no small feat and reflects dynamic teamwork for which everyone associated with Georgia Tech should be justly proud. Our outstanding faculty, bright students, excellent leadership, and highly supportive alumni give us an important edge in the continuing competition to be the very best. And certainly not to be overlooked are all those who elevated ISyE to the top many years ago. It is a testament to their dedication and achievement that ISyE has maintained that distinction for 24 years.

CQ: The Stewart School surpassed its $60million goal for Campaign Georgia Tech at the end of 2013, making it the first engineering school to reach its campaign goal. What motivates you to support Georgia Tech, and what would you say to others who are thinking about giving for the first time?

MS & CS: Industrial (and Systems) Engineering has been very special to our family. Aside from being proud of School achievements, we find that ISyE has been a large part of our business, professional, and academic life. The diversity of training has served us well, as it has for a great many ISyE alumni. Those who have been through the Georgia Tech “boot camp” appreciate what it has done for us in developing our mental skills and personal character. Giving something back is a privilege as well as a pleasure.

CQ: Your son and daughter went to Georgia Tech, and they both married Georgia Tech alumni. Do you see gold and white in your grandchildren’s future? What are your aspirations for Tech and what it will look like for their generation, and for the generations that follow?

MS & CS: We’ve been blessed with four wonderful grandchildren, two of whom will be entering college in 2016. They are all huge Tech fans, but we cannot say at this time where they will attend college. That depends on their individual interests, aptitudes, and opportunities. At this point, they all have their eye on Georgia Tech and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Tech provides the best education for the cost that you will find anywhere. As for our aspirations for Tech, we would be happy simply to see more of the same growth in quality and quantity. The Georgia Tech of today is a great place to be in the 21st century. Still, there is always room for improvement and we have every confidence that Tech will keep on getting better.

CQ: What is your favorite memory related to Georgia Tech?

MS & CS: This is a tough question, because there have been so many great Tech memories. We have enjoyed sporting events, the Alumni Association, the Foundation, the alumni travel program, wonderful Tech friends, and the list goes on.

MS: Probably one that brings me the greatest nostalgia, however, is working as a student for Colonel Groseclose in the IE office. The Colonel was a wonderful man, and it was his leadership that got the School off to such a good start. I still think of him often.

CQ: Through your philanthropy, you established the first endowed School Chair at Georgia Tech and later made a commitment to name the entire Stewart School. As H. Edwin Romeijn, the new holder of the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair, takes his post in January, what well wishes or advice would you give him?

MS & CS: We’re honored to be a small part of the ISyE success story that was written by so many alumni and faculty through support from the College of Engineering, Georgia Tech, and the State of Georgia. We express our gratitude to all previous ISyE school chairs and feel fortunate to have known them personally: Colonel Groseclose; Professors Lehrer, Thomas, Jarvis, Rouse, and White; and Tech alumna Jane Ammons, our most recent ISyE school chair. Now we extend a warm welcome to Dr. Romeijn and wish him great success at Georgia Tech. He will be among excellent company.

Jane Ammons, ISyE school chair, updated the board on ISyE School rankings and activities:

• Number 1 graduate program for 24 consecutive years (2015 Edition of the U. S. News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools).
• Number 1 undergraduate program for the 20th year (2015 edition of America’s Best Colleges by U.S. News & World Report).
• Number 5 supply chain engineering program (2014 Gartner Top U.S. Supply Chain Graduate University Programs).
• Number 5 Statistics & Operational Research program (2014 QS World University Rankings).
• New additions to the ISyE faculty: Martin Salvesbergh, Ben Haaland, Benoit Montreuil, Natashia Boland, Paul Griffin and Edwin Romeijn.
• William W. George Chair Pinar Keskinocak named COE ADVANCE professor.

Dr. Dene Sheheane, VP of Government and Community Relations, discussed with the board how they are working to ensure GT’s strategic priorities receive recognition and support from local and federal government partners. Sheheane went through a typical day and shared capital priorities and b-unit support. He answered the questions and concerns of the board.

Ammons then gave the board a development update on the campaign goal and a summary of objectives for ISyE as well as the other engineering schools.

Dean May gave a college update to the board including research, active learning initiative, faculty construction, and revitalizing undergraduate education. Some highlights included:

• More than 13,000 students and 3,200 degrees were conferred last year.
• In COE, there are 434 faculty members, 96,000 alumni and 150 interdisciplinary centers.
• Georgia Tech is number one in awarding engineering degrees to women.
• COE completed a successful ABET review.
• In 2014 25,872 applications were received and 33% were admitted.
• The average SAT score for COE in 2014 was 1480.

Next up was the ISyE student panel composed of Greg Miller, Alex Morgan, Nidhi Koshy, and Frederick Grimm. Greg Miller is a fourth year ISyE student who wanted to challenge his abilities and provide himself with a variety of opportunities after graduation. He is minoring in computer science. He is involved in Theta Chi, as well as Connect with Tech. He co-oped at Manhattan Associates to develop and implement software for client to monitor and optimize warehouse management, distribution, transportation. Alex Moran is a third year CS and ISyE student. He is a healthcare research assistant at the Health Center and is working on several projects aimed at potentially changing Medicaid and Medicare.  He is a member of the fraternity Sigma Chi, a grader for ISyE 3770 and a GT 1000 team leader. His future plans include studying abroad, continuing to do more research, and landing an internship with Google. Nidhi Koshy is a fourth year ISyE student who was born in India and raised in Tokyo, Japan. She was a liaison for ATL Tamasha and is involved with Lambda Sigma. Her main passion lies in empowering women. She is the Vice President of External Affairs for One Voice Atlanta, a group that educates students about the issue sex trafficking. She has also co-oped at UPS in their transportation department. Frederick Grimm is a fifth year ISyE student. He took advantage of GT’s networking opportunities and became a GT student ambassador, President Scholar fall retreat leader, a GT 1000 teaching assistant, as well as a campus tour guide. He interned at Chainalytics, a supply chain consulting firm, and has dabbled in entrepreneurship, taking home 2^nd place at Inventure. His product, Sucette, is a pacifier that can detect a fever with color change. He is currently working on getting the product to market.

Guy Primus, ISyE advisory board chair, wrapped up the meeting with questions and concerns from the board members.

 “This elevation for Spyros to IEEE Fellow is a well-deserved recognition and a testament to his outstanding contributions in the field.” said Jane Ammons, Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering School Chair. “Professor Reveliotis is a great example of someone who applies mathematical modeling to the automated production environment.”

Reveliotis' research interests are in discrete event systems theory and its applications, especially in the control of flexibly automated production and workflow management systems. A significant part of his past and ongoing research addresses problems related to the structural analysis and the supervisory control of flexibly automated production and workflow management systems, and the development of effective scheduling policies for these environments.

The IEEE is the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Through its 400,000 members in 160 countries, the IEEE is a leading authority on a wide range of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. The IEEE Board of Directors awards the rank of Fellow to a person with an outstanding record of accomplishment in any of the IEEE fields.

Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for elevation to IEEE Fellow.  Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. 

“We are delighted to have Paul back with us. With his expertise in health and supply chain systems, Paul will be a great asset as we continue to expand our reach to improve health care delivery operations,” said Jane Ammons, ISyE School Chair

Griffin is coming back to ISyE after spending the past five years as the Peter and Angela Dal Pezzo Department Head Chair of the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Penn State.  Previously, he served on the Georgia Tech ISyE faculty for 21 years, since 1988.

Griffin’s research interests are in health and supply chain systems. His current research activities have focused on cost-effectiveness modeling of public health interventions, health logistics, health access and economic modeling, and supply chain coordination and control including pricing and contracting mechanisms.

How has your multicultural experience shaped you?

My multicultural experience makes me eager to explore other cultures. I've traveled to about ten different countries in Asia, North America, the Middle East, and Europe, but I'm nowhere near satisfied! 

The best part about visiting new cities and countries is the food. I absolutely love trying the local cuisine! In fact, the food trucks that come to Tech are exciting because you can try different ethnic food. They may not be truly authentic, but it's definitely a nice break from fast food and anything I can cook. 

Most importantly, however, I think my multicultural experience helps me to connect with people of all cultural backgrounds. I am eager to learn from other people's customs and beliefs. 

Why did you choose to enroll and participate in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering’s IE undergraduate program? What is your concentration?

As I was researching different universities and exploring various areas of study in my junior year of high school, I initially thought that I wanted to study business. My dad and others advised me to get an engineering degree and then pursue an MBA, so I began looking into getting a bachelor's degree in engineering. It was then that I found out about industrial engineering, and it seemed to be a perfect fit for me!

After deciding to major in IE, choosing to come to Tech was an easy choice. After all, what better place to study industrial engineering than the school with the best industrial engineering program in the nation? 

I couldn't be happier to have chosen to study IE at the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering. I absolutely love what I study, and this school has challenged me in amazing ways!

My concentration is in supply chain engineering, but I'm still interested in exploring the other concentrations offered here.

What aspects of the program do you find to be the most beneficial? 

Thanks to ISyE, I think studying queues are exciting and solving problems using linear and integer programs extremely rewarding! 

One thing that I really appreciate about the ISyE program is that the undergraduate curriculum is laid out really well. The sequence of classes flows in a way so that you're always equipped with the tools and skills to take the subsequent class. I also like how we take more computer science classes than other engineering majors -- programming is such a useful skill! The curriculum also offered me the flexibility to minor in Japanese without taking any extra classes.

You are a scholar and an activist.  Why is public service in general important to you?

That's a great question. I could talk for hours on this subject, but I'll try to explain my views in a couple of minutes.

The surface level answer is that, as Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." As educated people, I believe we have the responsibility to use our education not only to benefit ourselves but also to "triumph over evil."

The underlying principles that drives this philosophy is that I believe that God created all of us in His image to love Him and love others. We can love others by respecting them, and injustice occurs when we do not do this. This causes people to believe lies about themselves, others, and God instead of living out who they were truly created to be and reaching their potential. 

The good news is that we can partner with God to heal the brokenness in the world, and that's why I think public service is important!

Tell us a little about your involvement in One Voice Atlanta.  What inspired you to devote your time to this particular project?  What are your projects?

At my high school, Christian Academy in Japan, the focus of our senior year was completing the Senior Comprehensives project. Each student had to research the causes, effects, and possible solutions to a global issue that they were passionate about. I chose to study women's rights in the Middle East, and through that journey, I learned about countless atrocities that women and children are subject to around the world. The book Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn was a crucial part of this journey. 

I knew that I wanted to continue being a part of empowering women at college, and while researching student organizations at Georgia Tech the summer before my first semester here, I found One Voice Atlanta. Since then, I have become extremely passionate about freeing women and children trapped in the sex industry. 

Since my sophomore year here, I have been serving as the Vice President of External Affairs. My role is to serve as a liaison between Georgia Tech students and our non-profit partner organizations working on the front lines of this issue. Last year I realized that there was a gap between students who were passionate about ending sex trafficking but didn't know where to begin or wanted to go beyond college fundraisers and awareness events, and non-profit organizations that rely on volunteers for their day-to-day operations. To fill this gap I decided to establish a volunteer program with Wellspring Living. The program was successful last year, and my committee and I have been working hard to expand this program this semester.

You have said that after graduating you want to work to end sex trafficking. What do you see yourself doing?

I know that I want to apply my industrial engineering skills to help end sex trafficking, but I'm still not sure how that will play out. However, I do have two examples I like to give people to help them understand how this is possible.

Freeset is a fair trade business based in Kolkata, India that employees women who are able to leave the sex industry. Freeset produces bags and shirts, and these women are a part of all aspects of the manufacturing process. It's interesting because the organization chooses not to be efficient in some areas so that they can employ more women. It's almost like reverse industrial engineering, but I love the idea of using business to free women from sexual slavery!

Another example I like to give is of Palantir Technologies. Palantir specializes in discovering and analyzing data through powerful software which their Philanthropic Engineering Team uses “to address the problem [of human trafficking] in two ways: to respond to victims’ needs in real time, and to analyze the aggregated incident data to understand the reach of trafficking networks.”
 

How has Georgia Tech helped support you in your public service endeavor?

Georgia Tech has opened my eyes to non-traditional ways of fighting for social justice; it has shown me how technology and engineering can be used for social good. 

Tell us more about yourself and especially something few people know about you.

I love to read. In fact, I'm really looking forward to winter break so that I can curl up with a couple of good books. 

Winners:

Kevin Hongfan Chen, IE 2014, and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, won the INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Award for his paper Robust Demand Response Portfolio Management under Operational Uncertainty, co-authored by ISyE Associate Professor Shijie Deng and ISyE Assistant Professor Andy Sun, who he was supervised by. 

ISyE postdoc Monica Gentili, Coca-Cola Associate Professor Nicoleta Serban and Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Associate Professor Julie Swann won the INFORMS 2014 Best Paper Award in the Public Sector in OR Section with their paper titled What are the areas in need for Improving Spatial Access to Pediatric Primary Care?

Fatma Kilinc-Karzan, Ph.D. IE 2011, won the 2014 JFIG Best Paper competition for her paper titled Two-Term Disjunctions on the Second-Order Cone. She is currently an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon and while at ISyE was a student of John Hunter Chair and Professor Arkadi Nemirovski.

ISyE alum, Jeff Linderoth, Ph.D. IE 1998, won the 2014 INFORMS Computing Society Prize. His advisor while at ISyE was James C. Edenfield Chair, Martin Savelsbergh.

Hao Yan, ISyE Ph.D. student, co-advised by ISyE Assistant Professor Kamran Paynabar and Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor Jan Shi, won the 2014 INFORMS Data Mining Best Student Paper Award Competition.

Second place:

ISyE Ph.D. student Tonghoon Suk took home second place in the 2014 George E. Nicholson Student Paper Competition, for the paper Randomized longest-queue-first scheduling for large-scale buffered systems co-authored with advisor ISyE Fouts Family Associate Professor Ton Dieker.  Their paper will appear in the Journal of/Advances in Applied Probability.

Third place:

ISyE Assistant Professor Andy Sun won third place in the 2014 JFIG Best Paper competition for the paper titled Multistage Adaptive Robust Optimization for Electric Power Systems Operatio, co-authored by ISyE Ph.D. student Alvaro Lorca.

Finalists:

The Gwinnett County Senior Design team was a finalist for the 2014 INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR Student Paper Competition for their paper Resource Allocation and Optimization for Advanced Voting in Gwinnett County. Team members include Mehran D’souza, Shi Gan, Andrew Luff, Peiqi Yang and they were advised by ISyE Fouts Family Associate Professor Ton Dieker.

The World Food Program Senior Design team was a finalist for the 2014 INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR Student Paper Competition.  Team members include Maria Ayers, Laxmi Sangeeta Gadepalli, Ashfaque Kachwala, Tahsin Munir, Cane Punma, Gabriel Rodriguez, and Yuvraj Singh and they were advised by ISyE Adjunct Professor Ozlem Ergun.

ISyE Professor Eva Lee and ISyE Ph.D. student Fan Yaun were finalists for the 2014 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice. This is a joint project with the CDC Strategic National Stockpile and Global Disease Detection and Emergency Response.

Jisu Jason Park, ISyE Ph.D. student, was a finalist for the 2014 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize. His advisor is ISyE Assistant Professor Seong-Hee Kim.

ISyE Ph.D. student Linwei Xin, co-advised by ISyE Professor Alex Shapiro and Assistant Professor Dave Goldberg, was a finalist in the MSOM student paper competition for his paper Optimality gap of constant-order policies decays exponentially in the lead time for lost sales models.

Also of note, the INFORMS Board appointed Martin Savelsbergh, James C. Edenfield Chair, Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Science.

Also, Weihong Gu, a University of Michigan industrial and operations Ph.D. student, participated in the INFORMS Minority Issues Forum Poster Competition and won the first place for her poster, A Decision Support System on Surgical Treatments For Rotator Cuff Tears. This project was partially supported by the seed grant provided by Bill George, IE 1964, Honorary PhD IE 2008, and his wife Penny, through the George Family Foundation.  Kamran Paynanbar, ISyE assistant professor, was one of the collaborators on the project as well. 

INFORMS, the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science, and business analytics, serves the scientific and professional needs of Operations Researchers and those in the Management Sciences including educators, scientists, students, managers, and consultants.

President Peterson read the citation the Fouts:

Cornelia, Georgia native J. Louis "Lou" Fouts, IE 1990, is an esteemed leader in business and his community. After graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology, he specialized in supply-chain restructuring at SysteCon prior to joining the Boston Consulting Group's Russian office. He returned stateside to earn his Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School prior to working at Caxton-Iseman Capital, where he developed private equity initiatives. In 2002, Mr. Fouts joined Water Street Capital, a global investment management firm based in Jacksonville, Florida, and became the firm's youngest partner two years later.

Georgia Tech is a tradition for the Fouts family, and Mr. Fouts joins his brothers, Nicholas S. Fouts, CE 1992 MS ENVE 1993, and J. Nathanael Fouts, IE 2003, in preserving the Fouts' legacy at Georgia Tech. Crediting his Georgia Tech education with preparing him for his successful career, Mr. Fouts has demonstrated his deep gratitude to his alma mater through transformative support for the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Therein, Mr. Fouts has directed critical philanthropic support for faculty, ensuring that it will continue to attract and retain preeminent teacher-scholars who will draw highly talented students to the program, attract junior and senior faculty as colleagues, and leverage external funding. Mr. Fouts has steadfastly served his alma mater through appointments on multiple boards including the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, the College of Engineering Advisory Board, and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Advisory Board, where he served as chair.

As one of the nation's premier research universities, Georgia Tech is educating the technological workforce of the twenty-first century and conducting research that drives innovation. Thanks to the support of principal benefactors like Mr. Fouts, Georgia Tech continues to reach new heights, building upon academic strengths and addressing the challenges facing our region, our nation, and the world. It is with profound gratitude that the Georgia Institute of Technology honors]. Louis Fouts as a member of the exceptional fellowship of The Hill Society.

Fouts has a strong connection to his alma matter and is dedicated to providing the best education at ISyE. Because of that, he has endowed three Early Career Professorships which are designed to enhance the ability of ISyE to “attract and retain eminent teacher-scholars.” ISyE faculty members Santanu Dey, Ton Dieker, Joel Sokol have received the professorships. Fouts is currently an active member of the ISyE advisory board and was previously chair of the board. Fouts enjoys engaging with students at ISyE and recently spoke with the class of ISyE 2801: The Professional Practice about his career and how his IE degree helped him get where he is today.  

