Welcome from the Incoming President Incoming Chapter Committee

Our doctoral program has grown ex-

traordinarily in the last few years. A President: Alfredo Santana
sample of this is the arrival of ten Vice President: Qingwei Li
new students this fall, all of them Treasurer: Fethulah Caliskan
international. During their first stage
Secretary: Ludwig Kuznia
in the program, they will adapt to the
American education system, im- Lecture Series: Dayna Martinez
prove their English communication Monica Puertas
skills, approve their comprehensive Webmasters: Patricio Rocha - Eleazar Gil
examination, and select an advisor
to start their research while working OR Times Editors: Laila Cure
as TAs for one or more courses. Ozan Ozcan
Meanwhile, we have students who are in a second Diana Prieto
stage that combines TA appointments with conduct-
ing research activities, reading numerous papers,
writing their first papers and presentations, and pre- Fall 2010 Activities
paring themselves for the candidacy examination.
Additionally, another group of students are complet- Excel Workshop
ing their third and final stage in the program: work-
ing to increase their number of publications, prepar-
(10/6)
ing proposal and dissertation defense, and teaching Fall Social: Karaoke and Wii Night
undergraduate courses. (10/7)
It is our objective as a student chapter to design MS Project Workshop
academic, social, and service activities to involve (10/21)
every student in the program, independently from Halloween Party
the stage they are completing. In that way the new
students will benefit themselves with the experience (10/30)
of the more senior students, while the senior ones INFORMS Annual Meeting
will increase their professional skills, such as leader- (11/6-11/11)
ship, teamwork, organization, and social responsibil- Tailgate: Pittsburg@USF
ity.
(11/20)
There is a thin line between being a large program Lecture Series
and being a big program. Thanks to all the work of
faculty, students, and staff, our participation in con- (11/22)
ferences, and the number of awards received from Lecture Series
members of our program has increased in the last (11/29)
few years. At every INFORMS conference, we are
one of the largest and most participative delegations Volume 6
, Issue 1
to attend. It is the main goal of the INFORMS stu- F
all 2010
dent chapter at USF to help students achieve their
potential, becoming one of the biggest Industrial En-
sue:
gineering research-oriented graduate programs in Inside this is ……………….2
the nation. ■ ………………….……
gs …… ………… ………………………… 3
OR/MS Rank
in ……………………….
By ………… …… …… …………………………
……
in Photos
Spring …………………………
…………….4
IN………….………
Alfredo Santana-Reynoso IMSE at INFORMS, AUST
INFORMS@USF President 2010 - 2011

A Newsletter from Student Chapter of INFORMS @ IMSE, USF

Rocha’s Corner

OR/MS Rankings
Rankings are ubiquitous. They provide a way of sorting things using some criteria. In
several professional sports, they are vital; without them there will be no way of organiz-
ing the playoff season and determining a champion. We also use rankings just for fun
i.e., when thinking on our favorite, say, 5 songs/movies/TV shows. The key element
when coming up with a ranking is the criteria, the set of attributes that are considered
to determine the positions on the ranking. In the case of professional sports, the crite-
ria are simple: the number of wins by a team; in the case of our favorite songs/movies/
tv shows things get more complicated. It would be actually hard for me to explain how I
would choose my favorite movies. I would probably think on how good the acting was,
the plot, the photography, and how I related to (connected with) the movie. Then, I
would need to assign a weight to each of these attributes which seems to me fairly complicated. Some rank-
ings are definitely no easy task.
A few weeks ago I was asked by members of the INFORMS Education Committee to compile a list of OR/MS
programs in the U.S. and abroad to post on the INFORMS website. The idea was to obtain the name of each
program (Industrial Engineering, Management Science, etc) and rank them using different criteria. We first
used a criterion based on the contributions of the programs to the practice literature in INFORMS journals
(i.e., Number of practice papers published in Interfaces journal or Operations research journal). We started
with this criterion because we had the data. In 2007, Professor Michael Rothkopf from Penn State published
an article on Interfaces with the data and the final ranking he obtained. Later on, we decided to directly ask
the OR/MS programs the following information: number of OR/MS-focused undergraduate degrees awarded
per year, number of OR/MS-focused Master's degrees awarded per year, number of OR/MS-focused Ph. D.
degrees awarded per year, and number of professors who are major contributors in OR/MS. Our criteria are
oriented towards size of the OR/MS programs as opposed to contributions to the practice literature. We are
still in the process of processing the data collected. It will be hard to come up with a weight for each of the
attributes (in the case we decide to use weights).
More recently (actually, a few days ago), the National Research Council (NRC) published its ranking of doc-
toral programs in the U.S., including what they called doctoral programs in Operations Research, Systems
Engineering and Industrial Engineering. The methodology used was more complex than in previous NRC
rankings. Two types of rankings based on different attributes were developed: the S-Ranking was obtained by
selecting around 20 attributes of a doctoral program, then a number of faculty members (say, 100) were sur-
veyed about the attributes they believed were more important. Weights were assigned based on this survey
of faculty members. Next, a method called the random halves was used to rank the doctoral programs. The
ranking was constructed based on the weights from 50 the surveys, which were randomly chosen. This proc-
ess was repeated for different batches of 50 surveys a total of 500 times. Since the position in the ranking of
a particular program was likely to change with the batch considered, they eliminated the best rankings (top
5%) and worst rankings (bottom 5%) of each program. Thus, the ranking of a program is given by an interval
(a,b) which can be read as follows: “with 90% of confidence, the rank of a program lies between a and b”.
In addition to the S-Ranking, they developed an R-Ranking which was obtained by asking faculty members to
directly grade a sample of doctoral programs from 1 to 6. Then, using again the random halves method, the
final R-Raking of a program was obtained.
As you can see, there are things that are even harder to systematically rank than your favorite 5 movies.■
By: Patricio Rocha
PhD. Candidate

