Event Category: Operations Research Seminar Series

9/19/19 | 4:15pm | E51-335 Reception to follow.         Jorge Nocedal Professor Northwestern University Abstract: We consider the problem of minimizing a noisy objective function using only function values. We first review the main approaches in the literature and then focus on two strategies that aim at estimating gradients. One is based on…

9/12/19 | 4:15pm | E51-335 Reception to follow.         John Birge Professor The University of Chicago Abstract: Prediction markets can be used to extract the wisdom of the crowd, but an informed participant can manipulate such markets in many cases. This talk will describe how this can occur when participants or the…

9/5/19 | 4:15pm | E51-335 Reception to follow.         Carri Chan Associate Professor Columbia Business School  Abstract: Healthcare is a limited resource environment where scarce capacity is often reserved for the most severe patients. However, there has been a growing interest in the use of preventive care to provide treatment to patients…

5/16/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Mohammad Fazel Zirandi Senior Lecturer MIT  Abstract:  The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible to enforce the immigration laws of the United States. In the past decade, various programs and guidelines have been introduced to focus ICE’s resources to deport the more dangerous and violent individuals,…

5/9/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Ben Hansen Associate Professor University of Michigan  Abstract:  In a regression discontinuity design (RDD), assignment to treatment versus a control condition is determined by the value of a particular baseline variable, $R$. In one recent RDD, $R$ is the average of a student’s…

5/2/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Gad Allon Jeffrey A. Keswin Professor Wharton  Abstract: In today’s ever-expanding “gig economy”, independent workers can freely choose when to work as well as seamlessly switch between multiple platforms that offer different incentives. Once a small minority of low-skilled workers with relatively low income,…

4/25/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Ashia Wilson Postdoctoral Researcher Microsoft Research  Abstract: The connection between continuous-time dynamics and discrete-time algorithms has led to the introduction of several methods in optimization. We add to this body of work by introducing a family of descent dynamics and descent algorithms with…

5/23/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Christian Tomasetti Associate Professor Johns Hopkins University  Abstract: The classifying methods used in CancerSEEK, a novel blood test using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) for the early detection of eight different cancer types, will be presented (Cohen et al. Science 2018, 359(6378):926-930). The blood…

4/11/19 | 4:15pm | E51-325 Reception to follow.         Dessi Pachamanova Professor Babson College  Abstract: This talk will discuss a robust text-based framework for analyzing the commercial value of innovations. Specifically, we show how one can identify key characteristics of patented healthcare innovations that lead to appropriation of value from the patent…

3/14/19 | 4:15pm | E51-335 Reception to follow.         Dick den Hertog Professor Tillburg University  Abstract: The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, reaching around 80 million people with food assistance in 75 countries each year. To deal with the operational complexities inherent to its…