News @ Operations Group WBS
Visit of Dr Christiane Barz
Christiane Barz is an assistant professor of the Decisions, Operations & Technology Management group, UCLA Anderson, and she will give a presentation at Warwick University on the 24 May
(see announcement ORMS Seminar with Dr Barz)
Biography
Prior to joining UCLA Anderson, she spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher with the Operations Management group at the Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Barz holds a doctorate degree and a diploma in industrial engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Her main research interests are revenue management, dynamic pricing, healthcare services, inventory theory, and production scheduling. In her dissertation, she analyzed the impact of an airline’s risk-attitude on the availability of low-cost tickets. The thesis was published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems and won several prizes including the dissertation prize of the German Operations Research Society 2007. Recent projects focus on the solution of large-scale dynamic optimization problems using approximate dynamic programming techniques. She applies these methods in production scheduling and healthcare applications.
Christiane Barz teaches "Data and Decisions" in the Full Time MBA Program and "Applied Stochastic Processes" in the PhD Program. Further, she will be teaching "Data Analysis and Management Decisions" in the Global Executive MBA Program for the Americas.
Visit of Professor Michael Fu, Programme Director, National Science Foundation
Professor Fu will give a presentation on the topic "Stochastic Gradient Estimation: Tutorial Review and Recent Research" on Monday 26th March 2012, B3.19, Warwick Business School, Scarman Road site, 10.00 -12.00.
Abstract:
Stochastic gradient estimation techniques are methodologies for deriving computationally efficient estimators used in simulation optimization and sensitivity analysis of complex stochastic systems, that require simulation to estimate their performance.
Using a simple illustrative example, the three most well-known direct techniques that lead to unbiased estimators are presented: perturbation analysis, the likelihood ratio (score function) method and weak derivatives.
Applications are discussed and then some recent research is summarized.
An overview of the Operations Research Programme at the United States National Science Foundation will be discussed in the second half of the talk.
Biography:
Michael Fu has been Director of the Operations Research Programme at the United States National Science Foundation since September 2010. He is on leave from the University of Maryland at College Park where he is Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Management Science in the Robert H. Smith School of Business, with a joint appointment in the Institute for Systems Research and affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, both in the A. James Clark School of Engineering. He received degrees in mathematics and EE/CS from MIT in 1985, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1989.
His research interests include simulation optimization and applied probability, with applications in supply chain management and financial engineering.
At Maryland, he received the Business School's Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence in 1995, the Institute for Systems Research Outstanding Systems Engineering Faculty Award in 2002, and was named a University of Maryland Distinguished Scholar-Teacher for 2004-2005.
He has published four books: Conditional Monte Carlo: Gradient Estimation and Optimization Applications (1997, co-author J.Q. Hu), which received the INFORMS Simulation Society Outstanding Publication Award in 1998; Simulation-based Algorithms for Markov Decision Processes (2007, co-authors H.S. Chang, J. Hu, S.I. Marcus); Perspectives in Operations Research (2006, co-editors F.B. Alt, B.L. Golden); and Advances in Mathematical Finance (2007, co-editors R.A. Jarrow, J.-Y. Yen, R.J. Elliott). He served as Stochastic Models and Simulation Department Editor of Management Science from 2006-2008, as Simulation Area Editor of Operations Research 2000-2005, and also on the editorial boards of Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS Journal on Computing, IIE Transactions, and Production and Operations Management. He is a Fellow of INFORMS and IEEE.
Recruitment@ORMS
The Operational Research and Management Sciences Group at Warwick Business School is looking to recruit several new scholars on all levels.
Visit vacancies for more details.
Seminar: Revenue Management at Avis, 22 Feb
Abstract: Avis Budget EMEA Ltd is a leading car rental company in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Over the last few years the company invested considerable resources in the bespoke design and development of a Revenue Management (RM) Forecasting and Optimisation system to allow Avis to maximise the revenue generated by its fleet of vehicles. The main decisions from the RM system are two levers which control both the supply and demand. One of these is to limit the availability of a certain products so that fleet is saved for more profitable customers. The other is to shuttle cars between rental stations, typically moving cars from areas of low demand to areas of high demand.
Speaker Biography: Dong Li is an operational research analyst at Avis Budget EMEA Ltd, which he joined in 2010. His main responsibility is to leverage operational research techniques in the car rental industry and in particular the revenue management problems.
He obtained his PhD in Management Science from Lancaster University in 2011, and was awarded the Kingsman Prize 2011 for the high quality of his research and publications. He has also spent three years working at Intel Corporation on problems concerned with the planning and scheduling of semi-conductor production.
Date & Location: 22 February, 12:00-13:00, Boardroom WBS Social Studies building
3rd Student Conference on Operational Research
The 3rd edition of the previous Student Conferences on Operational Research, SCOR 2012, which will be held at the University of Nottingham, UK from:
Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd April 2012
PhD students from all European Universities studying Operational Research, Management Science or a related field are kindly invited to submit an abstract for presentation at the conference. The purpose of SCOR 2012 is to provide a friendly environment for doctoral candidates to develop their presentation skills, to receive constructive feedback on their work and to meet other students with similar interests.
For further information, visit http://www.scor2012.com/