High School Students Hosted by OU ISE

OU ISE professor Kash Barker, with the help of ISE sophomore Sandy Vo and ISE doctoral student June Lee, hosted 25 high school students on Saturday, June 24, 2023. The future engineers learned about the ISE profession, the diversity of career fields they may find, and several tools and methods that ISEs employ. They also participated in interactive games introducing concepts network optimization and simulation. 

Visual Analytics Research Project Aims to Improve Supply Chain Resiliency

A new research effort led by the University of Oklahoma and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, will develop a visual analytics system to help Department of Defense decision makers understand the different types of risks associated with the global supply chain networks, the various actions that can be taken to protect the interests of national security, and ways to withstand and recover from any supply chain disruptions as quickly as possible.

Recent events like the COVID-19 pandemic have made apparent how supply chain networks are an essential yet vulnerable necessity for how resources, goods and services move around the globe.

“Everything that has happened in recent years has emphasized the importance of studying supply chain networks and making those more resilient to a broad range of disruptions, as well as more adaptable to new technologies,” said Andrés D. González, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering at OU and the principal investigator of the study.

“For example, COVID-19 caused significant cascading failures, where in diverse circumstances, a delay or a disruption in one of the functions from a single supplier propagated globally throughout the entire supply chain network and had effects in multiple regions and industries,” he added. “Many of these failures were caused by mechanisms that had never been observed before in history, and the depth and complexity of their effects were not adequately foreseen, thus inspiring the type of work we’re doing.”

González, who is also an affiliate faculty in the data science and analytics program in the Gallogly College of Engineering at OU, is leading an interdisciplinary team composed of experts spanning economics, industrial and systems engineering, and computer science, as well as aerospace and mechanical engineering, among others. González is also working with OU’s Data Institute for Societal Challenges and Oklahoma Aerospace and Defense Innovation Institute, whose executive director, retired Lt. Gen. Gene Kirkland, observed that this effort is “yet another example of emerging partnerships between academic colleges and university-wide centers to advance OU’s research in support of national security challenges.” 

Over the course of the four-year $3.7 million project, the research team plans to create an extensive computational and visual analytic environment using state-of-the-art modeling and predictive techniques, along with visualizations such as spatiotemporal graphs, charts and maps, to identify vulnerabilities and patterns that can help to better understand and evaluate the interactions and interdependencies between different components in supply-demand systems. 

“First, we need to gain adequate supply chain visibility and understand the complex regional and global supply-demand networks, their structures and dynamical properties, using novel data-driven system identification techniques based on multiple data sources such as contracts, partnerships, and flow of commodities and information,” González said. “Once a good understanding of supply chain network structure and dynamics has been achieved, it is critical to develop advanced models for supplier survivability prediction, risk quantification and propagation, and resilience-based mitigation, preparedness and recovery actions.”

By integrating those components within a visual analytics environment, researchers and practitioners will have a framework that can show not only visual representations of existing supply-demand networks but also provide significant insights and actionable information for stakeholders and decision makers. 

“A strong visual analytics environment can provide valuable information into what-if scenarios associated with a diverse range of disruptions, as well as pre- and post-event policies,” González said. “For example, what if we had another pandemic? What would be the effect of increasing tributary duties in a particular industry? Or, what if there is some political issue that affects some trade deal? The idea is to learn how people make decisions and how that can also give information to mathematical models to improve their predictive power. 

“It is also very important to understand the effect that other countries have on the performance of supply chain networks in the U.S., so having an understanding of this will enable us to make better decisions to reduce vulnerabilities, enhance our resilience, and improve cooperation as well,” he added.

by Chelsea Julian

Kash Barker Honored as Fellow by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers

Kash Barker, a professor at the University of Oklahoma's School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, was honored as a Fellow, Class of 2023, by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers at the National Conference held May 20-23 in New Orleans. 

The IISE Fellow award recognizes outstanding leaders in the profession who have made significant, nationally recognized contributions to the field of industrial and systems engineering. 

Barker was unable to attend the conference due to fulfillment of his duties as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellow. He was selected for the Fulbright Finland Foundation's Seeking Solutions for Global Challenges program and is completing his five month assignment at Aalto University in Finland.

Barker earned his bachelor and master's degrees in industrial engineering from OU and his doctorate in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the areas of risk and reliability analysis, systems engineering and analytics. 

https://www.iise.org/Details.aspx?id=50528

OU Capstone Team Participates in IISE Conference

OU ISE capstone students, and recent B.S. graduates, Matthew Brooks, Avery Dickinson, and Megan Khoury, were selected to represent the School of ISE at the 2023 IISE Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, LA in May. Their poster was among the top 13 capstone groups presenting at the conference. 

Their project combined lean methodologies, project management, and ISE principles to conduct a post-SAP implementation analysis for Belcan Consulting. Their analysis concluded that, upon implementation of the team’s recommendations, Belcan can expect to save $113,000 per implementation. 

View photos.

ISE Faculty Members Awarded ICAST/DISC Seed Grant

Kash Barker, Ph.D. and Andrés González, Ph.D., faculty members in the OU School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, along with collaborator Chie Noyori-Corbett, Ph.D. in the Zarrow School of Social Work, were awarded a $25,513 seed grant from the OU Institute for Community and Society Transformation (ICAST) and the Data Institute for Societal Challenges (DISC). One of seven such funded projects, their one-year project is entitled “Temporal Networks of Environmental Refugee Resettlement.” This project will develop a novel temporal network optimization model that reflects the optimal flow of refugees from origin to host locations, and expand such a baseline model with parameters and constraints reflective of the social science-driven characteristics of equitable decision-making, location integration and dynamics, and different decision-making perspectives to equip local communities to prepare for a larger global scale human migration due to climate change. The announcement from ICAST can be found here: 

https://ou.edu/icast/news-events/2023/seven-multidisciplinary-projects-receive-seed-funding-grants. 

Two ISE Doctoral Students Given Dissertation Awards

Two ISE doctoral students were among 10 students from the OU Gallogly College of Engineering selected to receive this semester’s Dissertation Excellence Award, a $5,000 award created to encourage doctoral students to graduate with excellence.

Manjurul Ahsan defended his dissertation entitled “Data Balancing Approaches in Quality, Defect, and Pattern Analysis” in April of 2023. Alireza Rangrazjeddi will defend his dissertation entitled “Game Theoretic Algorithms for Decentralized Decision-Making” in July of 2023.

More about the GCoE Dissertation Excellence Award can be found here: https://ouccoe100.blogspot.com/2023/05/spring-2023-ou-engineering-presents.html

ISE Student Honored as Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant

The University of Oklahoma Graduate Student Senate has awarded Himadri Sen Gupta, a doctoral student in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, with the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant award. Originally from Bangladesh, Himadri earned a master's degree in industrial and systems engineering and a graduate certificate in data science and analytics and in fall 2021. His research, directed by Dr. Andrés González, applies optimization models for improved community resilience decision-making.

A Q&A with Himadri can be found here: https://ouccoe100.blogspot.com/2023/05/gcoe-ise-student-honored-as-outstanding.html