CCAT Lunch & Learn with Siqian Shen, Ph.D.

Speaker(s): Siqian Shen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Industrial & Operations Engineering — University of Michigan

Presentation Title: Transportation & Logistics in a COVID-19 Era

Report: A Summary of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Tools for Fighting COVID-19

Date/Time: Thursday, May 7th, 2020 | 11:00 AM ET

Abstract: Operations Research and Industrial Engineering (OR & IE) approaches are widely used and play important roles in improving the design and operations of many standard corporate activities such as supply chain management, crew scheduling, vehicle routing, facility location, and resource allocation. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers, companies, community workers and individual households have been designing new systems and procedures to fight the virus. Many problems related to optimizing these systems and their operations can be tackled by extending the traditional OR & IE approaches with new objectives, constraints, and input data. The purpose of this talk is to summarize potential scenarios one may encounter during the prevention, disease control, intervention and recovery phases during COVID-19 outbreaks, and point out the OR & IE models that can be applied for solving the related problems. Using these techniques, policymakers can better prepare for rare but catastrophic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can better utilize resources and ensure medical supplies during the outbreak, and can improve the quality of life and work to mitigate economic losses.

Speaker Bios:
Siqian Shen is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and also serves as an Associate Director in the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery & Engineering (MICDE). She obtained a B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2007 and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2011. Her theoretical research interests are in integer programming, stochastic/robust optimization, and network optimization. Applications include optimization and risk analysis of energy, healthcare, cloud computing, and transportation systems. She is a recipient of the IIE Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award (1st Place), INFORMS IBM Smarter Planet Innovation Faculty Award, and Department of Energy (DoE) Early Career Award. Prof. Shen serves in the editorial board of journals like IISE Transactions, Networks, Service Science, INFORMS Journal on Computing.