EGRIE is a European based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting research on risk and insurance. This is mainly achieved through the organization of scientific conferences and meetings, the publication of research materials and the creation of a contact network amongst the concerned parties.

The paper discusses how catastrophic loss instruments are financial products that protect investors from loss arising from catastrophic events, such as hurricanes and floods. Often the actual payoff of such insurance-like instruments is linked to an index that represents the damage from a catastrophic event. Linking those instruments to an index rather than the actual damage of a specific entity makes them broadly tradable as contracts can be standardized in comparison to classical insurance products. The main challenge arises from determining a fair price for these contracts. Classical approaches followed actuarial approaches that are common for insurance products, however these prices are not necessarily arbitrage free. In contrast, the presented approach gives an indication how arbitrage-free and market-consistent prices for such instruments can be derived by overcoming the crucial point of tradability of the underlying processes, improving transparency and more efficient risk management decisions.  

This year’s featured speaker for ISyE’s Distinguished Leadership Lecture, John Marshall, IE 1996, shared his experiences in taking AirWatch from an apartment startup to a billion dollar buyout.

Marshall, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AirWatch by VMware, started AirWatch in 2003 running Cat-5 cable behind grease vats at local coffee shops for Wi-Fi HotSpots. After the iPhone emerged, he shifted the company’s focus to help organizations manage mobile devices for business use. With that pivot, the company grew from 150 to 1,900 employees in 4 years with 13,000 customers in 150 countries. In 2013, Marshall secured the largest Series A funding round of any software company in recent history at $200 million in 2013 and a year later he led the company’s acquisition by VMware for $1.54 billion. Ernst & Young named Marshall Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 for Technology.

If you missed the lecture, you can now watch it here: http://b.gatech.edu/1sPSK96

ABOUT THE MENTOR JACKETS PROGRAM
Mentor Jackets is the nationally-renowned program sponsored by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association and the Student Alumni Association (SAA) that pairs current Georgia Tech students with alumni mentors in a one-to-one mentoring relationship. The goals, time commitments, and expectations for each mentoring pair are determined entirely by the student and mentor, so the program is very flexible. On average, most mentors spend about an hour per month in contact with their student mentee, whether by in-person meetings, phone conversations, Skype, e-mail, etc.

Mentor Jackets has become the most popular program for students sponsored by the Student Alumni Association and expects around 1,200 students of all degree levels, majors, and interests to participate in the coming year.  

For more information, please visit www.gtmentorjackets.com.  

“I am pleased that Pinar has accepted this role as the College of Engineering’s ADVANCE professor,” May said. “She will be working with our faculty and administrators to reduce gender bias and increase career advancement opportunities for women in the College as well as the Georgia Tech as a whole.”

The National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE program is designed to increase the participation of women in the scientific and engineering workforce by boosting their representation and advancement in academic scientific and engineering careers. To meet this goal, the program provides opportunities for people and organizations to support new approaches to improving the climate for women in U.S. academic institutions. It also supports facilitating women's advancement to the highest ranks of academic leadership.

The ADVANCE program at Georgia Tech is coordinated by the Institute's ADVANCE Team (ADVANCE professors from the Institute’s six colleges and the Center for the Study of Women, Science, and Technology). Team members take an integrated approach to institutional factors supporting the full participation and advancement of women faculty. In this position, Keskinocak will work within the College and across the Institute on a number of women-faculty issues, including developing strategies to address gender equity issues in hiring, promotion and retention of women faculty.

Keskinocak is the William W. George Chair in ISyE. She is also the associate director of research for the Health Systems Institute, and the co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech. Keskinocak's research focuses on the applications of operations research and management science with societal impact, particularly health and humanitarian applications, supply chain management, and logistics and transportation.

“It’s important that all Georgia Tech graduates become global citizens and understand how business, commerce, engineering, and science work around the globe,” George said. Expanding Tech’s global footprint and graduating good global citizens is also part of Tech’s strategic plan.

The deadline to apply is Oct. 15. Those interested can apply online.

In addition to the George scholarships, the Office of International Education administers several other funding opportunities for students looking to go abroad. Award amounts and submission requirements vary by scholarship. View a list of scholarship online at www.oie.gatech.edu/scholarships.

George received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a  Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Bryant University, and University of St. Thomas. George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic.  He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002.  Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense.

CQ: What inspires your philanthropy generally, but also to Georgia Tech in particular?

BG: Back in 1994, Penny and I established the George Family Foundation as a way of giving back the money we were fortunate enough to earn through our work, particularly the time I was at Medtronic, when the stock price went up some 40 times. We were the beneficiaries of that, and we feel an obligation to give back. Our two sons have already received outstanding educations and are off on their own successful careers. We feel that the money we’ve earned should go back, to go toward making this world a better place. My wife Penny has had a particular interest in integrative medicine and integrative health, and I’ve had an interest in building better leaders for business and nonprofits. Our foundation has focused on those areas. We see Georgia Tech as an opportunity to advance both of those interests, through our work in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), in health systems, and also bioengineering and bioscience. We’ve tried to contribute to building all of those, because they are such vital parts of educating engineers and scientists for the future. I am proud of Penny, who has served as president of the foundation since 1998. Her leadership has been vital, and we make all of our philanthropic decisions together.

CQ: How did Georgia Tech shape your life?

BG: I came to Georgia Tech from Michigan. I had just turned 18. And, it’s where I grew up. Georgia Tech is the place where I matured, as a person. Its values shaped me. Relationships shaped me. I think I learned more about working with and leading people at Georgia Tech than I have at any time in my life before or since. And that really opened the door for me to improve myself as a human being and a leader. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to be involved in a number of Georgia Tech student organizations, from the student council to ODK to the Technique staff, and particularly my fraternity, Sigma Chi. That helped contribute to my development, and I want to give back, and see those opportunities be available to other young men and women who are coming through Georgia Tech these days, and in the future — not only to become good scientists and engineers, but also to become great leaders who can lead great enterprises. I think the school is doing that, and has done it historically, because unlike a lot of technical schools, it does turn out tremendous numbers of leaders. We want to support that any way we can.

CQ: What is your vision for Georgia Tech’s future?

BG: I see Georgia Tech emerging as one of the great engineering and scientific educational institutions in the world. It is developing people from all over the United States and all over the world who go there to receive an education, to collaborate and work together to create breakthroughs in science and engineering, and to make this world a better place. They are focused on really critical areas like energy and the environment, health care, transportation, logistics, and information technology — all the things that Georgia Tech can do so well. As a global institution, it’s necessary that Georgia Tech have relationships with other great global institutions, and the ability to collaborate. One of the unique things about Georgia Tech, in my experience, is the capacity of the faculty in multiple disciplines to work together. Many academic institutions are very segmented. Today’s really tough problems require a multidisciplinary approach and a systems approach, and that’s why I think ISyE is so important as a place to bring together those multidisciplinary approaches from across Georgia Tech.

CQ: Is there anything you would like to add?

BG: When I first became aware that Georgia Tech had one of the highest percentages of alumni giving, I thought that was remarkable, especially for a public school. I think that participation rate is really critical. So I want to encourage every alumnus and alumna to give back to the Institute on a regular basis. You can’t take it with you. And where else can you make a better contribution to helping those who come along after you? Also, this year I have the privilege of chairing the Georgia Tech Advisory Board. It’s a great opportunity for many of us who have been involved with the school to come together twice a year and meet with the president, the vice presidents, and key members of the staff to look at all the ways that we can build Georgia Tech for the future.

This interview first appeared in the the summer 2014 Georgia Tech Campaign Quarterly.

“We are happy that our supply chain graduate degree programs have been recognized for excellence,” said Alan Erera, ISyE’s associate chair for graduate studies and Coca-Cola Professor. “The top-ranked programs are primarily housed within business schools with long traditions of excellence in supply chain management and logistics.  Our engineering-based supply chain programs, such as our M.S. in Supply Chain Engineering, are a bit different in their focus on analytics and quantitative decision-making, and we are glad that they are rated high in value to industry.”

The Gartner Top U.S. Supply Chain Graduate University ranking’s data was gathered through surveys and interviews of industry and academia. Program performance was measured in part by curriculum breadth and depth, supply chain brand, program size, and applied work experience.

Advani and some of his colleagues, however, noticed that the exercise clothing they’d change into afterhours was far more comfortable. It was made from higher tech materials that were designed to react to temperature and moisture. “We all had similar stories,” Advani says. “How can you take that comfort and bring it into the other 23 hours of the day?”

They decided there was no reason their business clothes couldn’t perform as well as their athletic gear. Advani joined Kit Hicken and Gihan Amarairaiwardena to found Ministry of Supply in 2011. The following year the company launched the finished products in its clothing line, which Ministry of Supply dubs “Performance Professional” apparel.

Advani says their clothes are designed for fast-paced people who love what they do and keep a fuzzy line between work and life—and want to look good doing it.

“We get up at 7 a.m., get on a train, car, airplane.”Advani says. “It’s hot outside, cold outside; we meet a friend for dinner; get a drink with a client. Everything is wrinklefree and moisture wicking. People don’t have time to go to the dry cleaner. They don’t want to have to go home and change.”

Advani says Ministry of Supply designs its clothing by blending high-tech fabrics and manufacturing techniques with traditional fashion design. For example, one of the company’s dress shirts is made using phase-change materials, which NASA uses in space suits to regulate body temperature. It stores heat when you’re hot and releases it back to you when you’re cold, Advani says.

The company’s designers also develop their own materials when there aren’t existing products on the market that do what they’d like. “In a lot of ways we think of ourselves more of a product design company then a fashion company,” Advani says.

Advani says another strategy they’ve taken is working with manufacturers who don’t typically produce dress clothes. “One of the challenges we didn’t really anticipate is that most of these techniques exist—they’ve just never existed in this world,” he says.

One of these techniques is called thermal lamination, which Ministry of Supply uses to create a crisp, smooth collar on a dress shirt. Thermal lamination is more commonly used to make things like the bill on the hood of a high-end rain jacket.

“Half the battle is invention and half the battle is application,” Advani says. “One of the major challenges is you’re either training someone who knows these techniques to make a great dress shirt, or teaching an Italian dress shirt manufacturer that’s been around for 200 years to update its technology.

How do you get a dress shirt maker to buy a laser cutter? That’s just not going to happen.”Aesthetics are also very important for the company. Early on, fashion designers were brought in to create a sharp, tailored look. “That’s really the point of all this technology. To make a better garment that’s more suited for your day and makes you feel better when you’re wearing it,” Advani says.

This article first appeared in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Volume 90, No.3, 2014.

Today, there is an increasingly complex and massive amounts of health care data collected daily. The ability to accurately capture, integrate, and analyze this data is crucial in helping to better understand current issues and make better decisions within health care delivery and public health systems.

To meet this demand for accurate knowledge, several faculty members have recently assembled to form a Health Analytics group within Georgia Tech.

The purpose of the group is to conduct research and mentor students in data science methodologies to improve decision making in health care delivery and public health. Approaches are based on rigorous modeling, mathematical standards, and advanced computing techniques and anchored in real problems and questions in the health domain.

The team collaborates with scientists and decision makers from many types of organizations including clinicians, large providers, public health entities, and private companies.

While the Health Analytics group has an academic home within the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, they also have significant connections throughout Georgia Tech's Institute for People and Technology, the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems, the School of Public Policy, the College of Computing, and beyond.

The group brings together researchers and students who share a common interest in the health analytics.  Nicoleta Serban, ISyE Coca-Cola Associate Professor, and Julie Swann, ISyE’s Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Associate Professor, co-found and co-lead this group.

For more information visit http://www.healthanalytics.gatech.edu/.

Humanitarian logistics is traditionally associated with procurement, transportation and distribution operations for disaster relief or longer-term development activities. In addition to its ongoing focus on logistics, the HHS Center incorporates systems transformations for complex, long-term challenges such as reducing poverty, improving access to education and healthcare, and preventing disease.

Current and upcoming projects exemplifying the Center’s focus on systems include supply chain strategy from program design to distribution and a systems approach to improving healthcare delivery, from prevention of disease to treatment and outcomes.

For more information, please visit http://humanitarian.scl.gatech.edu/home

“It is gratifying to know that U.S. News & World Report recognizes Georgia Tech’s excellence in undergraduate engineering education, “said Gary S. May, dean of engineering at Georgia Tech. “This shows we are doing an outstanding job at producing a high level of academic quality within the college. The ranking is a reflection of the efforts of our faculty, staff and students whose hard work and commitment to excellence truly make us a world-class technological university.”

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering has climbed to the 4^th place ranking for undergraduate engineering programs that award doctoral degrees. With six of its engineering programs ranked in the top five, Tech also continued its strong showing in individual disciplines.

The Stewart School is honored to receive the U.S. News and World Report's (USNWR) top ranking for its graduate and undergraduate programs. These rankings say much about our alumni, faculty, and students.

The tool’s objectives are primarily to project financial costs and duration of debris removal operations among others. The tool can be used to support pre-disaster strategic decisions as well as operational decisions following a disaster.

To read more about the decision support tool and debris management visit http://www.debrismanagement.gatech.edu.

In collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center, ISyE’s Turgay Ayer and team are proposing a novel modeling framework to determine the most cost-effective practical policies from a societal perspective to detect liver cancer.

In contrast to existing policies, the model considers surveillance policies that are stratified by patients' liver condition and age. The research team carefully calibrated the model parameters based on the best evidence from previously published observational studies. The results demonstrate that their proposed policies are more cost-effective than the recommended one-size-fits-all policies. Furthermore, unlike current surveillance policies, expanding surveillance to non-cirrhotic patients has great potential to improve survival outcomes and cost-effectiveness. 

Using an engineering perspective, Rouse and Serban introduce concepts, principles, models, and methods for understanding and improving healthcare delivery. They argue that understanding healthcare delivery as a complex adaptive system will help us to design a system that is more efficient, effective, and equitable.

“This book is full of ideas, concepts, and examples of how systems thinking can be used to improve healthcare delivery and health.  It will quickly become a key text in the fields of the science of healthcare delivery and public health.”

– Denis A. Cortese, M.D., Foundation Professor, Arizona State University; Emeritus President and CEO, Mayo Clinic

How did you become a patent attorney after earning your bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Tech?

Just by chance. I had no idea about patents when I was at Tech.  I interviewed with General Motors at the job placement center during my senior year, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office also happened to have an opening for an interview that day. I interviewed, was given a job offer and accepted because I thought the Washington, D.C., area would be a nice place to live. While working for the government during the day, I went to law school at night and got my law degree. Working as an examiner was some of the best training I could have received prior to becoming a patent attorney.

What do you do as a patent attorney and principal at your law firm?

As a major part of my job, I draft and obtain utility and design patents, as well as trademarks, for my clients. I also have to advise them on how to maximize their protection and to avoid infringing on the rights of others. Not only do I get to use my technical and writing skills from Tech when handling applications, but I also use sales and marketing techniques to obtain clients, and management skills in the daily operation of my firm. While my firm was founded only eight years ago, we are one of the top five firms in the country for design patents and have become the 31st-ranked firm in the country for obtaining utility patents, according to Intellectual Property Today. I work with clients throughout the world.

What exactly is patent prosecution and how is it different than patent litigation?

Patent prosecution obtains patents for clients while patent litigation involves the enforcement of their patent rights. While I have been exposed to both sides of the business, I like the patent prosecution area. Every day you have a new puzzle to solve. Whether is it how to distinguish your client’s invention from the prior art or some other problem, there is something new every day. This keeps the job interesting.

How important is it for designers to protect their work legally?

Obtaining protection is critical because designers put so much time and expense into their work. Otherwise, competitors can be free to copy their endeavors. People sometimes do not recognize the scope of protection available. I have filed design patents for type fonts, fabric patterns, computer icons and LED designs. A design does not have to be beautiful or a work of art in order to qualify for protection. It simply needs to be a new, original and ornamental design embodied in or applied to an article of manufacture.

What do designers need to do to protect their work?

At first, designers should keep their designs confidential until a patent application has been filed. The right to file in countries outside the U.S. can be lost if an invention is released to the public before some initial filing. Moreover, the U.S. has certain bars that will arise over time, preventing a designer from obtaining patent protection after the first public disclosure, use, sale, offer for sale or other public release of the invention. A knowledgeable patent attorney can help guide the inventor through the rather complex patenting process. While it is possible for an individual to obtain a patent, an inexperienced person could be overwhelmed or make unnecessary mistakes during the patenting process.

What types of designs can be protected?

Design patents can protect a wide variety of items. For example, I have filed for a “Christmas tree” built from whiskey barrels, a vending machine with a wave-front and even macaroni. However, objects that are hidden in use or whose shape is dictated solely by their function may not be patentable. Such instances rarely occur. Furthermore, if an article is a copy of an already existing, known product, it would not be patentable.

Are there any common misconceptions or myths about design patents?

The biggest myth is that design patents are not worth the effort. However, after the Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. initial verdict of more than $1 billion, there has been a marked increase in design patent awareness. This verdict was based, in part, on infringement of some of Apple’s design patents.

This article first appeared in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Volume 90, No. 3, 2014.

While Rockwell describes his World Cup experience as the trip of a lifetime, he also couldn’t have anticipated some of the situations he found himself in. On the day of the USA-Germany match, for instance, heavy flooding had washed out all the roads leading to the stadium, and taxis refused to drive them. To make it to the match, Rockwell and his friends had to take two trains and a bus, then they had to walk in a downpour for about two hours.

Yes, he’s that passionate about soccer.

Growing up, Rockwell played soccer constantly and followed its professional ranks as closely as he could living in the U.S. As a Tech freshman in 1992, he joined the Institute’s club soccer team. But soon, Rockwell realized he “needed to start paying for college” and also focus more on his engineering coursework.

That’s when he turned to refereeing.

While still in college, Rockwell began officiating at the collegiate level, eventually working his way up to refereeing ACC tournaments. By the time he earned his degree in 1998, Rockwell had officiated the NCAA men’s soccer Sweet 16 and began to see refereeing as more than a source of income.

“It was a way to still participate in soccer, and a way to do it more fully than I ever imagined,” Rockwell says.

Eventually, Rockwell began looking around for more officiating opportunities. As he neared the completion of his degree, Rockwell started transitioning from the college circuit to the USA Soccer FIFA system.

