Faculty Position in Integrated Systems Engineering at The Ohio State University

The Integrated Systems Engineering Department at The Ohio State University, which offers a degree in industrial and systems engineering, is seeking applicants for a tenure-track faculty position. Applicants at all ranks (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor) will be considered. (See http://ise.osu.edu/docpdf/facultyposition.pdf for details.)

We are especially interested in candidates with expertise in stochastic processes, optimization and simulation. In addition, candidates will be evaluated in terms of the relevance of their expertise to the following College of Engineering research focus areas:  Advanced Materials, Energy, Food Security and Production, Health and Wellness, Sustainability and Transportation.

The search committee will start reviewing applications for this position on February 15, 2012.  The position will remain open until it is filled.

Applications should be sent to:

ISE Search Committee
210 Baker Systems Engineering
1971 Neil Ave.
Columbus OH 43210-1278
Email: freitas.6@osu.edu

ISE seminar Monday 1-30-12

INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
SPRING 2012 SEMINAR SERIES

TITLE:                 Chance Constrained Optimization Problems

SPEAKER:           Dr. Shabbir Ahmed,
                            Georgia Institute of Technology

DATE / TIME:     Monday, January 30, 2012
                            2:30 pm – 3:30 pm

LOCATION:         Room 453 Mohler Lab, 200 W. Packer Avenue


ABSTRACT:     Chance constrained optimization problems involve constraints with random data that are required to be satisfied with a given reliability. Such problems arise in many 
interesting application and are extremely challenging due to the stochastic and nonconvex nature of the feasible region.

In the first part of the talk we review a sampling and integer programming based approach for generating good approximate solutions to chance constrained optimization problems.

In the second part of the talk, we present recent developments in certifying solution quality for this problem class. In particular, we construct convex relaxations of chance constrained
optimization problems in order to obtain lower bounds on the optimal value. Unlike existing statistical lower bounding techniques, our approach is designed to provide deterministic lower 
bounds. We show that a version of the proposed scheme leads to a tractable convex relaxation when the chance constraint function is affine with respect to the underlying uncertain 
parameters. We also propose an iterative improvement scheme for refining the bounds.

BIOGRAPHY:   Shabbir Ahmed is a Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000. His research interests are in optimization, specifically stochastic and integer programming. Dr. Ahmed served as the Chair of the Community of Stochastic 
Programming (COSP) (2007-2010), and as a Vice-chair (Stochastic Programming) of the INFORMS Optimization Society (2006-2008). He is an Associate Editor for Mathematical Programming A, 
Mathematical Programming C, Operations Research, and Operations Research Letters, an Area Editor for Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science and a Department Editor for
IIE Transactions (Operations Engineering and Analysis). Dr. Ahmed's 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.


ALL FULL-TIME ISE PHD STUDENTS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND AND

ALL ISE GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND

Tolga Seyhan PhD defense 2-3-12

DISSERTATION DEFENSE ANNOUNCEMENT

TITLE:              Network Design under Competition

SPEAKER:      Tolga Han Seyhan, Ph.D. Candidate,
                       Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

DATE:             Friday, February 3, 2012 at 10:00 a.m.

LOCATION:      Room 453 Mohler, 200 W. Packer Avenue

ABSTRACT: Bilevel problems generalize the idea of Stackelberg games and are useful in modeling problems with competition. They are often not tractable and suffer heavily from computational complexity, mainly because the leader has to anticipate the best response of the follower. We present heuristic methods to reformulate these problems so that they are tractable (unlike the originals) and still bear a high representation power (like the originals).
First, we study the Stackelberg-game variant of the maximal covering location problem. We use a greedy heuristic as a proxy for the follower’s decision, pose it as a feasibility problem, and embed it into the leader’s problem as constraints. Computational studies indicate short solution times; and even if the follower responds optimally, the method still provides an effective heuristic for the leader’s problem.
Next, we consider a competitive distribution system design problem. We first develop a model to find equilibrium strategies in the simultaneous-move game. Then, for the Stackelberg setting, we develop a heuristic reformulation of the leader problem using a pruning algorithm for the follower. We obtain near-optimal design strategies and both models offer short solution times.
Finally, we revisit the college admissions problem to study networking in a labor market game. We currently study the applicants’ side of this game and have developed an algorithm that characterizes their optimal choices. Then, we formulate the problem as a non-additive longest-path problem and introduce an algorithm that also solves the joint application-signaling problem.

BIOGRAPHY: Tolga Han Seyhan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Lehigh University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering in 2004 and 2007, from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. He joined Lehigh University in 2007. His research focuses on mathematical programming and game theory with applications to logistics, supply chain management and energy systems. He is a member of INFORMS, MSOM and TSL societies, and SOLA. Tolga will join Amazon.com as a Sr. Operations Research Analyst.

Introduction to ORBEL Wolsey Award

http://www.n-side.com/wolsey-award/

All too often, high-quality OR implementations (algorithms, heuristics, routines,...) are discarded as soon as their author leaves the academic world. The ORBEL Wolsey Award has been created to support the student or PhD that wants to share his work with the community. It will reward the author of the best and most significant OR implementation contributed to Open-Source during the year. Be proud of your work, share it, be recognized for it and you can possibly enjoy an i-Pad !

Job Opportunities at IBM Research and Development, Ireland

In 2010, IBM established the IBM Research and Development Lab in Dublin,
Ireland.  This lab includes the Smarter Cities Technology Centre (SCTC),
where we focus on applying data analytics and optimization to real-world
challenges in the domains of water, energy, and transport. We are looking
for exceptional researchers in optimization to join our fast-growing
interdisciplinary team.

Both entry-level and highly experienced candidates can apply.

