River giant sign
Fish
Fish
The aquarium had a whole building showing fish/reptiles/etc. from inland waters (the focus of our paper), and it was fun to see so many fish from our study areas.
Y’all science is so cool.
(A) I’m at a quantum workshop in Chattanooga, cool in itself, and the reception is at the aquarium.
(B) These two fish are arapaima! They are massive. Gretch (lead of my fish paper) lived on a boat in the Amazon tracking them for nearly a year for her MS thesis.
Side bar for bluesky - I love that we were able to use dancing people as the icons in the final version. This captures some of the underlying joy I have in getting to model :)
Building schematic. It includes candidate and selected locations for sanitizer stations.
We applied the framework to the problem of locating hand sanitizer stations on a university campus during COVID-19.
In general, we aim to present one option to add a bit of rigor to the process of stakeholder interaction and hope this could support better decisions in practice.
Diagram of the framework. The steps are: start, interview stakeholders, conduct qualitative analysis, modelers update mental models, gather quantitative data, develop model version, and evaluate model. If the model is deemed sufficient, the process concludes. Else the stakeholders may update mental models, and the process repeats beginning with more interviews.
The framework is embedded in concepts from the field of Cognitive Systems Engineering.
Note how the modelers' perspectives on the problem (mental models) are shaped by interviews and affect the resulting model version.
Nominal view of modeling (left panel) vs. contextualized view of modeling (right panel). Contextualized view includes modelers, stakeholders, context, and the model.
The paper's goal is to present a framework to support the process of applied optimization model development.
We've observed that much modeling occurs in an iterative, though ad hoc way. The paper aims to provide a theoretical grounding for this process.
I.e., to support the figure's right panel.
New paper:
“Developing Optimization Models with Cognitive Systems Engineering”
This is the result of Tyler O’Brien’s MS thesis, co-advised with Sudeep Hedge and in collaboration with Steven Foster.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
#orms
Two panel figure. The left panel presents a nominal view of modeling (OR modelers and the model). The right panel presents a contextual view of modeling (with OR modelers, the model, context, and stakeholders).
The paper's goal is to present a framework to support the process of applied optimization model development.
We've observed that much modeling is done in iterative though ad hoc way. The paper aims to provide a theoretical grounding for this process.
i.e., to support the right panel of the figure
Winning team
Group picture
Representatives from the Tucker Research Group
Fourth Annual Clemson IE Research Group Olympics!
Congrats to the combined BEST and PHASE lab team for taking home the trophy.
My group got 2nd place!
Emily standing in front of a lake and mountains.
I was at Western Carolina U today chatting about quantum computing. I had a great visit, and I love getting to drive through the mountains.
Policies:
Can pricing supplements improve access in low and lower-middle income countries? Yes.
Does back-shoring to the US help shortages? Not really.
Do bilateral alliances help shortages? Not really.
Map of worldwide expected shortages in status quo
Findings (cancer drug case study):
Who is affected when a company doesn't plan for geopolitical strain?
- Company profit - minor (1-3% decrease)
- Patients - major (26-29% increase in shortages).
There are differences in shortages between countries of different income levels due to pricing
Model structure: first-stage variables (location decisions); uncertainty realization (capacity, demand, and geopolitical strain); second-stage decision variables (raw materials, distribution, shortage)
It's about global pharma supply chains, geopolitical strain, and drug shortages:
- We present a new model to locate facilities in spite of export ban risks.
- We evaluate shortages worldwide: under different levels of strain and different mitigation policies.
New paper in EJOR led by Martha Sabogal De La Pava:
"Effects of geopolitical strain on global pharmaceutical supply chain design and drug shortages"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Done - apologies I missed this!
Yes 😂
Motivating Research.
This looks cool!
"we shall be happy to award a chocolate windmill to the first person..."
I love older papers.
Lenstra and Kan, 1979 "Computational Complexity of Discrete Optimization Problems" Annals of Discrete Mathematics
#orms
Wow.
Clemson 😅😅😅
Ended up losing by two.
It’s March!!
Ah, yes, the universal symbol of applied mathematics: the yellow cow with orange stripes.
Do you talk about #orms with the media, policymakers, public educators, or other stakeholders?
Consider applying for the Public Engagement Award from INFORMS AGC.
Deadline May 1, 2025.
www.informs.org/Recognizing-...
This article gives some more information on the REU cancellations this summer.
It sounds like the current cancellations are coming from programs that were expecting to be renewed but weren't this cycle. More might be coming with the general budget volatility.
Tbd.
www.science.org/content/arti...
For transparency:
At this point, Clemson IE's REU is still on for this summer. We haven't heard anything to the contrary, thankfully. I'll keep y'all posted if that changes.
cecas.clemson.edu/hcore/
Safe travels, Anna.
Finally, I am deeply sympathetic to the challenges and pressures the org and our membership are under. I am cheering for yall in leadership trying to figure out how to navigate this. I mention this to try to help, certainly not to tear down.
If you need anything, open invitation to reach out.
That said, I am sure y’all are working on it. Practically, something I would like to see very soon is what the ad hoc committee is going to produce and when. Something like - they will report back to membership by July with a transition plan - would be helpful.
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate this.
And I definitely respect the uncertainty. Yet… to walk back something this important to the org (and to email everybody), I think the process needed to be one step further along. As is, unfortunately, the only substantive part of the email was the sunset itself.
Agreed, it was an odd email. My sense is that they tried to thread a needle and missed. We shall see.