The switch was far from glamorous: traveling long hours to referee small tournaments in neighboring states, often for very little pay. And the work was year-round, while college soccer is structured in a less-demanding, three-month system. Even so, Rockwell loved the experience.

Meanwhile, he landed a full-time job as an industrial engineer with the Clorox Company in Atlanta. The opportunities opening up in his career might have offered some incentive to focus on engineering alone, but Rockwell continued to chase his passion.

It wasn’t until 2004—six years after graduating Tech—that Rockwell caught what he calls his “big break.” He was working a soccer tournament in Minnesota when someone within the professional refereeing system approached him with some good news.

“I was told I had a chance to do Major League Soccer,” Rockwell says. “That’s when I started really concentrating, trying to make it to the next level.”

Rockwell stuck to a strict workout regimen, and he continued burning his vacation days with Clorox to work various tournaments and matches across the country. The commitment paid off: In 2005, Rockwell qualified to be a MLS referee and he’s been officiating at that level ever since.

As his soccer refereeing dreams took flight, Rockwell’s career at Clorox bloomed. He received a series of promotions that elevated him from engineering to management.

Even as his day job responsibilities have increased, Rockwell maintains a busy schedule with MLS. He typically works MLS matches on three weekends out of every month during the season, with some Wednesday night matches mixed in. The engineer said the logistics can be tough, but he’s found a way to make it work.

“I’m always honest about my schedule,” Rockwell says. “I can’t call in sick and show up on ESPN that night.”

The physical demands of officiating have also increased as he’s moved up. According to Rockwell, all USA Soccer FIFA officials have to wear Polar brand sport watches that record their heart rate data and workout regimens. This data has to be downloaded and sent to FIFA on a regular basis to ensure officials remain in top shape. If officials fail to meet certain minimum standards, they are ineligible to officiate the matches.

Rockwell doesn’t just meet the standards set by FIFA—he excels. In 2011, he was named the top assistant referee in Major League Soccer. His resume is strong enough that Rockwell could pursue eligibility to referee at a future World Cup, but the engineer says he’s unlikely to take that step.

Just to be considered to officiate at a World Cup, referees must first endure intensive training and testing, as well as work various tournaments around the globe. Rockwell said he knows of one World Cup ref who had to go to Nigeria for five weeks to work at under-20 tournaments, and afterward had to complete a fitness test in Trinidad.

“I don’t think my job would let me take off five weeks several times a year,” he says. “And in fairness, it isn’t something I’ve asked for, either.”

While the World Cup is not on his radar, Rockwell still hopes to take part in the next World Cup qualifying process, which wouldn’t require the same training or time commitment as a full tournament.

Regardless, Rockwell believes he’s in the perfect work environment to continue living his dream as a soccer official. Germany-based Henkel acquired Rockwell’s division from Clorox in 2003, and Rockwell currently works as the Regional Head of Corporate Audit for North and Latin America. Over the summer, everyone in Henkel’s U.S. offices was carefully watching each Germany match leading up to the team’s World Cup victory.

“Luckily, a lot of the people I report to are soccer fans,” Rockwell says. “They encouraged us to watch the games when Germany was playing, even though many of us were rooting for Team USA.”

This article first appeared in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Volume 90, No. 3 2014.

Deutschler began his career at Siemens, first in their Operations Leadership Development Program, then as an internal consultant focused on operational challenges in manufacturing, supply chain and project management. Then he went on to launch his first of several entrepreneurial projects, Georgia Biodiesel Corporation.  He has since worked on several other startups, and currently works at Deloitte Consulting where he focuses on clients in the energy sector.  Phillip also serves on the board of directors of GUHDO USA Inc. (guhdo.com), an industrial tooling company, where he holds an advisory role.

What was Georgia Biodiesel and what happened?
For those unfamiliar with biodiesel, it is a renewable fuel that is produced from plant oils or animal fats that has valuable applications as an additive in traditional petroleum diesel fuel. It reduces the admissions profile of the fuel while improving the lubricity and other characteristics.

I identified an opportunity to use lower cost raw materials, that weren’t compatible with existing technologies, to produce biodiesel that exceeded international quality standards. Having the raw materials, but no known way to use it was the crux of our initial challenge. So I thought like an IE, rolled up my sleeves and engineered a brand new production technology. The process went against much of the traditional wisdom in the industry, but it worked and it gave us a competitive advantage.

Having successfully piloted and vetted the strategy we continued on and achieved several other noteworthy milestones, including participating in the U.S. Bioenergy Delegation to Germany and even having the groundbreaking of our production plant in Blakely, GA. The project came to a peak at exactly the wrong time. Volatility in the energy market and tight lending practices made it difficult to drum up the necessary financing and I eventually made the tough decision to shut down the project. It taught me a valuable lesson though, sometimes knowing when to walk away from a project is just as important as knowing when to go after one.

What are some of the other entrepreneurial projects you’ve undertaken?
Some of the more noteworthy included a project trying to address the growing education loan market in the U.S., another which worked to identify unconventional applications for mature green-tech solutions and a software company, Everbase (everbase.net), addressing the international data security concerns created by the NSA’s data collection practices. I also did start-up consulting in Germany for several months with a firm called Four Quarters EXIST.

What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly those earlier in their careers?
First of all, I think “entrepreneurship” has become a buzzword that is overplayed. In my view, the same skills that make a good entrepreneur – such as identifying and solving problems, being able to execute a project, taking ownership in your work and understanding business from a holistic context – are the same skills that let you excel in corporate environments. That said, there are a few lessons I wish I’d learned earlier.

Don’t treat your age or experience as a liability, make it an asset and own it. The minute you act as though it might be a disadvantage is the same moment others will recognize it as one. Instead, frame it as a strength and leverage it as an asset. Ultimately any idea needs to stand or fall on its own merits and your newness can give you more energy to seek out solutions and increased flexibility to think beyond conventional wisdom. Don’t underestimate the value of disruptive thought.

Also, don’t be greedy. By that, I mean don’t feel the need to own everything and do everything yourself. Seek out and find partners that complement your skill set and treat them fairly. Their personal investment in the project will help ensure their interests align with yours. In the end, a smaller share of a stronger project is more valuable than hundreds or thousands of hours invested in a failed endeavor.

Consulting is a popular career for IEs. Why do you think that is?
I think IEs gravitating towards consulting is purely a function of the core skills the program equips you with. Consultants typically address their clients’ most pressing challenges to help them maneuver an uncertain path. At a most basic level, it comes back to my point earlier about making decisions with a degree of certainty in an uncertain world. There is also a systematic problem solving approach and quantitative perspective that are both extremely valuable. Businesses are relying more and more on data driven analytics to deliver impact. This is something that IE, as a field, does particularly well.

What would you share with students aspiring to join the consulting field?

And for any aspiring consultants, I can share with them a few characteristics that I’ve seen are pretty common across most individuals who excel in the field. First, nail the basics. Having a strong baseline toolbox of quantitative and qualitative skills, such as being able to perform analytics and tell a compelling story, are table stakes to get your foot in the door. Next, be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. It is fairly common that you will be engaged to address a challenge that either isn’t fully understood or that actually stems from some seemingly unrelated root cause. Finally, make sure you can be effective in a team-based environment. Most, if not all, work in this field is team based and an essential key to delivering results is the ability to craft solutions that are a composite of multiple perspectives from individuals with diverse personal experiences and skills.

What are two facts about you that would surprise most people?
I’m a passionate equestrian, spending a lot of my weekends tearing through the woods on horseback.

Going into my last year at Georgia Tech I had spent more semesters enrolled abroad than on our Atlanta campus. Most people would probably be surprised to know that was even possible, but between Georgia Tech Lorraine, Language Business and Technology, exchange programs and internships, it somehow happened.

Haaland previously was an assistant professor at Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Medical School's Centre for Quantitative Medicine. Before that, he was an assistant professor in the department of Statistics and Applied Probability at NUS. 

Haaland's theoretical work largely focuses on design and analysis of computer experiments. However, he broadly considers himself a scientist, with specific expertise in complex modeling and data analysis. He has experience in evidence-based medicine, clinical trial design, health services research, and epidemiology. His experience in quantitative arenas include high-level expertise are meta-analysis, experimental design, predictive and non-parametric modeling, Bayesian analysis, computing, and numerical analysis.

In 2007, he earned the top score for the Ph.D. Qualifying Exam in the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin. In 2006, he received the Outstanding Master’s Student award in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Montana State University.

Haaland received a B.S in applied mathematics and an M.S. in statistics from Montana State University in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin in 2010. 

It is heartbreaking to watch those battling Ebola in Africa, and people struggling in conflict areas including Iraq and Ukraine. For those of you driven to help, there is one important issue to keep in mind: SWEDOW. It stands for Stuff We Don't Want.

Our first instincts may be to look around the house for things to donate or set up community collection efforts. While well meaning, items not requested by individuals or organizations on the ground can clog up the already limited supply chain and cause more harm than good. 

Even items such as vaccines and medical supplies, which can be extremely helpful, can result in negative impact if they are not sent when they are needed and to those who need them. 

It is important to understand why the disease of Ebola has been particularly devastating in this epidemic. One great contributor is the existing infrastructure in the countries where the disease outbreak began. They are among the countries with the lowest gross domestic product worldwide, and with the lowest spending on healthcare globally.

For most of us, it would be ineffectual to try to respond to this rapidly spreading outbreak. However, we can commit to continued investment in lifting individuals and nations out of poverty, and ensuring that sufficient resources are available to provide basic services to populations. 

If countries had a sufficient number of health care personnel and a sufficient number of medical supplies such as gloves, then this outbreak could have been stopped far earlier.

Find an organization that has boots on the ground in any of the locales related to the crises, and direct your resources to that organization.

Ask yourself not only how you can help in this crisis, but also how you can help prevent future crises of this nature.

 

This article first appeared in the GT Amplifier.

By Lee Burrell, MS SCE 2012

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” – André Gide, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1947)

I’m confident that at the essence of every student’s experience at Georgia Tech is the fact that our prestigious institution pushed the boundaries of our comfort zones beyond what we previously thought possible.

My experience of how Tech’s College of Engineering stretched, pulled, yanked, and drove me to be better – personally, professionally, and academically – began on my very first day.

That day started in a packed and ice-cold conference room in the ISyE building, across from the CRC.

As I sheepishly strolled into the room, it finally hit me that I was at the No. 1 industrial engineering program in the entire country (for 23 years in a row, I was keenly aware). I was as tense as someone deathly afraid of heights naively stepping out onto the ledge of the Chicago Skydeck.

My palms felt like a soaked yellow Georgia Tech basketball jersey. My mind raced around in circles like Jeff Gordon’s car at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with questions exploding like those little popper fireworks being thrown on the ground.

What happened if I failed out? How did I even get in? Maybe I should have just gone to the University (sic) of Georgia.

So what does one instinctively reach for when faced with uncertainty and crippling fear? Familiarity, of course! I quickly hashed out a plan to seek someone, anyone, who was feeling as I was – I surely could find someone feeling these same uncomfortable emotions, right? – and we would together wallow in our certainly ill-fated decision. A genius plan, I thought, under the circumstances.

Although I was admittedly a little rusty in my advanced math skills, I was able to calculate after a quick scan of the 42 fresh-faced strangers in the room that I was, in fact, the only one visibly panic-stricken – that or my new friends were all professional poker players. My genius plan was crashing faster than the stock market in 2008.

There I sat, just a country boy from the South with a slight drawl in a room full of sagacious and worldly people, certain I had gotten myself into something that was clearly over my head.

Oh well, I thought – I’m not going down without a fight, fear be damned.

One by one I mustered the courage to introduce myself to these strangers, getting to know each of them.

Like magnets being drawn together, it was these same strangers who quickly became my closest comrades as we toiled over countless sleepless nights on the treacherous front lines of global logistics problems. Our time spent together both in and out of the classroom allowed me to gain a better understanding of vastly different countries and cultures, loves and languages, histories and hopes, and interestingly enough, myself.

Beyond the classroom, I mustered the wherewithal to join numerous campus groups, make new friends through weight training and intramurals (and win the graduate basketball championship, it must be noted), suspend myself on the on-campus ropes courses, and apply my startup to Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center startup incubator (and get accepted). And ironically enough, I wasn’t too shabby in the classroom either. That failure that I feared so much never came to pass; I was able to pass every class, making my mother proud by graduating with a respectable 3.45 GPA.

Since graduating in 2012, I’ve worked on global logistics projects for some of the world’s top companies in a multitude of industries. From Singapore to San Francisco, China to the Czech Republic, India to Indiana, I’ve used the skills I learned at the College of Engineering to positively influence the 3Ps (People, Profits, and Planet).

I’ve also been able to call amazing cities like Chicago, Detroit, and now Calgary home. Each time I’ve relocated for a new role, I’ve moved into cities where I knew no one and had no idea how things might turn out, similar to my first experience at Georgia Tech. Yet each time I’ve met amazing people, gained lifelong friends, had amazing experiences, and grew as a human being.

Over the course of all my new and sometimes scary adventures since that fateful first day at Tech, I’ve come to realize that the unknown is not a cause for fear, but a potentially incredible opportunity to be embraced.

We all experience doubts at times, but what might we miss if we concede control to the monster called fear that lives within each of us? I certainly would have missed out on one of the most enjoyable and enriching experiences of my life – becoming a helluva engineer.

This article first appeared in the Summer/Fall 2014 issue of the Georgia Tech Engineers Magazine. 

• Reconnect the SC&L alumni of Georgia Tech with one another as well as to the current Tech student body, both professionally and socially
• Keep our alumni updated on current activities both on campus and around the world
• Promote and support SC&L student organizations at Georgia Tech through mentoring, speaker events, and networking
• Provide a forum to promote life-long learning and career enrichment in SC&L

We now seek your involvement! In order to form this group, we are asking all interested alumni and friends of Georgia Tech to complete the form at www.scl.gatech.edu/sclaffinity for us to gather and gauge interest as well as understand how potential members would like to be involved (we are open to your suggestions and ideas) in this exciting new initiative.

The Ellis R. Ott Scholarship is given based on demonstrated ability, academic achievement, industrial and teaching experience in the realm of applied statistics.

The ARCS Scholars Award recognizes outstanding doctoral students who have a record of achievement and who show exceptional promise of making a significant contribution to the worldwide advancement of science and technology. This is the second consecutive year Plumlee has received this award.

Plumlee’s research interests focus on analytics for product and process improvement.  During his time as a student in ISyE, where he also received an M.S. in Statistics,  Plumlee was awarded both the Morris Fellowship as well as the Tennenbaum Fellowship.  Portions of his dissertation work are forthcoming in the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Technometrics.  He is also the recipient of the 2012 INFORMS Quality, Reliability and Statistics Best Paper Award.

Plumlee has been invited to present his work at several conferences including the INFORMS Annual Meeting, the IMS/ASA Spring Research Conference, the Joint Statistical Meetings, the Design and Analysis of Experiments Conference, the NSF CMMI Engineering Research and Innovation Conference.

Prior to coming to Georgia Tech in 2010, he received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University where he received the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and the College of Engineering Dean's Choice Award for best poster.

Serban was selected because of her leadership in the field of healthcare analytics. Her research focuses on model-based data mining for functional data and spatio-temporal data with applications to industrial economics with a focus on service distribution. She also focuses on nonparametric statistical methods motivated by recent applications from proteomics and genomics.

Serban received her B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Theoretical Statistics and Stochastic Processes from the University of Bucharest in 1998. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in 2005.

Pokutta was selected because of his research on combinatorial optimization and polyhedral combinatorics, and in particular cutting-plane methods, extended formulations, and applications of optimization methods in supply chain management, production planning, mechanical engineering, and finance. His research is motivated by exploring these limits of computation and by applications in various disciplines requiring the solution of non-standard, highly complex optimization problems. Examples of Pokutta's applied work include stowage optimization problems for inland vessels, oil production problems, clearing of electricity markets, portfolio optimization problems, and optimal liquidity management strategies.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2012, Pokutta worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Operations Research Center where the topic of his research was combinatorial optimization and cutting plane procedures. Upon completion of his postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Pokutta was appointed as an optimization specialist at ILOG where he worked on production planning and supply chain optimization within the steel industry, automotive industry, and energy industry. In 2008, he joined KDB Krall Demmel Baumgarten in order to set up a quantitative, state-of-the art risk management practice and develop risk management methodologies at top tier banks. He then returned to academia and held the position of a research scientist at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and was a visiting lecturer at MIT. He received both his master's degree in and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

Kim was selected because of her research on ranking and selection procedures for stochastic simulation, optimization via simulation, statistical output analysis, quality control, and applications of simulation methods to environmental management.  

Kim received an INFORMS Simulation Society Outstanding Simulation Publication Award in 2006 and an NSF Career Award in 2007 and The Harold W. Kuhn Award, 2013. She received a B.S. in Industrial Management from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University. 

Mei was selected because of his research on change-point problems and sequential analysis in mathematical statistics; sensor networks and information theory in Engineering; as well as longitudinal data analysis, random effects models, and clinical trials in Biostatistics.

Prior to joining ISyE in 2006, he worked as a Postdoc in Biostatistics for two years in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA. Mei received a B.S. in Mathematics from Peking University in P.R. China, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics with a minor in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. 

“Edwin has a unique blend of research expertise, teaching excellence and national leadership, which is exactly what we need to maintain the finest industrial engineering program in the country,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “He has the vision, experience, temperament and outstanding reputation in fields critical to the school that make him ideally suited and prepared to keep our industrial engineering program at the forefront internationally.”

As the new chair, Romeijn will oversee a school that consistently ranks as the No. 1 industrial engineering program in both graduate and undergraduate education according to U.S. News & World Report. The school was originally established in 1924, and it has become the largest industrial engineering program in the country with more than 2,000 students and 60 faculty members. 

"These are exciting times for the field of industrial and systems engineering,” said Romeijn. “I am looking forward to joining Georgia Tech and helping ISyE both continue and expand its tradition of excellence and leadership in research and teaching in this field."

Romeijn received his M.S. in econometrics and Ph.D. in operations research from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1988 and 1992, respectively. He was a faculty member at the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at the Rotterdam School of Management of Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida before joining the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2008.

He currently serves as program director for the Manufacturing and Service Enterprise Systems programs at the National Science Foundation. He has taught courses in operations research, stochastic processes, applied probability and statistics, supply chain management, and decision support systems. His research focuses on optimization theory and applications, in particular in the areas of supply chain optimization and optimization in health care.