Required:
  Ph.D. in Operation Research, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or
  similar field
  Expertise in one or more of the following:
     MILP
     Nonlinear optimization
     Robust optimization
     Optimization under uncertainty

Preferred:
  Experience applying optimization technology to problems in energy,
  transport or water systems
  Java and/or C++ experience
  Experience with the IBM ILOG optimization products (CPLEX Studio, CPLEX
  Optimizer, or ODM Enterprise)

To apply, please submit your CV by following the link below (this link
points to a generic job add, and any one candidate is not expected to
fulfil all the requirements listed there):
https://jobs3.netmedia1.com/cp/job_summary.jsp?job_id=RES-0414703

For any questions, feel free to contact me directly.

Sincerely,
Susara van den Heever
______________________________

________________
Susara van den Heever, PhD
Research Manager
IBM Smarter Cities Technology Centre - Analytics & Optimization
Dublin Research Lab - Mulhuddart, Dublin 15, Ireland
SCTC: http://www-05.ibm.com/ie/smarterplanet/technologycentre/

NSF CAREER AWARD FOR Santanu Dey: Non-traditional Cutting-Plane Algorithms for Mixed-Integer Programs

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1149400

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project is to improve the current generation of mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers by devising new general-purpose cutting-plane methods. A great deal of useful information that could be used in deriving and selecting cutting-planes is often left unused by state-of-the-art MIP techniques. This project will investigate some of the following non-traditional paradigms for incorporating more information into cutting planes: (i) Use information from multiple constraints simultaneously to derive cutting planes, instead of using a single implied constraint. (ii) Design suitable cutting planes and then verify their validity before use, instead of deriving cutting planes without any control over their quality. (iii) Incorporate information from explicit enumeration of integer points to guide the choice of cutting planes and improve their strength. Since many mathematical challenges need to be overcome in order to tap the potential of these non-traditional paradigms, results from this project could significantly enhance the mathematical toolkit used by integer programmers for the generation and analysis of cutting planes.

If successful, this project will not only make theoretical advances in mathematical programming, but also lead to significant improvements in the performance of MIP solvers, leading to huge gains in a broad spectrum of applications of MIP models in areas such as health care, forestry, finance, supply-chain design, and chemical engineering. The key educational objective of this award is to develop an outside-classroom operations research puzzle competition to foster and enrich an environment for undergraduate research. Moreover a new graduate course will be designed with the aim of dissemination of research results directly to future practitioners and to bring students from different engineering communities together, thus providing opportunities for new research directions and collaborations.

Two Post-Doctoral Fellows—OR Healthcare Applications

Two Post-Doctoral Fellows—OR Healthcare Applications

University of Maryland School of Medicine

Position Description:

The Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Maryland, School

of Medicine is recruiting for two post-doctoral fellow positions focused on

research in applications of OR techniques in radiation therapy. Knowledge and experience in one of the following areas is preferred: solving large-scale

problems using exact/heuristic optimization techniques, high-throughput

computing environment or GPU, machine learning, image processing and

analysis. Candidates for this position must have a Ph.D. in industrial

engineering, computer science, mathematics, electrical and computer

engineering, medical physics, biomedical engineering, or related field.

Successful applicants must be highly motivated and must have strong

programming (C/C++ and Matlab) skills.

Interested applicants should mail or send electronically their curriculum

vitae to:

Hao Howard Zhang, Ph.D.

Department of Radiation Oncology

22 South Greene St

Baltimore MD 21201

hzhan001@umaryland.edu

William E. Hart's Blog: The Pyomo Book is Coming Soon

William E. Hart's Blog: The Pyomo Book is Coming Soon: The Python Optimization Modeling Objects (Pyomo) package is an open source tool for modeling optimization applications in Python. Pyomo can ...

Researcher Positions in Optimization at NICTA

Organization/Institution: NICTA (National ICT Australia)
Researchers (Optimisation)

•    Up to 7 positions available.
•    Competitive Salary: 85K-110K Australian, incl. superannuation.
•    Duration: Up to 3 years in the first instance.

NICTA (National ICT Australia) is Australia’s Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence. Our
primary goal is to conduct world-class research generating fundamental
scientific results with an impact on society. NICTA aspires to be one
of the world’s top ten ICT research centres by 2020.

Applications are invited for researcher positions within the
Optimisation Research Group, to work with Sylvie Thiebaux and Pascal
Van Hentenryck. The majority of the positions are based in Canberra
and the rest in Melbourne.

We seek outstanding researchers who have recently received their PhD
to be part of a large, world-class optimisation group. The researchers
will join significant projects in infrastructure resilience (including
disaster management and infrastructure security) and smart energy
systems (including smart electricity grids and smart buildings).

Candidates should have a PhD in computer science, operations research,
or related areas, a strong background in artificial intelligence,
constraint programming, or operations research, and good modelling and
programming skills.

It is expected that all researchers will continue to build upon their
international reputation by publishing papers and attending top
conferences, while participating to the design and implementation of
optimisation systems for infrastructure resilience and smart energy
management.

Application Instructions

The full text of the advertising can be seen at

https://nicta.silkroad.com/epostings/index.cfm?fuseaction=app.jobinfo&jobid=93&company_id=16182&version=1&source=ONLINE&JobOwner=993266&startflag=1

Application Instructions

NICTA reserves the right to fill some or all of these positions prior to the closing date, or by invitation, or to not make any appointments. Applicants are thus encouraged to apply early.

Please email resume, motivation letter, short research statement, and names of 3 referees to:

•    Sylvie Thiebaux ( Sylvie.Thiebaux@nicta.com.au)
•    Pascal Van Hentenryck (pvh@nicta.com.au)