2
 Spring 2010 in Photos

These are some photos of our highlights from this past spring:

▲ INFORMS@USF launched the Graduate Research Exchange Program, in collaboration with the University of Florida. Petros
Xanthopoulos from the UF INFORMS student chapter, came to USF and Qingwei Li, from the INFORMS@USF student chapter
went to UF. Both shared their research, met with other students and toured the campuses. (March 19th/26th 2010)

Members of the INFORMS@USF student participated in low and high ropes course offered by USF Campus recreation at the
Riverfront Park. (May 5th, 2010) ▼

Our third annual potluck buffet was a success. Our members cooked food from their countries and shared it with our IMSE de-
partment. (April 23rd, 2010) ▼

3
 IMSE at INFORMS 2010, Austin, TX.
Here is a summary of our presentations at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting at Austin, TX.
Patricio Rocha, Tapas K. Das Sunday Nov 07, 11:00 - 12:30
Carbon Revenue Redistribution Strategies for Electric Power Markets

Ludwig (Louie) Kuznia, Grisselle Centeno, Zhixin Sunday Nov 07, 11:00 - 12:30
Miao, Bo Zeng
Stochastic Optimization of Power Supply System in Isolated Islands with Renewable Energy

Laila Cure, Jose Zayas-Castro, Peter Fabri Monday Nov 08, 08:00 - 09:30
A Methodology to Guide Risk Analysis in Health Care Delivery Systems

Long Zhao, Bo Zeng, Lingling Fan Monday Nov 08, 14:40-15:00

Robust Unit Commitment Problem with Demand Response and Renewable Energy

Qingwei Li, Alex Savachkin, Bo Zeng Monday Nov 08, 16:30 - 18:00
Decision Support Models for Design of Reliable Distribution Networks
Volume 6, Issue 1

Diana Prieto, Tapas K. Das, Sharad Malavade, Alfredo Santana-Reynoso, Monday Nov 08, 16:30 - 18:00
Alex Savachkin
Models for Public Health Crisis Management During a Pandemic

Ozan Ozcan, Kingsley Reeves Tuesday Nov 09, 13:30 - 15:00

Building Relational Capital in Environmental Manufacturing to Substitute Vertical Integration

Fethullah Caliskan, Ozan Ozcan, Kingsley Reeves Tuesday Nov 09, 13:30 - 15:00
The Impact of Supply Chain and Knowledge Diffusion Network Structure on Innovation

Jose Zayas-Castro, Peter Fabri, Phillip Foulis, Alcides Santander-Mercado Tuesday Nov 09, 13:30 - 15:00
Analysis of Temporal Variations of Laboratory Test Results of Patients in Intensive Care Units

Monica Puertas, Sandro Paz, Bo Zeng, Ruth Murrugarra (Rensselaer Polytechnic Tuesday Nov 09, 16:30 - 18:00
Institute), Luis Chavez-Bedoya, (Northwestern University)
Large Scale Optimization Model using Benders Decomposition for a Production and Distribution Problem

Bo Zeng, Yu An, Yu Zhang. Tuesday Nov 09, 08:00 - 09:30

Fall 2010

Design of Reliable Hub-spoke Network

Alfredo Santana-Reynoso, Sharad Malavade, Diana Prieto Wednesday Nov 10, 15:30 - 17:00
Decision Support Systems for Pandemic Influenza (PI) Surveillance

Kingsley Reeves, Fethullah Caliskan, Ozan Ozcan Wednesday Nov 10, 15:30 - 17:00
The Vertical Integration Evolution of Sustainability Focused Companies

Dayna L. Martinez, Tapas K. Das, Alex Savachkin Wednesday Nov 10, 15:30 - 17:00
Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) for the Mitigation of Pandemic Influenza

IMSE
4202 E. Fowler Ave. ENB 118 Editors:
Tampa FL, 33620
Tel: (813) 974-5591 • Laila Cure • Diana Prieto • Ozan Ozcan •
Fax: (813) 974-974-5953

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