While at Michigan, he has served as chair of the graduate admissions and financial aid committee for the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering and on the faculty search and promotion committees. He is currently area editor for Optimization and Health Care Systems Applications, Omega, and associate editor of IIE Transactions.  

The designation of Dean's Professor is rare and is intended to honor young, up and coming full professors who are rising stars. Ahmed was selected for his outstanding scholarship, dedication to education, and excellence in service at Institutional and national/international levels. 

The Stewart Faculty Fellow appointment also recognizes Ahmed’s outstanding accomplishments and future potential for leadership of the field.  This term position will provide him with resources to advance his research program and expand the reach of its important impact.

Ahmed’s research interests are in optimization, specifically stochastic and integer programming. Past honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER award, two IBM Faculty Awards, the Coca-Cola Junior Professorship from ISyE, and the INFORMS Dantzig Dissertation award.

He has served as the chair of the Community of Stochastic Programming (2007-2010), and as a Stochastic Programming vice-chair of the INFORMS Optimization Society (2006-2008). He serves as associate editor of a number of journals including Mathematical Programming and Operations Research. Ahmed received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000.

In a recent interview Chow gave us the inside scoop on his summer research and how he is putting his IE skills to the test.

Tell us about the project you are researching?
I am working in cancer genomics, which is an area of biology that looks at how cancer spreads and evolves on a genetic level, primarily through DNA analysis. I'm developing a new algorithm that will analyze cancer gene expression profiles. The practical application of the project is that given a set of biopsy samples from a tumor that a pathologist isn't positive is cancer, we want to use DNA sequencing and an algorithm to determine if the tumor is benign or malignant.

Do you think that your industrial engineering perspective will benefit you in this biology focused field?

I think the industrial engineering perspective is a huge strength in the field. I think that the way we are taught to approach problems with a framework built on analytic tools like statistics, optimization, and simulation are useful because they can applied to most situations. For instance, even though I've learned optimization mostly in terms of classic problems like facility locationing or the diet problem, I'm trying to use the same optimization theory to detect patterns of mutation caused by prostate cancer. Even though I don't have the biology background that most of the others have, the analytical tools that I've learned are flexible enough to be adapted to problems in biology.

Describe an average day in your life as a research intern.
Usually I wake up around 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and head to breakfast. The lab provides food and housing, so we stay on campus and have pretty limited meal times. Usually I try to be in to lab around 9:00 a.m. or earlier, but I don't have strict times. I'll work until lunch at 12:00 noon, take a lunch break with the other students, and then head back to work until dinner around 6:00 p.m. After dinner usually I'll workout (rock climbing with the other URP's if I can) and sometime head back to lab for a few minutes to check on code that is running or do a little bit of work. Usually by that time it's around 11:00 p.m. so I'll head back to the cabin for a little relaxing with the other students before going to sleep around midnight.

What motivated you to apply for this position?
My dad is an engineer who designs medical devices so growing up I've always been exposed to different aspects of the healthcare industry. When I was deciding on a choice of college I wanted a field that could combine biology/medicine and math (but no physics or chemistry!).
After coming to Georgia Tech, I started in the spring of my freshman year doing ecological metagenomics research in Dr. Frank Stewart's Biology Lab to get some experience with wet lab procedures and modern genome work. That summer, I took an internship with Kroger's Operations Research group and got to hear about one of their projects that helped reduce out-of-stock prescription drugs by 1.6 million per year so I was exposed to the role that ISyE could play in the pharmaceutical industry while part of a huge company. The following year and since then, I have joined Dr. Turgay Ayer's research group at ISyE, where I've had various projects studying coronary heart disease using a variety of modelling and simulation techniques. Finally, as the student chapter of Institute of Industrial officer my sophomore year I hosted a bioinformatics event where Dr. Eva Lee came and talked about her work in healthcare and all the super interesting projects she has worked on. All this has given me a ton of exposure and introduced me to the breadth of different opportunities in healthcare. In short, I think it's a combination of the amazing work my dad has done in healthcare, and my opportunities at Georgia Tech and Kroger that have really led me to become passionate about this field.

What are you doing for fun while you are there?
It's amazing! Cold Spring Harbor is about an hour from the city, so in addition to the amazing activities in the city, we are still surrounded by tons of nature. The lab is on a hillside of a decent sized harbor and has hiking trails, a beach, and kayaks so there is the best of the city and essentially a nature preserve. The weather is great and seeing the sun set over the harbor never gets old. For fun we have tons of outdoor recreation options both at the lab and on Long Island, and visiting the city is fun on the weekends. Usually a group of the other student researchers goes into the city to explore, shop, or visit museums every weekend.

You have a lot of outside interests, how do you stay so well rounded?
Growing up my parents and school really instilled in me the importance of being well rounded. My school had activities and programs devoted to improving us physically, socially, academically, artistically, and spiritually. Coming to college and maintaining this 'well-roundedness' was really important for me. I really believe that being well-rounded doesn't mean just doing one or two extra-curricular activities all focused around the same thing so it really comes down to scheduling your time really well. I try to diversify my interests to make myself a better person every day and to that end I've sought out experiences at Georgia Tech that will challenge me in different ways. One of the things that drew me to Georgia Tech was the plethora of opportunities available for students that I didn't see at other schools.

“As someone who had great difficulty developing a disciplined writing schedule with my own dissertation,” said Clint Stivers, a Brittain Fellow and Communication Center professional tutor, “I wish I'd been able to attend a DWB. Our pilot with the ISyE students demonstrated how establishing such a schedule is fundamental to successful writing.”

Since the University of Pennsylvania’s first Dissertation Boot Camp in 2005, universities across the country have been experimenting with the model, trying to find ways to provide assistance to graduate students, many of whom find the task of finishing their dissertations formidable.

 “Real life gets in the way,” says Brandy Ball Blake, ISyE communication specialist.  “Graduate students have to teach, grade, research, support their families, spend time with their families—somehow manage to be ‘whole’ human beings and finish their dissertations in a prescribed amount of time.  The Boot Camp provides these students with a supportive environment and a set time and place to focus on their work and not be pulled in a thousand directions.”

Students from the ISyE and from Literature, Media, and Communication worked on their dissertations in the Communication Center from 9 am to 5 pm every day, taking occasional scheduled breaks to eat, get the blood flowing, and re-energize. 

In addition to maintaining a strict schedule, the participants were asked to identify daily goals and to track how successful they were at keeping those goals. 

“Our intent was to keep everything positive,” explained Blake.  “The students set their own pace, but accountability was the key.  They were accountable to the goals they set and, because of the close-knit environment, to everyone else who was diligently working in the room.  This really kept them focused.”

 Student feedback indicated the overwhelming success of the pilot--helping the participants make significant progress towards their long-term writing goals, analyze and assess their writing goals, stay focused on their projects, and identify barriers to writing productively.  Just as significantly, the week helped them realize the importance of rewarding themselves for their efforts.

“An important goal for Boot Camp programs is to help students develop long-term positive writing strategies through behavior changes,” says Karen Head, assistant professor and director of the Communication Center.  “We stressed the importance of rewards because feeling even a small sense of accomplishment makes it more likely that writers will continue practicing their new strategies.”

How did they hold up during the Boot Camp?  “They were energized,” says Blake.  “Seeing tangible progress towards their goals seemed to inspire them.  We thought they would want to go home early on Friday, but many of them said they would stay even later if we let them.”

Where does the Boot Camp go from here?  “Based on the success of this pilot study,” says Stivers, “I anticipate the Dissertation Writing Boot Camp will become an opportunity for graduate students in all departments who are trying to write their dissertations.”

Since World War I, thousands of Georgia Tech students and alumni have served in the United States military. Some served their nation in times of war. Some served in times of peace.

Some were drafted. Some volunteered. And some made the ultimate sacrifice and died fighting for their country.

Some embarked on long careers as soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines—many of them after completing Tech’s ROTC programs and being commissioned as officers. Some of them stayed in service for just a short while.

And some came to the Institute as students after their service ended, looking to build upon their military experiences with a rigorous education that only Tech could provide.

Georgia Tech stands proud of all these veterans who honorably carried out their duties and bravely defended our freedoms. While we can’t share every one of their stories, we’ve identified seven remarkable veterans who represent a wide range of experiences, from a World War II bomb disposal expert to a current student who recently transitioned out of the military.

They are leaders, teachers, heroes and survivors. You can read it on their faces.

Wayne Waddell, EE 56, Colonel, Air Force [Retired]

Waddell flew the Thunderchief F105 fighter-bomber during the Vietnam War, and was captured on July 5, 1967, after his plane succumbed to anti-aircraft fire. He spent six years as a POW before he was released on March 4, 1973.

“I flew 46-and-a-half missions before I was shot down. Everyone thought I was gone. And then the North Vietnamese found me. … It was bad at first, and I had to fall back on my training and my willpower to stay alive. My accommodations were no Hogan’s Heroes or Stalag 17, but they were livable. There I met some of the finest people in the world, my fellow POWs. We were not heroes. Those are the names on the wall. We consider ourselves fortunate survivors, able to enjoy the life that we were almost denied.”

Read more about Wayne’s story of survival here.

J. Scott Gilliam, Mgt 15, Corporal, U.S. Army [Veteran]

After serving six years in the U.S. Army, Scott took a second try at earning a degree at Tech. He’s not only well underway in his pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in management, he also co-founded the Georgia Tech Student Veterans group on campus.

“I enrolled at Tech in 2004 as an architecture student, but I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t mature enough. I needed to grow up and get out on my own. So I left and joined the Army. … I served as a combat engineer, looking for IEDs and clearing routes for supply convoys and soldiers. For every 10 hours of boredom there were 10 seconds of insanity whenever we came under fire or struck an improvised bomb. … I’ve never laughed harder than I did during deployment—it was necessary to cope with my friends getting hurt and sometimes even killed around me.”

 Fred Espy, AM 66, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy [Retired]

Tech’s second black graduate, Fred earned a degree in applied math and served in the Navy ROTC before becoming an officer in the Navy. He served as an F-4 pilot and air intelligence officer during the Vietnam War, and later helped found and lead ROTC programs at Southwest DeKalb High School and Morehouse College.

“As an intelligence officer, I knew we weren’t winning the war, no matter what Gen. [William] Westmoreland said. Most of us didn’t want to die. We didn’t want to be John Wayne. … Despite the outcome of the war, I felt like I made a real difference with my military career. Later on, through my involvement with recruiting and ROTC programs, I was able to help many young people find their way. That means so much more to me than dropping bombs on a bridge.”

Read more about Fred’s lifelong commitment to making a difference in young people’s lives.

James McGarrah, MS ME 79, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy [Retired]

Currently the chief of staff at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Jim served in the Navy and Navy Reserve for 37 years. He rose from a junior officer aboard the USS Belknap to the rank of Rear Admiral, a post where he, in his last assignment, oversaw the review of enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay.

“I’ve had three defining stages to my Naval career, from a peace-time sailor and engineer to a battalion commander during Desert Storm to a chief administrator. I’ve been lucky to serve for nearly 40 years in support of causes much bigger than myself, to contribute directly to the safety and security of my country. … Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that you can’t manage people in times of conflict, you have to lead them.”

Jasmine Walker, MS OR 14, Captain, U.S. Army [Active]

A graduate of West Point, Jasmine served on deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan in military intelligence and counterinsurgency command roles. She applied for grad school at Tech, but before she could return to the States, she was wounded in action and awarded a Purple Heart. Jasmine just completed her degree and began teaching systems engineering at West Point this summer.

“In Afghanistan, my soldiers conducted more than 600 combat patrols, cleared more than 650 pounds of homemade explosives off the battlefield and detained multiple high-value targets.  … I was wounded during a firefight out on patrol, sustaining blast injuries from multiple rocket-propelled grenades and 82mm recoilless rifle rounds. I lost over 40 percent of the strength on my right side and suffered some cognitive deficits from traumatic brain injury. I was hospitalized for 10 days to allow my brain to heal.”

Jim Tucker, ChE 47, Captain, U.S. Army [Veteran]

Jim was a sophomore at Tech when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and he was drafted in April 1943. After completing Officer Candidate School, he was named commanding officer of the 183rd Bomb Disposal Squad, which was sent to the Philippines and Japan at the end of World War II.

“I am most proud about being able to serve my country by providing services that saved lives and completing all my assignments satisfactorily and expeditiously. I witnessed cruelty, hardship and filth, and suffered pain, but returned from my time in service the same man that entered. … I seldom think about my time in the service since I have trained myself to focus on the present and future, which can be changed, rather than the past which cannot.”

 Ron Johnson, MS OR 85  General, U.S. Army [Retired]

After being dared by a Junior ROTC instructor to seek admission to West Point, Ron served in the Army for 32 years, rising to the post of commanding general. He oversaw the $18.4 billion reconstruction program in Iraq, became the COO of the Army Corps of Engineers, and now is a Tech Professor of the Practice for industrial and systems engineering.

“Tech gave me some of the tools I needed to command, lead and manage at the highest levels of the Army. Understanding data, process improvement, lean thinking concepts, supply chain management, project management, stochastic processes, simulation, optimization… all these subjects prepared me for the challenges of running organizations like the Army’s Installation Management Command or being the COO of the largest public engineering company in the nation, the Army Corps of Engineers.”

This article first appeared in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine

His book, TRAUMA RED: The Making of a Surgeon in War and in America’s Cities chronicles the patient cases he has handled over two decades on two distinct fronts –in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served as a frontline U.S. Navy surgeon, and the urban zones of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where he has been confronted by an endless stream of victims of civilian violence and accidents.

In his book, Dr. Rhee recalls the fateful day of being called into work on ten gunshot victims from a man who opened fire on a crowd of people at a local supermarket. One of the victims was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It was a day the nation would never forget, but for Rhee, it was also just another day on the job.

Competent and tough, he spent his childhood in South Korea and Uganda, where he once watched his surgeon father remove a spear from a man’s belly.  This incident was the turning point in his life motivating him to pursue a lifelong interest in patient care.

Dr. Rhee is now the Chief of Trauma, Surgical Critical Care, Burns & Emergency Surgery as well as the Marin Gluck Professor of Surgery at the University of Arizona.  And as you can imagine, he carries a list of post-nominal initials after his name including MD, MPH, FACS, FCCM, and DMCC.  

He gracefully balances his demanding career as a world-renowned surgeon with an active research agenda and teaching load. His days, he said, are long and arduous but also extremely rewarding. 

“A typical day is not typical for me. I had no idea that I would be working as an academician and that means that there is a lot of travel involved for conferences and symposiums as well as from a regulatory point of view.  The clinical job is my savior as that is when I get to do professionally what I was trained to do and love to do.  The daily workload includes patient care, meetings to improve the systems in the hospital as well as teaching and constant innovating and problem solving,” said Rhee.

When asked if his Georgia Tech degree in Health Systems has helped him in his career he said, “I have an upper hand on the health care system and the issues globally than the other surgeons who did not have this degree. The systems approach that I learned at Georgia Tech helps me tremendously as I work towards developing a more efficient patient-based system to deliver not only trauma care but health care to all the patients treated at this hospital.  It has also been of great benefit to me as I work at the national level to improve health care.”  

Dr. Rhee, we, at Georgia Tech, are very proud of you.

The citation reads:

Since Lillian Gilbreth received the initial Gilbreth Award in 1962, it has gone to many of the giants of our profession; all men…until tonight. Tonight, we would like to honor Jane Ammons. Jane serves as the H. Milton and Carolyn Stewart School Chair and Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. For over 38 years, Jane has been an active industrial engineering practitioner, award-winning teacher and researcher, and leader, including service as president and as secretary of the IIE Board of Trustees. During this time, she and her husband Ricky have been blessed with two sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. Her areas of expertise include supply chain engineering with a special interest in developing closed-loop, environmentally sustainable systems. Jane received her Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering from Georgia Tech, and she is a registered professional engineer in the state of Georgia. Jane’s work is well-published, and she and her students have won several research awards. At Georgia Tech, she has been honored with eight teaching/faculty awards. She also served as the NSF ADVANCE Professor of Engineering from 2002-2006 working to advance the career success of women engineering faculty. Jane has provided national and international leadership and service on several boards and advisory panels, including the technical committee for the Uganda: Millennium Science Initiative Project co-financed by the World Bank and the U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Committee. She is a program evaluator for ABET, an IIE fellow and a member of SME, INFORMS and ASEE.

Dr. Ammons is a leader in the overall field of industrial and systems engineering.  She is also a pioneer of engineering for women and a supporter of enhancing educational opportunities for underrepresented minorities. 

Dr. Ammons contributions have been vast and her tenure at Georgia Tech has been marked by my many successes and firsts. She was the first female ISyE Ph.D. recipient (1982) and the first female ISyE faculty member. She previously served as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Engineering, and in 2011, was appointed to hold the H. Milton Stewart and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair in ISyE, becoming the first female school chair in the College of Engineering.

In addition to her institutional service, Dr. Ammons has had a strong impact in the external field of industrial and systems engineering. She is a past-president of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and has chaired the National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Committee. She has also served as a member of the Technical Committee for the Uganda: Millennium Science Initiative Project co-financed by the World Bank and has served as a Program Evaluator for ABET, the engineering education accreditation organization.

 1.    Changes in freight transport infrastructure.  The Panama Canal is currently being modified to allow much larger vessels the ability to transit.  The new canal, with a new set of locks, will have significant impact on the flow of goods into U.S. East Coast ports (e.g., Savannah) and beyond.  Changes in port, rail, and road infrastructure worldwide will impact on global trade.  Changes in port infrastructure include the Singapore container port relocation and the new Shanghai Yangshan terminal location.

 2.    Real-time supply chain control, based on real-time data.  More data are becoming available in real-time or near real-time, making it possible to exert real-time control of supply chains.  This Big Data phenomenon is particularly challenging since many of the data sources and systems needing these data for control, e.g., tractor-trailers delivering to assembly plants, are constantly on the move.  Synchronizing the supply chain with real-time data and predictive analytics in order to better enable same-day or next-day delivery driven by e-commerce is rapidly becoming a reality.

 3.    New manufacturing process innovations.  The impact of additive manufacturing (e.g., 3-D printing) on supply chain design and operations may have dramatic impact on the design of supply chains.  If additive manufacturing feedstock can be used for multiple products, then a risk pooling opportunity exists that may reduce transport demand for work-in-progress and finished goods.  New packaging that results in weight and cube reduction per unit of product shipped may further reduce the growth in tonnage transported.

 4.    Reverse globalization and re-shoring.  Supplier footprints for the U.S. market are moving closer to the U.S. This is due to changing wage structures in China and in Mexico and in the improved resilience provided by shorter supply chains (“Mexico is the new China”).  Future changes in the cost of energy (which may go down, indicating the possible advantage of longer supply chains) and interest rates (which may go up, increasing inventory holding costs, indicating the possible advantage of faster supply chains) may affect this trend. 

 5.    Demographic changes and the growth of urban logistics.  Over 50% of the world’s population now lives in urban areas.  The growth of mega-cities in the world is occurring mostly in Asia (e.g., Tokyo, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Jakarta, Seoul, and Delhi). The impact of congestion on moving goods in urban areas and the increasing value of real-time congestion information for improving freight transport efficiency are continuing opportunities and challenges.  The impact of new e-commerce based business strategies on moving goods in urban areas is further heightening the importance of urban logistics.

 6.    Concurrent product and supply chain design.  Products are being designed in order to reduce total supply chain cost, assuming the supply chain is sufficiently well informed and adaptive (capable of real-time control, based on real-time data) so that product differentiation can occur late in the supply chain (`postponement’) and be based on real-time or near real-time demand.  Product architectures that are modular tend to enable product differentiation late in the supply chain.  ‘Push’ supply chains (for mass production) are being replaced by ‘pull’ supply chains (for mass customization, build-to-order). 

You just graduated in May, what lies ahead?

I will work on wrapping up my research project at school. After being admitted to multiple top Ph.D. programs, I have decided to start the Ph.D. program at University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the fall of 2014.

Tell us a little about your background.  What motivated you to come to Georgia Tech to get your undergrad degree at ISyE?

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Chengdu. It is the largest city located in the south west of China.  Later in my life, I spent six years at Chengdu Foreign Languages School for my junior high school and senior high school. I was amazed by some of the early high school students who directly got into United States for their undergrad degrees, so I also tried to follow their path and applied for to American institutions. I didn't know much about Georgia Tech back then, but I U.S. News and World Reports provided a very good reference. Luckily I got in!

You would like to eventually go to graduate school and become a professor.  When did you decide you wanted to be a professor and why?

I am interested in the research aspect where you have a chance to break through what people haven't solved in the world. It's a different flavor compared with working in the industry.

You have a very intense schedule and have accomplished a lot in the last five years.  It sounds like you are taking advantage of all that Georgia Tech has to offer. How have you juggled two majors, three Ph.D. classes and two research projects and still make outstanding grades?

There are brilliant teachers who teach well. I also have really smart friends at all levels who’ve helped me a lot. In the end, hard work also pays off more or less.

With all your academic activities, do you have free time outside of classwork? If so, what do you do enjoy doing?

Actually quite a lot.  I'm a big fan of our football team. I watched all of the Georgia Tech football games in the past five years either on TV or at Bobby Dodd Stadium. For the home games, I went to the majority of them.  A random but cool thing I did was be one of the bananas in the 2011 Homecoming game against Clemson. Like most of the Tech fans, I hate UGA and always remember the score 45-42 from 2008 game. Early in my college when I have more free time, I enjoyed doing community service project within an on-campus club called Georgia Tech Circle K. I made a lot of nice and cool friends in the club.  During my Co-op and Intern semesters, I like inviting friends to my apartment and cooking food together during the weekends.   I also jog every single weekend and like to travel when I don't have a lot of work on hand.

You mention you were one of the bananas in the 2011 homecoming game against Clemson. What is the banana and do you have a photo of you in the suit?

Well, my previous roommate decided that he wanted to bring a group of friends in banana suits together and go to the homecoming game. It might seem random and stupid to some people, but the experience turned out to be one of the best parts for my college life.

Where is your favorite place on campus?

The best memory at college goes to Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Tell us a little about each of your internships. What did you enjoy most about each of them?

I spent three semesters working as a Software Engineer Co-op at Ventyx ABB. I learnt a lot of technical stuff in programming and modelling. I also learnt to behave professionally in a company. Meeting experienced industry people within the company has helped me a lot in many different aspects. Talking to Georgia tech alumni from previous generations and listening to their story is the best part!

I also spent one summer semester working at Hewlett-Packard. It was the semester when I developed a much better understanding of self-motivation and proactive work attitudes. The experience is simply invaluable.

Tell us about one of the research projects you worked on.

The most recent research project I'm working on is about applying Robust Optimization in Demand Response Scheduling. Advised by Dr. Andy Sun, I had a chance to work on the modeling and simulation aspects of the problems.

What do you consider your biggest achievement? What is the best piece of advice you ever received?

By talking to friends and teachers and listening to their stories, I start to understand what self-motivation is and how it can be applied in work. To me, self-motivation is something that comes from inside. It's about interest, inspiration and proactive attitudes that you have in work.

My view about co-ops has been completely changed by one of my ISyE friends at school. I was actually a very passive worker in my own co-op, someone who stayed in a cycle of getting assignment from manager, finishing them on time and then getting another one. I have never thought about any change because I felt it just went fine. Then I met this cool, smart friend who was working as a co-op at Delta. His daily work at company was generating reports, but somehow he decided and managed to go beyond his assignment, explore something of great potential value, define the problem and consistently work on the problem.  I mean it was just so amazing as how much impact an undergraduate student can have in such a big corporate. I learned from this and applied it in my internship at Hewlett-Packard. The feeling was great. It was like a new world you opened for yourself - full of passions, inspiration, challenges and opportunities.

Finish the sentence: Few people know that…

 1. It takes me 3 years to realize that WR in football means "wide receiver" not "white receiver".

 2. I'm currently a San Francisco 49er fan although I'm in the city of Atlanta.

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Global Agenda Council said Ratliff’s leadership will be “instrumental in helping this Council collaboratively develop pertinent insights and solutions to address this global challenge.”

Ratliff, the executive director of Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, has previously served on the WEF Logistics & Supply Chain Global Agenda Council and co-authored a chapter in the WEF Global Enabling Trade Report 2012: Reducing Supply Chain Barriers that outlined the requirements that an optimization model for supply chain design should fulfill, and some of the obstacles faced in its construction.  Ratliff was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996 and is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE).

Established in 2008, the Network of Global Agenda Councils is an invitation-only knowledge network that serves as an international brain trust to the World Economic Forum and the world at large. Each of the 80 Councils focuses on specific issues, and the six Metacouncils dealing with cross-cutting themes are comprised of 20 globally renowned experts from business, government, academia and civil society. The Network gives its members a unique platform to support the Forum's vision to better understand and catalyze global, regional and industry transformation. 

Born in Panama City, Varela is an entrepreneur, with family roots in the province of Herrera. After graduating from Colegio Javier, he attended Georgia Tech, where he received a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering in 1985. In the private sector, Varela has been on the board of Varela Hermanos, a family company, since 1985 and was executive vice president of the company until 2008.

Politically, Varela has worked in political campaigns beginning in the 1990s, was chief of the Panameñista Party campaign in 1994 and was the Panameñista Party's presidential candidate during the 2009 election. He has also served as the Minister of Foreign Relations from July 2009 until August 2011. Varela joined forces with his rival in the presidential run, previous President Ricardo Martinelli, as the candidate for Vice President, and on May 3, 2009, was sworn in as Vice-President of Panama. A free-market conservative, Varela has strong social credentials, having been the architect of a popular program at the start of Ricardo Martinelli's presidency to provide a $100 monthly stipend to Panamanians over age 70 without a pension or retirement benefits.

“Analytics spans the fields of statistics, operations research, computing, and business. The Georgia Tech Master of Science in Analytics degree is one of the few truly interdisciplinary analytics degrees that include all of those areas. As a result, our graduates will be uniquely able to think across the disciplines as they generate deeper insights into analytics problems,” said Joel Sokol, director of the MS in Analytics program.

This interdisciplinary degree program leverages the combined strengths of Georgia Tech in statistics, operations research, computing, and business by melding the world-class expertise of the College of Engineering’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, the College of Computing’s School of Computational Science and Engineering, and the Scheller College of Business. By combining the strengths of these nationally ranked programs, graduates will be afforded the opportunity to integrate analytic skills in a unique and interdisciplinary way that yields deep insights into analytics problems.

One of the central objectives of the program will be to produce graduates who will be ready to enter the workplace with the computing, business, statistics, and operations research skills needed to immediately identify, analyze, and solve analytics problems for better business intelligence and decision support. Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Analytics graduates will be able to move directly into business, industry, and government positions where they can apply the practical knowledge they have gained to immediately benefit their employers.
Program participants will have access to a state-of-the-art analytics lab with high-performance computing infrastructure for massive-scale data analytics, and will learn to:

• identify and frame problems;
• acquire, manage, and utilize large and fast-moving streams of data; 
• create, analyze, solve, and interpret mathematical models using appropriate methodology; and 
•  integrate these interdisciplinary skills to successfully develop and execute analytics projects.

Beyond these core skills, participants will focus on one of three tracks that will provide additional depth in specific area of analytics:

• Analytical Tools: This track provides students with a greater understanding of the quantitative methodology of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics: how to select, build, solve, and analyze models using methodology such as parametric and non-parametric statistics, regression, forecasting, data mining, machine learning, optimization, stochastics, and simulation. 
• Business Analytics: This track provides students with a deeper understanding of the practice of using analytics in business and industry: how to understand, frame, and solve problems in marketing, operations, finance, management of information technology, human resources, and accounting in order to develop and execute analytics projects within businesses.
• Computational Data Analytics: This track provides students with a deeper understanding of the practice of dealing with so-called “big data”: how to acquire, preprocess, store, manage, analyze, and visualize data arriving at high volume, velocity, and variety. 

Analytics is an important and quickly-growing field, and has quickly become a key facet of business strategy. The field is still new enough that its need has clearly outpaced the supply of students and will do so for the foreseeable future. With this new program, Georgia Tech will fill that gap by producing top graduates in the field.

For more information, visit www.analytics.gatech.edu.

The World Food Program (WFP), is the largest humanitarian organization fighting world hunger, has a decentralized decision making process across its supply chain.  In order to centralize commodity, sourcing, and routing decisions, the team created a customizable optimization tool, based on a multi-period multi-commodity minimum cost network flow model.  The tool outputs the most cost-effective solution given optional constraints over a planning horizon.  With this visibility, WFP can potentially save $34 million or 12.91% of the supply chain costs.

Finalists in the competition were two senior design teams who worked with Heidelberg Spares and Manheim SureSell.

The Heidelberg Spares team members include Gian Di Carlo, Benedict Herbst, Christoph Koehler, Lior Koren, Andrea Pava, Mark Vaisberg, and Daniel Zuleta and their faculty advisor is Doug Bodner. Their project was on Predictive Replacement for Spare Parts of Printing Presses. This project improves the service business of Heidelberg USA, a company that manufactures industrial printing presses, by shifting it towards a proactive service model.  Utilizing reliability theory, correlation analysis, optimization, and simulation, the team created a suite of tools that identify economically optimal part replacement times, helping prevent Heidelberg customers from incurring unexpected, expensive machine failures. With this win-win solution, Heidelberg has a potential service revenue increase of up to $49M, and its customers have potential downtime reduction of 40%.

The Manheim SureSell Team members include Hannah Berkhan, Layla Bouzoubaa, Alicia Hess, Claudia Lara, Maryann Remy, and Alexandra Underwood. Their faculty advisor is Sebastian Pokutta. Their project is titled Risk Transfer Mechanism through SureSell. Manheim facilitates more than $50 billion annually by auctioning automobiles for outside sellers but only earns revenue itself when cars sell.  To encourage sellers to accept bids rather than continuously retry at auction, the team developed a risk-transfer mechanism, SureSell, in which Manheim will pay the difference between the highest bid and the market price of cars that have been auctioned four times but have not yet sold.  SureSell returns pricing control to Manheim and increases car conversion rates.

According to ISyE Professor Emeritus Leon McGinnis, the three teams collectively created between $40 million and as much as $100 million in potential value for their clients. He also cites that all senior design participants worked on projects with remarkable outcomes. “The breadth of projects and the overall quality of the work is quite impressive, and it may spur us to think about ways to make the undergraduate curriculum even better,” said McGinnis.

All senior students in ISyE culminate their undergraduate educational experience with the Senior Design course in order to provide firsthand experience at solving real world problems in a team environment. Students typically work in teams of six to eight individuals with 15-25 Senior Design teams running each semester. Each group is advised by an ISyE faculty member, and the faculty coordinator manages the overall course. Companies interested in submitting a project for consideration can either contact Joel Sokol, at 404 894-6484 or can post a project through the ISyE webpage at http://www.isye.gatech.edu/seniordesign/. Senior design teams look for projects before the start of the fall and spring semesters.

“Martin has a strong international reputation for outstanding scholarship involving the solution of challenging and important problems in supply chain and logistics and also for important methodological and computational developments,” said Jane Ammons, Stewart School chair.

Savelsbergh is a logistics and optimization specialist with over 20 years of experience in mathematical modelling, optimization methods, performance analysis, supply chain management, production planning, and transportation. He has published over 120 research papers in many of the top operations research and optimization journals. He has a track record of creating innovative techniques for solving large-scale optimization problems in a variety of areas, ranging from vehicle routing and scheduling, to service network design, to stockyard management.

Savelsbergh has demonstrated ability to design and implement highly sophisticated and effective optimization algorithms as well as an ability to analyze practical decision problems and translate the insights obtained into optimal business solutions. Before joining the University of Newcastle in October of 2011, Savelsbergh led the Business and Services Analytics research program in the Mathematics, Informatics, and Statistics division of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Industrial and Scientific Research Organization).  Savelsbergh is a Fellow of INFORMS, the largest society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science, and analytics. 

Since launching on Kickstarter in 2012, they’ve released a full line of men's "Performance Professional" products.  Ministry of Supply focuses on an understanding of the human body, technical fibers and fabrics, and advanced manufacturing techniques, making it the most comfortable and sharp set of apparel on the market. For example, the Apollo dress shirt uses NASA technology, embedded within the fibers of the shirt, to proactively cool or warm your body in times of need - avoiding sweat stains, wrinkles, and odors.  With a team of ten, they just completed a Series Seed fundraising, and wrapped up their first full calendar year - shipping about 40,000 units to about 20,000 customers.

ISyE recently spoke to Advani to learn more about how he blends his engineering background with a sense of fashion and design. 

Why fashion? What inspired you to go into this industry? 

As an outdoor enthusiast, I’ve always been interested in how fashion and function interact. That’s the nature of what we’re trying to do – taking a lot inspiration for how comfortable we are on the field or at the gym, and bringing those familiar principles to a new category. And since we’re engineers by nature, it came naturally.

Tell us about founding Ministry of Supply?  

We started the company in 2011 while I was at MIT for business school. Having prototyped a few items, I met up with my co-founders during my first year of grad school. They were also marching forward on the same concept, so it was natural (and serendipitous) that we joined. We also had a very similar vision in terms of the deeper “why” we were doing this, and complimentary skill sets.

Other than co-founder, what role do you play in the company? 

I’m the President – focused on making sure our goals are clear, and that the whole team is marching towards them every day, week, quarter, etc.  In addition (we each wear many hats!) I focus on product operations (sourcing, production, and fulfillment) and finances (accounting, reporting, and planning).

Do you use your IE skills in your role in the company?  

Every day. A lot of the issues we learned to deal with in our ISyE classes come to life so frequently. For instance, we talk safety stocks, logistics, optimization, and even some light system dynamics.  It’s fantastic to see the text book solutions come alive on such a regular basis.

What is the Ministry of Supply’s guiding principle for addressing fashion?

We’re focused on breaking down the limitations of current fashion by using customer input and feedback – starting with a fundamental understanding of the human body (through various testing mechanisms, like thermal imaging).  Then, we use advanced materials and technical manufacturing methods (like seamless knitting or bonding) to solve the issues that we understand.

What are some of the most interesting innovations in your company? 

One of our first innovations was utilizing Phase Change Materials – initially developed for NASA space suits – in our dress shirts. PCMs effectively regulate your temperature by melting or freezing near your ideal skin temperature (freezing or melting to transfer energy, thus affecting temperature). We embed technology like PCMs into our fibers – and since, have found other “platforms” that we rely upon, such as toasted coffee grounds embedded within the fibers of our socks, sweaters, and undershirts to naturally combat odor.

Describe some of your favorite fashion items that your company produces/sells and what makes them special? 

I’ve always been a huge fan of socks, and ours are pretty spectacular.   We start with strain analysis, and follow with pressure mapping – to create the most comfortable dress sock (or loafer sock) on the market – built for the male stride, like wearing your favorite gym socks to work. We also leverage similar technology in our ATMOS t-shirt, which uses thermal imaging to map ventilation panels on to the t-shirt, to proactively keep you cool. The best part is that for both of these products, we use seamless knitting machines – think 3D printing for fashion.

And finally, one more question.  What is one of your fondest memories from your time at Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering?

Senior Design in 2007, my team pulled an all-nighter after Thanksgiving, since we were fall graduates. It ended up being a blast - we brought snacks, drinks, and tunes to the computer lab and cranked away all night. I don't think I recognized it then, but all-nighters (quite frequent) were definitely as much fun as they were painful. I remember the intense and great feeling of our simulation working for the first time just as the sun was rising. We went out for a big breakfast to celebrate, and then slept for a day straight.

The finalists:
Team members from ISyE's Heidelberg Spare Parts Senior Design Team include Gian Di Carlo, Benedict Herbst, Christoph Koehler, Lior Koren, Andrea Pava, Mark Vaisberg, and Daniel Zuleta. Their faculty advisor is Doug Bodner.

Team members from ISyE's Manheim SureSell Senior Design Team include Hannah Berkhan, Layla Bouzoubaa, Alicia Hess, Claudia Lara, Maryann Remy, and Alexandra Underwood. Their faculty advisor is Sebastian Pokutta.

Team members from ISyE's United Nations World Food Program Senior Design Team include Maria Ayers, Laxmi Gadepalli, Ashfaque (Ash) Kachwala, Tahsin Munir, Cane Punma, Gabriel Rodriguez, and Yuvraj (Yuvi) Singh. Their faculty advisor is Ozlem Ergun.

“Bill George has made distinct and important contributions in leadership, education, the health sector and beyond, and he continues to inspire future generations to lead with extraordinary vision.  ISyE is very proud that Bill is being honored with this well-deserved award,” said Jane Ammons, ISyE school chair.

George led Medtronic, a medical technology company, through more than a decade of unparalleled growth, where he began as president and chief operating officer in 1989 and then as CEO in 1991. Before moving on in 2002, George took the company from a $1.1 billion to $60 billion enterprise. George measured success by the number of new patients the company was able to help each year “be restored to full health”—a number which grew from 300,000 to 10 million today. As a professor at Harvard Business School, George builds ethical leaders with equal vigor. He has penned five books on leadership, informally advised numerous CEOs and emerging leaders, and contributed to the advancement of society through leadership on a variety of corporate and nonprofit boards.

Bill George and his wife Penny have also founded the George Family Foundation, as a way to foster wholeness in mind, body, spirit, and community and to further the development of authentic leaders. Influenced by his personal involvement, the Foundation has supported national and global leadership programs that train and nurture authentic leaders in all sectors.

The Georges, who reside in Minneapolis, MN, support academia at Georgia Tech and ISyE through multiple fellowships, seed grant funding, and an endowed chair, with a key goal of stimulating and supporting research in predictive health. 

Some of the expected services include: reviewing and evaluating data on the safety and effectiveness of marketed and investigational devices, advising the Commissioner of Food and Drugs regarding recommended classification or reclassification of these devices into one of the three regulatory categories, advising on any possible risks to health associated with the use of the devices, advising on formulation of product protocols and reviewing premarket approval applications for medical devices.

Lee works in the area of mathematical programming and large-scale computational algorithms with a primary emphasis on medical/healthcare decision analysis and logistics operations management. She tackles challenging problems in health systems and biomedicine through systems modeling, algorithm and software design, and decision theory analysis. Specific research areas include health risk prediction, early disease prediction and diagnosis, optimal treatment strategies and drug delivery, healthcare outcome analysis and treatment prediction, public health and medical preparedness, large-scale healthcare/medical decision analysis and quality improvement.

Lee is a three-time INFORMS Franz Edelman Laureate. In 2007 she, along with Dr. Marco Zaider from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, won the award for breakthroughs in cancer therapeutics. In 2011, along with CDC Strategic National Stockpile director Greg Bural, the team was honored for work on emergency response and publc health preparedness. In 2014, along with the chief of emergency medicine at Grady Health System Dr. Hany Atallah, the team was recognized for transforming clinic workflow and patient care. Lee has received seven patents for innovative medical systems and devices. Her research has been featured and discussed in numerous news media articles, including articles in the New York Times, London Times, Urology Times, Atlanta Business Chronicle, and Homeland Security IAIP Directorate Daily Report. Her cancer research was featured in a TV science news segment for Discoveries and Breakthroughs, Inside Science, Curing Prostate Cancer, broadcast by television stations nationwide. Her information-decision support system, RealOpt, has over 7,800 public health site users. It has been used for H1N1 mass vaccination, disaster response logistics in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, radiological screening and decontamination in the 2011 Japan Tohoku disasters, and in full-scale anthrax and pandemic planning and drills, and regular seasonal flu vaccine dispensing. 

Before delving deeper, it is important to note that public speaking has been a forte of Das’ for many years.  Das was recognized as a 2009 Future Business Leaders of America Top Ten National Finalist in Public Speaking and served as the only undergraduate workshop facilitator of ‘The Road to Effective Public Speaking’ at the 2011 ACC Leadership Conference.  A President’s Scholar at Georgia Tech studying industrial engineering, she is an inducted member of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national collegiate leadership society. Looking to the future, Das has accepted a full time offer with Deloitte Consulting where she hopes to put her public speaking skills to the test.

The theme of Das’ reflection speech is 'The Spirit of Georgia Tech,” one quality she feels that distinguishes this institution from the rest is 'spirit.'

“There is an incredible amount of spirit here on campus, both in and out of the classroom, spirit that drives each of us towards achieving our goals and aspirations,” says Das. “I hope to impart the message that the qualities we have developed through our experiences at Georgia Tech will continue to define us as we strive to exceed our potential as future leaders.”

Das has competed in numerous public speaking competitions on the national level and has presented at the 2011 ACC Leadership Conference and the 2011 Georgia Tech Leadership Conference. Ever since her first competition at age 15, and as a Future Business Leaders of America Top 10 National Finalist, Das has grown tremendously both as a person and as a professional. The process of crafting a speech, relating it to a diverse audience, and delivering it with style proved to be the perfect preparation for building confidence in her life and beyond.

During her early years, Das had to have sufficient content and flair for delivery to engage a wide variety of audiences each week during competitions. The experience upped her sense of self and confidence in her speaking abilities and she holds strong to the notion that public speaking has “revolutionized my life.” For Das, the greatest honor is knowing that her message has successfully impacted a group of individuals. “Serving as commencement speaker this spring is truly the culmination of a lifelong dream and the fruition of a vision,” she says.

Georgia Tech is known for preparing its students for life after college and Das is no exception.  Along the way she has learned the value of hard work, determination, and above all, persistence.

“I am prepared to handle failure with poise and grace, and to rise above challenges. Ultimately, my career at Georgia Tech has ensured that in the future, though I may be challenged, I will not be shattered. I thank Georgia Tech for this experience and am looking forward to staying connected with the institution,” Das says.

For those still in college, Das urges those to “create your own opportunities and strive to follow a path in order to achieve your goals and aspirations.” Her biggest achievement to date has been representing Georgia Tech in several leadership roles on a national level. She serves on The New Agenda's 2014 Young Women Leadership Council as the only woman from Georgia Tech. Impressively, after a Womensphere Emerging Leaders Summit, Das successfully reached out to the EVP of Brand Marketing for the Harlem Globetrotters to ask her to serve as the keynote speaker at the Georgia Tech Leadership Conference.  She was also invited as the youngest presenter by 'The Soledad O'Brien and Brad Raymond Foundation' to lead a seminar on 'Life After College,' in which Das discussed her experiences at Georgia Tech.

Das enjoys encouraging her fellow students to sharpen their oral communication skills. “Effective communication is the name of the game today. The best way to improve is to practice! I would encourage those interested to pursue opportunities to lead and speak both during presentations during class and outside, in great initiatives, such as the Public Speaking Club at Georgia Tech.” 

Das believes that it is critical for students, especially engineers, to refine their oral skills as the combination between technical and communication aptitude is very high in demand. With a desire to pursue a professional speaking career alongside her staple career choice, the demand for Das will run high as well. 

Congratulations to the following students:      

Sukirat Bakshi, President, Georgia Tech IIE, and Tanay Rajore, President, Alpha Pi Mu, Honor Society received the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering Leadership Award. Both Bakshi and Rajore embody the characteristics of a great leader. Bakshi, a strong and effective leader who isn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves, set up the electronic check-in and response system for the IIE career fair and organized many successful events. Rajore is an exciting, innovative, and initiative-driver leader, has increased participation and activities within the IE honor society while incorporating more process improvement structures. 

Hongfan (Kevin) Chen received the ISyE Alpha Pi Mu Academic Excellence Award and the COE Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.In an impressive five year span, Kevin has managed to complete two majors: IE and Math; two internships; three Ph.D. classes; and two research projects as well as a ticket to ACC Meeting of the Mind Conference.  Kevin has been admitted to multiple top PhD programs and aspires to be a professor.

Haley Hahmann received the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering Senior Service Award.  Hahmann won the award for her exceptional dedication to serving and representing ISyE. Haley extended herself beyond the scope of her responsibilities by always being available as an ISyE ambassador for prospective student visits, and being a key contributor in the development and deployment of ISyE's outreach program to high schools to promote industrial engineering as a major and the ISyE brand.

Pravara Manasa Harati received the Henry Ford II Best Junior Award for best academic performance at ISyE.

David Chen, Ayodeji Hambolu, Heather Humphrey, Tahsin Munir, Jeremiah Strang and David Weigel received the Jack C. Webb Scholarship based on their scholarship, leadership, extracurricular and community activities.

Jordan Avery, Andres Borda Cabal and Patrick Nadeau received the Kurt Salmon Associates Scholarship in Industrial and Systems Engineering for their academic merit and their contributions to ISyE.  

Caleb Steiner received the ALCOA Foundation Scholarship. Caleb received this award for exhibiting strong leadership skills, high energy, excellent interpersonal skills, tolerance for stress and initiative.

Bryce Ferguson received the IIE Student Chapter Outstanding Senior Award, Anubhav Jain received the IIE Student Chapter Rising Star Award and Maria Silva Willson received the IIE Student Chapter Top International Student Award for their strong academic performance, service and leadership.

Jordan Avery, Dylan Buczek, Nicholas Buczek, Jialei Deng, Jifeng Jiang, Erin Lightfoot, Jaclyn McClain, Binita Patel, Tanay Rajore and Jeremiah Strang received the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship for their contributions to the supply chain engineering program at Georgia Tech.

Alyssa Fornek received the KS2 Technologies, Inc. Entrepreneurship Award because of her entrepreneurial spirit.Alyssa is the founder and owner of Jovial Expressions, a handmade greeting card business.  She started making cards a few years ago as a hobby and to help pay for her out-of-state tuition.

Georgia Wang received the KS2 Technologies, Inc. Innovative Technology Award.  Georgia designed the T-Fend: The Twistable Fender.  This fender is by cyclists to use during or after rainy days.  It is able to shield the cyclist from rain, mud, and backsplash caused when riding through wet surfaces while still remaining lightweight and compact.  The T-Fend also has a reflective surface for more visibility.

At the end of the ceremony, ISyE students surprised ISyE academic advisor, Fran Buser by acknowledging her for going above and beyond her duties as an advisor. Buser is noted as always willing and ready to help, with patience and kindness even during chaotic registration periods. The students say that Buser is genuinely invested in their success and a true supporter.

The awards and scholarships were presented by Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair and Professor, Nicoleta Serban, ISyE associate professor, Fran Buser, ISyE academic adviser, Chen Zhou, ISyE associate chair for undergraduate studies, Andy Sun, ISyE assistant professor, Valarie DuRant-Modeste, ISyE academic advising manager, General Ronald L. Johnson, Professor of the Practice at  ISyE, Patti Parker, ISyE academic advisor, Diya Radhakrishna, President of IIE Student Chapter, Andrea Laliberte, ISyE Edenfield Executive in Residence.

Dr. Ammons is a pioneer of engineering for women, a supporter of enhancing educational opportunities for underrepresented minorities, and a leader in the overall field of industrial and systems engineering.

Her tenure at Georgia Tech has been marked by many firsts and many successes. She was the first female ISyE Ph.D. recipient (1982) and the first female ISyE faculty member. She previously served as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Engineering, and in 2011, was appointed to hold the H. Milton Stewart and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair in ISyE, becoming the first female school chair in the College of Engineering.

In addition to her institutional service, Dr. Ammons has had a strong impact in the external field of industrial and systems engineering. She is a past-president of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and has chaired the National Science Foundation Engineering Advisory Committee. She has also served as a member of the Technical Committee for the Uganda: Millennium Science Initiative Project co-financed by the World Bank and has served as a Program Evaluator for ABET, the engineering education accreditation organization.

The new scholarship made its debut at the recent 2014 Women in Engineering Banquet and was awarded to Breona Jenkins.

Breona Jenkins, an IE graduating senior, was selected to receive the award for her extraordinary motivation, abilities, and leadership in the engineering world and beyond. Jenkins is an “academic star.” In addition to her high honors, she has held several leadership and extracurricular positions while at Tech such as Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society vice president of outreach programs, FASET leader, Kid@Kollege committee chair, peer advisor for the Office of International Education, Team Buzz project coordinator, member of the Mentor and Mentee Program with Women in Engineering, and past president of the Spanish Speaking Organization. Outside of Tech, she has a passion for tutoring high school students in math and dancing.

For more information on this or other ISyE scholarships, contact Nancy Sandlin at nsandlin@isye.gatech.edu.

"We are thrilled to welcome our newest members to the ISyE Advisory Board. The commitment and enthusiasm that they bring to ISyE is invaluable to our continued success," said Jane Ammons, ISyE School Chair.

Randell “Randy” A. Cain, Jr., IE 1991, is a portfolio manager and principal owner at Herndon Capital Management. Cain is responsible for managing in excess of $9 billion in equity securities for a variety of institutional and individual portfolio clients via direct accounts, commingled funds, and mutual funds. He and his wife Cynthia have five children. Cain has served as a youth coach in soccer and basketball for his children’s teams for several year and is involved with community organizations such as serving on finance committee for the board of the Hornets’ Nest Girls Scouts Council in the Charlotte, NC area. He received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Marie Klaer, IE 1979, retired in 2008 after a career with AT&T and BellSouth, where she served as a revenue analyst.  She was instrumental in leading the merging of BellSouth Revenue data with the AT&T analysis systems. Klaer received her Georgia Tech degree with honors.  She is a supporter of social services for the needy.  In 2011, she was named the Robert D. Fowler Family YMCA 2011 Volunteer of the Year.   Outside of her commitment to the YMCA, Klaer also volunteers at Rainbow Village and Special Pops Tennis, a program that enhances the lives of children and adults with intellectual disabilities.    

Samuel S. Lee, IE 1990, is the chairman and chief executive officer of Prospect Medical Holdings, Inc., since 2008.  Prospect is a privately held national healthcare company headquartered in West Los Angeles that provides medical services through coordinated regional care with its hospitals, clinics, and affiliated medical groups of 3,500 physicians.  Prospect had been a publicly-traded company prior to a go-private transaction led by management and the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners in 2010.  Prior to Prospect, he was a co-founder and CEO of Alta Hospitals, Inc., which merged with Prospect in 2007.  Lee serves on the Boards of the Nix Health Foundation; Hospital Association of Southern California; California Association of Physician Groups National Board, serves as a regional representative and interviewer for Harvard College, and is active with the Young Presidents Organization.  He received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mark Moon, IE 1985, is the executive vice president and president of sales & product operations for Motorola Solutions. He is responsible for overseeing all activities related to global sales/go-to-market, services, product development, supply chain and strategy.  Moon’s organization includes over 18,000 employees located in more than 65 countries. Moon joined Motorola in 1985 and has held many leadership roles in sales, product development, services and general management. He serves on the board of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which was created by the U.S. Congress to lead a nationwide effort to honor America's firefighters and provide support and assistance to their families.

Guy Primus, IE 1992, MS IE 1995, will follow Lou Fouts, IE 1990, as the new advisory board chair.  He is the co-founder of The Core Venture Studio, a company that provides startup entrepreneurs with in-house product strategy, technical and business expertise, and capital infrastructure needed to grow their businesses. Prior to this, Primus served as Chief Operating Officer at Overbrook Entertainment, the film, TV and transmedia production company founded by producer James Lassiter and actor/producer Will Smith. Primus’ success in the worlds of media and technology led to his selection as a ‘CUP Catalyst’ in Media & Entertainment by the Council of Urban Professionals, a ‘Captain of Industry’ the Institute of Industrial Engineers and being named to Georgia Tech’s Council of Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni. Primus received his MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Wu is a renowned scholar and active researcher and academic leader in engineering statistics. Over his 40 year career, he has made pivotal contributions in quality engineering through the design of experiments to improve products and processes. His theoretical breakthrough and algorithms have transformed some optimality criteria from obscurity to become the standard in software and textbooks. Wu has made fundamental contributions to numerous areas in statistics including survey sampling, statistical inference, nonlinear least squares, sensitivity testing, and quality improvement. He has published 160 journal papers and four books, among which 14 papers are cited more than 100 times. He was one of the “ISI highly cited researchers” in 2002.

After joining Georgia Tech in 2003, Wu has made significant and long lasting impacts to Georgia Tech. Wu was one of the key leaders that built strong interdisciplinary research programs on campus, which already led to numerous major funded research programs and initiatives. Wu works to produce the next-generation researchers and academic leaders for the profession. He rebuilt the ISyE Statistics Group by identifying and recruiting five junior faculty members from 2003 to 2007, all of whom have received National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards. Four former Ph.D. students of Wu’s have also received NSF CAREER Awards, and all four have continued to carry close connections with GT.

For his pioneering and path-breaking work, Wu has received many honors, including the National Academy of Engineering, Academician of Academia Sinica, COPSS Presidents Award, and numerous honorary professorships and best paper awards. His honors also include Pan Wenyuan Technology Award (Taiwan), Einstein chair professorship at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lifelong Achievement Award from the Chinese Statistical Association (Taiwan), and an honorary doctorate degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Wu has given several prestigious talks and 15 plenary talks at various national and international conferences and several prestigious named lectures.

Combining rigor with dedication, respect, and friendship, Sokol is a cornerstone of Georgia Tech’s leadership in industrial engineering education. The excitement that encompasses Sokol while teaching is palpable to his students. They say he comes to class with the purpose of teaching and a goal for every student to understand the topic. Sokol’s students express life-long appreciation of their Georgia Tech education and he continues to mentor his students, both graduate and undergraduate, even after they leave Georgia Tech.  His former mentees include not just PhD students at top universities and successful engineers and consultants, but also prosperous entrepreneurs, military officers, vice presidents and directors across at least four continents.

Sokol has helped revamp the Senior Design curriculum, developed or co-developed five new courses, and created new course materials for optimization and logistics courses at multiple levels.  His materials have been requested and used not only by colleagues at Georgia Tech, but also at MIT and several other universities.  Sokol’s teaching has even reached the popular press: his use of The Simpons TV show to illustrate game theory concepts is mentioned in Simon Singh’s book: The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets.

Since joining Georgia Tech in 1999, Sokol has been an outstanding teacher in all facets of the profession.  He has won recognition for curriculum development and educational technology, and he has held national leadership positions in education. Sokol has proven to be an impactful teacher time and time again as well as a mentor to undergraduates and graduate students alike.

Paynabar joined ISyE in the fall of 2012, and has quickly made his mark in the classroom by connecting with his students.  He has a highly interactive approach to teaching, supported by deep knowledge of his field, which allows him to bring new research findings into the classroom. During his first summer at Georgia Tech, Paynabar was a research mentor in SURE, the Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Engineering/Science program, helping students make the link between undergraduate education and a future in research. This spring, Paynabar has volunteered to advise high school interns from Chamblee Charter High School in the Senior Engineering Capstone (SEC) Experience program.

The very high course instructor opinion survey scores that Paynabar receives are reflected in the comments from students. They say Paynabar has an ability to connect with his students and create an in-class atmosphere in which he helps students understand how what they learn can be applied in the real-world, and not just for an exam.  Students particularly note Paynabar’s respect and attention to the questions of all students as well his approachableness. Students repeatedly described his availability not just as a classroom teacher, but as a generous mentor and friend outside of class as well.

Paynabar received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology and Azad University in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from The University of Michigan in 2012. He also holds an M.A. in Statistics from The University of Michigan. Paynabar is the recipient of the INFORMS Data Mining Best Student Paper Award, the Best Application Paper Award from IIE Transactions, and the Wilson Prize for the Best Student Paper in Manufacturing. His papers have been published or accepted for publication in IIE Transactions on Quality and Reliability Engineering, Journal of Quality Technology, ASME Transactions-Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, and Quality and Reliability Engineering International Journal.

If the advances of undergraduate Jamie Clark, recent alumna Melissa McCoy, and faculty member Karen Feigh offer just a glimpse into what Tech’s women in engineering are capable of accomplishing, the face of engineering is set to take on a whole new look.

Read more: http://www.news.gatech.edu/features/women-engineering-tech

This issue marks the twenty-fourth consecutive year that ISyE has ranked as the foremost program of its kind in the nation at the graduate level within industrial/manufacturing/systems engineering category.

"This sustained recognition is a remarkable tribute to our outstanding students, world-class faculty, and alumni who can be found around the globe making significant contributions," said Jane Ammons, the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair.

The Institute’s College of Engineering ranked No. 6 and all 11 of the programs within the college are ranked in the top 10, including industrial engineering (No. 1), biomedical and bioengineering (No. 2), environmental (No. 4), civil (No. 5), aerospace (No. 5), mechanical (No. 5), electrical (No. 6), computer (No. 7), nuclear (No. 8), materials (No. 9) and chemical (No. 10). Georgia Tech appears on the top 10 list of engineering specialties more than any other ranked institution.

"Georgia Tech's strong rankings with U.S. News & World Report year after year reflect the Institute's ongoing commitment to excellence in research and teaching, as well as a legacy of preparing innovators and leaders," said Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson.

As part of this Committee, Thomas, the Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems at the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, will assist the Departments of Agriculture and Energy in meeting the Act’s important national goals of a healthier rural economy and improved national energy security. The Act’s main focus is on overcoming key technical challenges through research and development that will lead to a greatly expanded bio-based industry. Thomas will have the responsibility of providing advice to the Departments on matters including: biomass research and development, technical focus and direction of requests for proposals issued under the initiative, procedures for reviewing and evaluating requests for proposals, and facilitating consultation and partnerships among Federal agencies.

Thomas’ research interests are energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning. Thomas received a B. A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University. From 1986 to 1989, she was a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1989 to 2004, she was a Research Scientist at Princeton University, in the Princeton Environmental Institute and in the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, and was a Lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 2004-05, Thomas was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. Thomas was a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board from 2003 to 2009, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society.

The following projects will receive seed grant funding:

• Sequential Blood Pressure Changepoint Detection.  The research team leading this effort includes Turgay Ayer, assistant professor at ISyE, Yao Xie, assistant professor at ISyE, and Peter Wilson, professor at Emory University Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute.  The objective of their research is to utilize decision making tools to improve the management of hypertension. The aims are to create blood pressure cutoff values defining hypertension for subpopulations based on age, sex, ethnicity, and comorbidities, create algorithms for classifying hypertension in previously healthy patients using daily measurements, and simplify these algorithms into easily implementable heuristics for clinical use.
• Optimal Policies for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Surveillance: A Dynamic Approach from Societal Perspective. The research team leading this effort includes Turgay Ayer, assistant professor at ISyE, and Jagpreet Chhatwal, assistant professor of Health Services Research at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The objective of their research is to develop a comprehensive, data-driven modeling framework to analyze the cost-effectiveness of numerous surveillance strategies for patients with Hepatitis C virus infection, the most common cause of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the US.
• Considering Women’s Preferences in Down Syndrome Screening: Risk-Sensitive Decisions and Optimal Risk Cutoffs. The research team leading this effort includes Turgay Ayer, assistant professor at ISyE, Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair at ISyE, Ira Horowitz, John D. Thompson Professor and Chair at Emory University School of Medicine (SOM), Jane Ellis, medical director at Emory Regional Perinatal Center, and Matt Oster, assistant professor at Emory University SOM. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of women’s preferences and weighting of different pregnancy outcomes on the optimal risk cutoff values in Down Syndrome screening. They propose to develop a modeling framework to evaluate various prenatal screening strategies, to identify appropriate risk cutoff values considering differences in individual women’s preferences. An easy-to-use decision support tool will be built based on this modeling framework to aid in clinical decision-making and promote informed and shared decision-making.
• Predicting Health Costs and Variations Geographically. The research team leading this effort includes Julie Swann, Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Associate Professor at ISyE, and Nicoleta Serban, associate professor at ISyE.  Their focus is on predictive health at the system level, where they study health costs and variations in costs geographically and find statistically significant associations.  Such variation in cost can point to behaviors at the patient or provider level or infrastructure in the community that can be targeted for future improvements. The overall research question is to what extent costs vary geographically, especially for Medicaid, and what factors are associated with increased costs in the system.
• A Decision Support System for Treatment Determination of Rotator Cuff Tears Patients. Kamran Paynabar, assistant professor at ISyE, is leading this research effort. The objective is to develop a decision support system that utilizes patients’ medical record and initial examination data to predict the probability of a need for surgery treatment for rotator cuff tears patients at an early stage. The developed decision support system helps physicians make more accurate decisions on treatment recommendation by leveraging the predicted surgery probability.
• Linking Access to Health Outcomes for Cystic Fibrosis. Nicoleta Serban, associate professor at ISyE, is leading this research effort. The objective of the study is to assess whether health outcomes for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients are significantly associated to accessibility of the CF accredited care centers in the United States. Although multiple factors have been studied to as potential health outcomes for CF disease progression, investigations on how healthcare access is linked to disparities in the CF-related health outcomes are sparse. The overall research question is to what extent access to care impacts the health status of patients with CF?

The George Family Foundation was founded by Bill George and his wife Penny as a way to foster wholeness in mind, body, spirit, and community and to further the development of authentic leaders. Their interests include integrative medicine, leadership, spirituality, and community. The Georges, who reside in Minneapolis, MN, support academia at Georgia Tech through fellowships and an endowed chair in the area of health systems. George is the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and currently serves on the boards of ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He is also a trustee of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the World Economic Forum USA. He has made frequent appearances on television and radio, and his articles have appeared in numerous publications. He has been named to the “Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years” by PBS.

March Madness isn't just about basketball. It's also partly the madness around the plethora of data used to predict the winner of the annual NCAA Tournament.


With such a wide variety of potential data –road/neutral records, per-possession statistics and injury updates are just a few – it’s no wonder that there are so many different team rankings, meta-rankings and NCAA Tournament predictions.

Continue reading on the Amplifier.

The Amplifier, a multi-contributor blog pairing current issues with commentary from Georgia Tech experts, provides a forum for sharing, "What does Georgia Tech think?"

The first place winners, consisting of six students, won for their paper titled A Stochastic Optimization Approach to Appointment Scheduling in Healthcare. The paper describes an analysis of the work-flow process of the Emory Endocrinology Clinic, which operates under the Emory Healthcare system. The goal of their project is to improve the quality of care provided to patients by decreasing wait times and increasing doctor satisfaction. The team created a scheduling tool that provides custom fixed schedules for the six full-time doctors to be employed by their operations manager. The proposed solution provides a 20.4% reduction in patient wait time and a 23.5% reduction in doctor delay. To achieve the same improvement in these two metrics the clinic would have had to hire three additional doctors at an approximate $540,000 annual cost to the clinic. The team members include Robert Angelucci, Mary Lynn Buchanan, Breona Jenkins, Beau Shinkle, Teckmon Siaw, and Nolan Thomson and was led by ISyE faculty advisor, Dima Nazzal.  The team will now compete in the Undergraduate Technical Paper Competition Global Finals at the IIE Annual Conference & Expo in May 2014 in Montreal, QC, Canada.

The second place team, comprised of four students, won for their paper titled Resource allocation and optimization for advanced voting in Gwinnett County. The objective of their project is to analyze the tradeoff between cost and voter service level for advanced voting in Gwinnett County, which they achieve by optimizing the allocation of resources among the four advanced voting locations. Applying and integrating simulation and optimization techniques, they developed a decision support tool to reduce overstaffing costs as well as to reduce voter waiting times for Gwinnett County voters. The team includes Mehran D’souza, Shi Gan, Andrew Luff, and Peiqi Yang and was led by ISyE faculty advisor Ton Dieker.

The IIE Southeastern Regional conference is an opportunity for industrial engineering students to network and explore the local industry in the Orlando area by touring local companies. Approximately 200 industrial engineering students attended the conference from schools across the Southeast.

The eight certifications include: Supply Chain Principles, Inventory Control, Warehousing Operations, Transportation Operations, Customer Service Operations, Demand Planning, Procurement, and Manufacturing & Service Operations.

Seven states have been targeted for the initial roll-out of the certifications and an estimated 3,000 jobs will be filled by program participants. Target students for the certification programs include veterans, the long-term unemployed, and individuals impacted by significant industry-specific downsizing and outsourcing.

“Over the years, supply chain management has become more integrated and more complex,” said Tim Brown, SCL’s academic program director who serves as the Georgia Tech principal investigator on the grant. “To meet the ever increasing demands of industry and to stay on top of distinct trends in the field, it is imperative to develop and offer standard professional education in the field.”

Brown was also elected co-chairman of the Academic Advisory Council, serving as the university chair. He will be representing Georgia Tech, Northwestern and Rutgers. The Academic Advisory Council will oversee the development of the curriculum and the content of the eight certifications. 

Georgia Tech’s SCL, the world's largest supply chain and logistics research and education enterprise, was a natural choice for Broward College to team up with as SCL has over sixty years’ experience in addressing industry needs in supply chain management and has at its fingertip a team of Georgia Tech faculty who specialize across the diverse arenas of this field.

“We are excited for the opportunity to serve as a lead on this grant. With our role in helping define the content of each of the eight certificates, SCL hopes to create an alliance across Georgia and beyond to implement the courses,” Brown says.

Brown has met with representatives from the other 11 consortium education partners in a formal kick-off and initial planning conference. The work of the consortium has now begun, and it will continue through 2016. Four certificate programs will be developed over the next few months – with instruction targeted to begin in October 2014. The remaining programs will be completed next year.

The consortium consists of nine colleges who are advised and supported by three universities. The consortium includes: Broward College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, Northwestern University, Columbus State Community College, Essex County College, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Harper College, Long Beach Community College, San Jacinto Community College, St. Petersburg College, and Union County College.

Online content delivery, in addition to traditional in classroom training, is a key component of the program. The intent of this hybrid delivery is to allow students to pursue studies at their own pace while meeting personal work and family commitments. A few dozen corporate partners, including Atlanta’s UPS, are on board to provide input to the consortium regarding key skill needs and high demand roles.

The William W. George Chair was endowed to support a leading faculty member in the field of health systems whose interdisciplinary work and collaborations with other outstanding research and teaching organizations make an impact on the quality of health care delivery around the globe.

 “Pinar has a distinguished record of accomplishments in the field of health systems and humanitarian logistics. This appointment provides a well-deserved opportunity to enhance her growing research and educational impacts in these much needed arenas,” said Jane Ammons, ISyE School Chair.

Keskinocak is also the co-director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Logistics and the Associate Director of Research for the Health Systems Institute at Georgia Tech. She currently serves as a department editor for the journal Operations Research (Policy Modeling and Public Sector area) and as the president of the INFORMS Health Applications Society. She has had a passion for having a direct and positive impact in improving the quality of life for people around the globe in practice through her research since her graduate school days, and has gradually shifted and expanded her work from the for-profit sector towards applications of industrial engineering and operations research in the health and humanitarian sectors.

Her research has been published in journals such as Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, IIE Transactions, Naval Research Logistics, Interfaces, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, BMC Public Health, Epidemiology and Infection.

The Institute of Mathematical Statistics selected Hung for the Tweedie award because of her “outstanding contributions to design and analysis of computer experiments and statistical analysis with applications in cell biology.” Ying will present the Tweedie New Researcher Invited Lecture at the IMS New Researchers’ Conference, held this year in Boston in August.

“Ying embodies the ideal statistician who can do basic research, useful methodology and high impact collaborative research. It was apparent even as a young graduate student. We are proud of her accomplishments thus far and look forward to what she will do next,” said Wu and Vengazhiyil.

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

As a NSF Career award winner, Hung joins the ranks of ISyE statistics alumni Peter Qian who won in 2011 (former student of Wu) and M. K. Jeong who won in 2007 (former student of J.C. Lu). 

Wang’s interests go beyond traditional manufacturing returning to the U.S. He and his colleagues at GTMI are working toward a new kind of manufacturing rooted in innovation and systems thinking by focusing on innovation to create high value-add products. The approach will require looking at the entire system instead of discrete events. And who is more qualified to look at the whole system than industrial engineers?

One project GTMI is working on for U.S. Veterans Affairs is called SOCAT, which stands for socket optimized for comfort with advanced technology. Wang’s colleague and fellow ISyE Professor Chuck Zhang is leading SOCAT, among other printed electronics projects.

"Our aspiration at GTMI is [to be] the leader in advanced manufacturing globally," Wang says. "And I think the ultimate goal is to make sure that we have substantial impact to create wealth, to elevate the standard of living of the U.S. citizens, to drive innovation and to create really good high-paying jobs, especially middle-class jobs. ... It is a lofty goal, but it is not unreachable."

Read the entire article here: http://bit.ly/OfloQG

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often respond to urgent needs created by such disasters by fielding donations and distributing supplies. But to reach the most people and save the most lives, they must plan responses far in advance.

 Enter: the engineers.

 Industrial and systems engineers are known for designing optimization tools and models to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations’ work. For a humanitarian group facing the wake of a natural disaster, mitigation and decision aid tools become even more vital given the high degree of uncertainty and limited infrastructure and resources. Now, a College of Engineering alumna’s work in this field is being adopted by Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI).

Industrial and systems engineering (ISyE) alumna Shelly Ballard, who earned a master’s degree in 2012, teamed up with Professor Julie Swann of the Health & Humanitarian Logistics Center (HHL) for her thesis. Swann and Professors Özlem Ergun and Pinar Keskinocak cofounded and now direct the Center, which helps organizations improve logistics in emergencies and long-term development.

“We find that students can get really excited about using engineering skills in nontraditional environments like humanitarian systems,” Swann says.

Following a major disaster, one of the most urgent needs is adequate shelter. Ballard collaborated with Swann to design a product-mix optimization tool for Habitat for Humanity International to address a classic problem: How can an organization allocate limited resources to impact the most people for the least time and money?

Habitat, headquartered in Americus, Ga., maintains a large presence in Atlanta and throughout the world. It provides shelter assistance for people affected by disasters through its Disaster Risk Reduction and Response program, which offers “products” like damage assessment, transitional housing, home repair, latrine/ sanitation builds, and disaster and hygiene training and kits.

Habitat’s senior director of global disaster response, Kip Scheidler, summarizes: “We have a variety of ‘products’ in our toolkit that we can bring to bear after a disaster to help a community recover. Deciding the most effective mix of those is not always easy, and yet it is essential if we are going to maximize our limited resources.”

To help Habitat meet those goals, Ballard worked with the organization to decide which products and services would offer the most beneficial impact.

 Using Open-Solver, free optimization software, Ballard and Habitat assessed the products and services Habitat offers after a disaster, the available resources and costs, and the measurable effectiveness of each type of product. For the tool’s “input,” Ballard looked at resources needed, constraints (such as time and budget), and available resources (including funding, materials, and volunteers) to create an effectiveness score. That score, along with input from Habitat, was then used to identify an optimum product mix.

In her analysis, Ballard used Hurricane Felix as an example. The Category 5 storm hit the coast of Nicaragua in 2007, destroying more than 10,900 homes and leaving 45 percent of the population without sanitation facilities. Using her tool, Ballard calculated an optimal product mix that showed a several-fold improvement in overall effectiveness compared to the mix of products actually used following the disaster.

Her methods offered the possibility of a much greater impact on the community for the same cost.

This type of industrial engineering, optimizing “value for money,” is important for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, because it shows donors that their money is being used in the most efficient and effective ways possible.

Swann points to the important role that universities like Georgia Tech play not only in developing new science but in translating scientific approaches into practice, which can aid companies, NGOs, or government in decision-making under intense pressure.

“I had actually participated in building Habitat houses when I was a freshman at Georgia Tech,” she recalls, “so it is exciting to work with students to ‘build’ in a new capacity for Habitat.”

In addition to her work on the product optimization tool in Atlanta, Ballard also traveled to the Caribbean on a research trip with HHL as part of Georgia Tech’s Caribbean Hazard Assessment Mitigation and Preparedness interdisciplinary project. These countries at high-risk for hurricanes – such as Haiti, where Habitat has served more than 2,000 families in the last 30 years – are examples of areas where the tool could be effective.

“It's been such an honor to see the tool I built for Habitat being improved upon, and something Habitat is excited to share,” says Ballard. “Perhaps the most exciting part is seeing organizations catch on to the vast potential of these tools! If the major players start building and using these tools, just imagine how many more people and families could be reached."

Ballard has moved on from Georgia Tech, but HHL and Habitat continue to expand on her work. Current ISyE student Le Jiang is volunteering with Habitat’s Atlanta team to further improve what’s now called the “Shelly tool.”

“For a nonprofit, having an optimization tool puts HFHI at the forefront of their sector,” Jiang says. “In combination with successfully quantifying effectiveness, this could potentially thrust HFHI into leadership in the nonprofit community.”

Written By Meghan Smithgall 

This article first appeared in the College of Engineering 2014 Winter issue.

Candidates for this position must have an earned doctorate or equivalent experience, and national and international recognition in their specific discipline. A  proven record of excellence in academic and professional scholarly achievements is essential.  The successful candidate should have the strategic skills and vision to lead the School toward higher levels of excellence within a multi-disciplinary and high–technology environment and be able to establish a successful working relationship with federal, state and private funding agencies.  The Chair has a leadership role in increasing private and public support for the School; developing and maintaining close relationships with alumni of the School is essential. 

The Chair reports to the Dean of the College of Engineering and is responsible for all administrative, budgetary and personnel decisions within the School.  The successful candidate will be expected to provide evidence of fiscal responsibility and exhibit excellent leadership and management abilities, particularly interpersonal, team-building, and effective communication skills.  It is essential that the Chair provide leadership to an experienced, talented School staff.

Review of application materials will begin February 28, 2014 and continue until the position is filled.

Applications should include a letter of interest, curriculum vitae and names and address of five references. Electronic submission of materials is preferred and should be submitted to:

Ronald W. Rousseau

School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, GA  30332-0100

Tel: (404) 894-2866 Fax: (404) 894-2868

Email: rwr@gatech.edu

Georgia Institute is an Equal Education/Employment Opportunity Institution

Thomas and Wenman Liu, a PhD student in the School of Public Policy, evaluated a wide range of environmental impacts, including water use, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and ecosystem impacts, as well as broader issues regarding land use and sustainability.

In addition to its efforts to reduce its forest fiber footprint, K-C has announced its plan to transition at least 50 percent of wood fiber sourced from natural forests to alternate fiber sources by 2025. This broad, new initiative is expected to help protect biodiversity and reduce the impacts of fiber that the company uses, while ensuring the fiber is sourced in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Equally important, the initiative will also help insulate the company from continuing volatile price fluctuations in the world fiber market.

With a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy, Thomas’ research interests include energy and materials efficiency, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Thomas is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society.

Alex Berry, second-year IE major and Chinese minor, is the sophomore class president for Student Government Association (SGA). An incredibly active student on Tech’s campus, he is involved in multiple SGA committees and campus events, including this week’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities. When he’s not busy with homework and SGA proposals, Berry can be found on the soccer field, with his many friends or sometimes even napping.

Technique: What do you hope to do with your major in the future?

Berry: I hope to delve into Global Supply Chain and Logistics, eventually transitioning into international business and corporate management.

Technique: What is your favorite aspect of Tech life?

Berry: I love the how easy it was to make friends and to find a ‘family’ here. Coming from a small high school in southwest Georgia, I was a scared of the vastly bigger environment.

Technique: You are currently the sophomore class president. Why did you join SGA your Freshman year?

Berry: When I came to Tech, I knew very little about the school, its history and, most importantly, the amazing people that go here. I wanted to structure my involvements around activities where servant leadership was abound, while simultaneously having the opportunity to get to know my class better. In addition, I wanted to try something completely different from high school—an extracurricular that really helped me come out of my “study bubble.”

Technique: What SGA “cause” is most special to you?

Berry: SGA works on a variety of initiatives and causes for the student body. Hands down, my favorite cause is supporting student organizations! It’s not just about allocating money, but also helping them to connect on the student, club and administrative level. It’s rare that a Student Government has the potential to have so much impact on individual students, as well as such a voice in general campus affairs.

Technique: You are very involved in the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day events. What portion of the events are you most looking forward to?

Berry: So many months of planning has gone into each event, so it’s hard to pick just one. If pressed, I would say that the annual Martin Luther King Day of Service truly embodies many of the values that the late Rev. King Jr. believed in. Every year, the Day of Service connects students and staff in a truly meaningful way.

Technique: What has been the most challenging part of organizing the Martin Luther King Jr. events?

Berry: To be honest, the Martin Luther King Jr. events are my first real attempt at event planning. Logistics, funding, marketing, etc. where all things my planning committee had to help me learn firsthand. Also, there was a major stretch where the committee had to do communication on an international scale, from South America to India to the U.S. That was definitely a new experience.

Technique: What does Martin Luther King Jr. Day mean to you?

Berry: Martin Luther King Jr. Day is much more than a mere day of remembrance. The holiday encompasses a call to action on local and an international scale. That call really resonates with the Georgia Tech Motto of “Progress and Service.”

Technique: Are there any other upcoming events at Tech you are looking forward to?

Berry: First, Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service: Jan. 20. Second, Martin Luther King Sunday Supper: Jan. 23. Third, First Spring Connect with Tech session for our newly accepted Yellow Jackets.

Technique: What is your favorite thing to do at Tech when you’re not in class, studying or working?

Berry: With no hesitation, the answer is fútbol—soccer. I cannot wait to play on the new turf fields (thanks SGA)! I’ll be very blessed to play with the [Tech] Challenge Football Club for this year’s fútbol intramural season.

Technique: How do you balance being a full-time Tech student and being involved at Tech?

Berry: My friends are crucial to helping me maintain the balance between my involvements and academics. Besides always encouraging me to stay involved and make a difference, they also hold me accountable in my classes. Also, I’ve mastered the ability of the “powernap.”

Technique: If you could change anything about Tech, what would it be?

Berry: I think the way that we look at student organization transitions can really be improved. Every year, the vast majority of organizations have to start at ground zero, with new E-board, new projects and lacking experience. A great way to aid in this would be transition workshops for new and established organizations, as well as giving more real leadership and learning opportunities to underclassmen.

Technique: Any advice to students wanting to become more involved around campus?

Berry: When looking to get involved on campus (or off campus), take your time and find something that you are really passionate about, something that wakes you up in the morning and puts a smile on your face. In addition, get outside your comfort zone. Your involvements from high school were important, but they don’t have to completely dictate and limit your activities now.

“Under Jane's leadership, ISyE has continued to be the preeminent industrial and systems engineering program in the country,” said Gary S. May, Dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “In her career, Jane achieved many milestones including being the first woman chair of an engineering school at Tech. We are all grateful for what she has done during her tenure as both a school chair and as a College of Engineering associate dean. Her energy, leadership, and hard work on behalf of ISyE will be missed at Tech.”

During her time as school chair, ISyE increased the size of the faculty by almost 20 percent by adding nine new faculty members, with plans to hire more outstanding faculty colleagues during before the end of the academic year. To improve the quality of experience for ISyE’s students, Ammons filled three new positions including a director of student services, an Edenfield Executive-in-Residence, and a professor of the practice. Also, ISyE has ramped up its international professional master’s degree in supply chain engineering program and initiated a second professional master’s program, this time in analytics. 

Because competition has increased, and the traditional revenue streams are drying up, Ammons has been extremely active in fundraising, working tirelessly to help ISyE achieve its $60M goal. ISyE officially reached its Capital Campaign goal in December 2013 and was the first engineering school to reach its goal.

In addition, ISyE has accomplished major facilities upgrade to the School including the construction of a bridge to connect the two buildings for better flow and access and the creation of the ISyE Studio, which was established to provide students with a workspace to practice presentations, collaborate with other students, and obtain tutorial assistance.

Before joining ISyE as school chair, Ammons previously served as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Engineering and before that held the rank of professor at ISyE. 

During her time at Georgia Tech, she has experienced a lot of firsts. She is the first female chair of ISyE as well as the first woman to be named a chair of a school in Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering.  Also, Ammons was the first female to graduate with a Ph.D. (1982) from ISyE, as well as the school’s first female faculty member.

At Georgia Tech, she has been honored with eight teaching/faculty awards at the school and university levels including the WORMS Award for the Advancement of Women in OR/MS (2005), “Spirit of Georgia Tech” Professor (2001), MERITOR Faculty Excellence Award (1999), and the WRC’s Woman of Distinction Award (2003), among many others.

She has authored or co-authored more than 100 refereed and technical publications in the area of manufacturing systems and supply chain engineering in her career. She has a particular interest and expertise in developing closed-loop, environmentally sustainable systems.

Ammons served as an advisor for the Tau Beta Pi student chapter for 24 years. She continues to be engaged in activities to enhance the development of Georgia Tech students and faculty, including women and under-represented groups. At Georgia Tech she served as the NSF ADVANCE Professor of Engineering from 2002-2006 working to advance the career success of women engineering faculty.

Ammons has served as the President of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). She has been a member of the Technical Committee for the Uganda: Millennium Science Initiative (MSI) Project co-financed by the World Bank. She serves as a Program Evaluator for ABET, the engineering education accreditation organization.

In addition to her academic experience, Ammons has worked as a plant engineer for an industrial manufacturer and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Georgia.

“Georgia Tech and ISyE have been an important part of my academic life, and it has been a pleasure to serve as school chair and work with ISyE’s renowned alumni, faculty, students, staff, peers, and community to strengthen and influence what our students do today and in the future.” said Ammons.  “I know ISyE will continue to move forward with even higher levels of impact and success.”  

Eva Lee and the Grady team worked on a project to model and optimize emergence department workflow for Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Lee was first inducted as INFORMS Franz Edelman Award Laureate in 2007 with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and their project on "Operations Research Advances Cancer Therapeutics.”

This year’s six finalists are:

• Grady Health System, with the Georgia Institute of Technology, for “Modeling and Optimizing Emergency Department Workflow.”
• Twitter, with Stanford University, for “The ‘Who to Follow’ System at Twitter: Strategy, Algorithms, and Revenue Impact.”
• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with Kid Risk, Inc.,for “Using Integrated Analytical Models to Support Global Health Policies to Manage Vaccine Preventable Diseases: Polio Eradication and Beyond.”
• The Energy Authority for “Hydroelectric Generation and Water Routing Optimizer.”
• Kidney Exchange at the Alliance for Paired Donation, with Boston College, Stanford, and MIT,for “Kidney Exchange.”
• NBN Company, with Biarri, for “Fiber Optic Network Optimization at NBN Co.”

Now in its 43rd year, the INFORMS Franz Edelman Prize competition recognizes outstanding examples of analytics and operations research projects that transform companies, entire industries and people’s lives. Using innovative advanced analytical methods, the teams were instrumental in helping their respective institutions make better decisions, providing a disciplined way by which management can improve organizational performance in a wide variety of situations and across both public and private organizations.  

“Alan’s accomplishments to date are impressive. His stature in the community is evidenced by his recent selection as one of only twenty-five U.S. participants in the first EU-U.S. Transportation Research Symposium on City Logistics co-sponsored by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies,” said Jane Ammons, school chair.

In addition to leading ISyE’s graduate studies program, Erera also has a large and active research program.  His research focuses primarily on transportation and logistics systems planning and control, with a focus both on innovative modeling and solution methodologies.  He works on challenging application areas including dynamic and stochastic vehicle routing and scheduling, robust asset management, logistics service network design, integrating security and efficiency in logistics systems, and highway traffic network analysis. Erera's research has been funded by both government agencies such as USDOT, DHS, and NSF, and through grants from industry partners in manufacturing and logistics. He currently co-directs the Center for Global Transportation at ISyE's Supply Chain & Logistics Institute.

Erera received his B.S. in engineering from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Wu’s lecture focused on quality improvement.

Quality improvement (QI) has a glorious history, starting from Shewhart’s path-breaking work on statistical process control to Deming’s high-impact work on quality management. Statistical concepts and tools played a key role in such work. As the applications became more sophisticated, elaborate statistical methods were required to tackle the problems. In the last three decades, QI has seen more use of experimental design and analysis, particularly the methodology of robust parameter design.

Wu is continuously invited to give lectures at events hosted by some of the most respected organizations in the field. Wu's honors include membership on the National Academy of Engineering, Member of Academia Sinica, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Presidents’ Award in 1987, COPSS Fisher Lecture Award in 2011, honorary professor at Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an honorary doctor of mathematics at University of Waterloo. 

The Home Depot is an American retailer of home improvement and construction products and services. The senior design team redefined how The Home Depot should staff and service customers in their paint departments. The team created a customer service simulation analysis tool that the corporate labor team can use to explore for each store when associates should be staffed and how their roles could best be used to meet changing customer needs throughout the day . The team designed easy-to-implement policy changes that will simultaneously lower wait times and lead to a projected annual multi-million incremental profit due to increased sales.

Finalists in the competition were two senior design teams who worked with Coca-Cola Refreshments and United Soft Plastics.

The Coca-Cola Refreshments team includes students Erinn Manby, Drew Downey, Meredith Freeman, Kevin Jamison, Sahil Ramakrishnan, Natalie Souther, and Max Tanski. Their faculty advisor is Ton Dieker. The purpose of their project is to reduce Coca-Cola Refreshments’ total inventory costs at three in-scope plants by developing new inventory replenishment policies. By creating three new policies and customizing policy parameters for each raw material, they have identified a 36% reduction in total annual inventory costs.

The United Soft Plastics team includes students Yash Dabriwal, Po-Hsian Wang, Patrick Koehler, Chang Woong Yoon, Patrick Chen, Dylan Arnold, Cathy Nguyen, and John Kincheloe.  Their faculty advisor is Leon McGinnis.  United Soft Plastics, Inc. (USP), located in Lawrenceville, GA, is a manufacturer of customized thermoplastic elastomers. Experiencing quality complaints, late customer deliveries and excessive managerial time spent on clerical activities, USP asked for a senior design team to investigate potential process improvements. The team analyzed the production process, developed new layouts and new standard operating procedures. In addition, the team developed an Excel-based production scheduling tool, and an Access-based application for inter department communication. USP can expect approximately a 35% reduction in costs from incurred quality complaints, 60% reduction in late orders, and elimination of almost 3 hours per day in clerical work by senior managers.

All senior students in ISyE culminate their undergraduate educational experience with the Senior Design course in order to provide firsthand experience at solving real world problems in a team environment. Students typically work in teams of six to eight individuals with 15-25 Senior Design teams running each semester. Each group is advised by an ISyE faculty member, and the faculty coordinator manages the overall course. Companies interested in submitting a project for consideration can either contact Joel Sokol, at 404 894-6484 or can post a project through the ISyE webpage at http://www.isye.gatech.edu/seniordesign/. Senior design teams look for projects before the start of the fall and spring semesters.

Read more here: https://dph.georgia.gov/blog/2013-12-17/missed-some-shots-tools-help-you-catch

Integer programming is the name for optimization models and algorithms in which some variables are required to have integer values. Planning and operational problems in energy, finance, health, manufacturing, military, transportation, and in almost any imaginable domain where decisions are made, are formulated and solved using integer programming.

For example, most Fortune 500 companies use integer programming in some aspects of their business. Currently available software is capable of solving models with thousands, and sometimes millions, of variables and constraints. Nemhauser discussed integer programming models whose solutions have had big impact in solving important problems, and presented recent progress that has made it possible to solve very large instances and to obtain good solutions quickly. In addition, he speculated on future advances in methodology and applications.

Nemhauser is the A. Russell Chandler Chaired Professor in ISyE. He received a Ph.D. in operations research from Northwestern University in 1961, and joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University where he remained until 1969. In 1970, he joined Cornell University as a professor in operations research and industrial engineering and served as school director from 1977 to 1983. He has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Leeds, U.K., and the University of Louvain, Belgium and the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has served the Operations Research Society of America (ORSA) as council member, president, and editor of Operations Research, and he is past chair of the Mathematical Programming Society. He was the founding editor of Operations Research Letters, and founding co-editor of Handbooks of Operations Research and Management Science.

Researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) annual meeting say that new drug-resistant infectious diseases are appearing more frequently and spreading faster than ever before. In order to best address the next outbreak, ISyE Professor Eva Lee presented a novel software program at AAAS called RealOpt. You can read about the program that sifts through massive amounts of data to better optimize decision-making during the event of an emergency scenario – especially in the case of a deadly outbreak here: http://fxn.ws/1j95QrL

Capstone Design is a series of courses offered to undergraduate students from all disciplines at the Georgia Tech. Students work in teams to design, build, and test prototypes with real world applications.  At the end of each semester students showcase their efforts at the “Capstone Design Expo”, where teams display and pitch their inventions and marketability to a panel of judges, invited guest, media, and their peers.

The finalists:

Team members from ISyE's CDC Senior Design team are Nishi Anand, Dylan Buczek, Nicholas Buczek, Timothy Lin, Tanay Rajore, and Muriel Wacker. Their faculty advisor is William W. George Chair Pinar Keskinocak.

Team members from ISyE's Emory Winship Senior Design team are Sung Keun Baek, Xiaoyang Li, Allen Liu, James Micali, Ji Su Park, Mengnan Shen, Yunjie Sun, and Emilie Wurmser. Their faculty advisor is William W. George Chair Pinar Keskinocak..

 Team members from ISyE's Interface Senior Design Team are Andrew Bedenk, Kaitlyn Castaneira, Margaret Massey, Jonathan Porter, James Tanzy, and Andrew Taylor. Their faculty advisor is Associate Professor Marc Goetschalckx.

Team members from ISyE’s UPS (Peak) Senior Design teams are April Ahn, Jessica Dow, Lucas Onsgard, Jake Rice, Philip Tylman, Song Wang and Jongkwan Woo. Their advisor is Dean’s Professor Shabbir Ahmed.

Faculty members who are developing and implementing innovative educational approaches in a variety of engineering disciplines will come together for the 2-1/2-day event, where they can share ideas, learn from research and best practice in education, and leave with a charter to bring about improvement in their home institution.

 “The Frontiers of Engineering Education program brings together top university faculty to explore preparing engineers for the world’s great engineering challenges,” said National Academy of Engineering President Dan Mote. “It is a no-holds-barred look at the front-edge of engineering education."

Paynabar has a passion and enthusiasm for teaching and sharing knowledge with his students, and has been recognized with the Georgia Tech campus level 2014 CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. His teaching philosophy includes a structured method of teaching with clear communication, strong in-class interaction and engagement, and an imperative on a stress-free learning environment in an effort encourage intellectual curiosity. His overarching goal is to teach students how to think.

The programs' principal homes are in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE) and are jointly affiliated with the School of Mathematics.

 “The OR program in ISyE, especially the optimization component, has been well recognized internationally and viewed as the crown jewel of ISyE. Statistics received a big boost about 11 years ago and has quickly built its strength to reach international acclaim. ISyE is unique in that it is one of the only departments or schools in the country that has major programs in both operations research (OR) and statistics in the same unit,” commented Professor George Nemhauser, ISyE’s A. Russell Chandler Chair, who leads ISyE’s OR area.

Professor Jeff Wu, ISyE’s Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics, who leads statistics area added, “Both programs take pride in having done innovative and high impact research and also in educating a generation of doctoral students who have taken major positions in academia and industry. The synergy between the two disciplines is critical to the important emerging field of big data analytics in which we plan to play a major role.”

Georgia Tech is in good company in this ranking; the top five are Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Georgia Tech's statistics programs are highly regarded because of the efforts of many world-class faculty members working in a variety of areas, ranging from the theoretical and mathematical aspects through applications to engineering, science, and computing," said Doug Ulmer, chair of the School of Mathematics.