The DSLab held its fifth semi-annual research symposium on January 17, 2023.

Presentations concerned repair inventory simulation analysis (Bob Jiang and Frannie Fang with Kiki Xu), climate change impacts on Boston hospitals – Phase 2 (Grace Niu, Caroline Tan, and Amelia Zhao), classification trees for DOE applications (Michelle Liu and Adrian Perez), and Tableau with Python interface for MBTA winter storm planning (Danielle Song, Terry Liu, and Claire Ding). Watch an introduction and the first three presentations here.

DSLab at the Decision Sciences Institute Meeting in Houston

Five research assistants accompanied DSLab Co-Directors Canan Corlu and John Maleyeff to the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) annual meeting in Houston, Texas (November 19-21).  Kiki Xu made a presentation entitled "Optimal Service Level for Repair Part Inventory Considering the Cost of Holding Other Parts" (a project inspired by a supply chain management capstone project with the MBTA, co-authored by researchers Yuxin Yang and Valeria Kaffaty, who were unable to attend).  Adrian Perez made a presentation entitled "Maximizing Demand Fulfillment Probability under Pareto-Distributed Demand" (co-authored by researcher Cas Rosman, who was unable to attend).  Prof. Maleyeff made a presentation entitled "Public Transit Decision Support for Winter Storm Preparation," which was co-authored by Danielle Song, Claire Ding, and David Kuo, who were unable to attend.  Besides Kiki and Adrian, other DSLab researchers who attended the conference were Frannie Fang, Caroline Tan, and Michelle Liu.

DSLab Researchers Active at INFORMS 2022

Three DSLab researchers accompanied Profs. Canan Corlu and John Maleyeff to the annual INFORMS conference in Indianapolis, October 16-20.  Claire Ding presented a poster and made a presentation concerning her MBTA winter storm planning project (with co-authors Danielle Song and David Kuo, who were unable to attend, and Prof. Maleyeff).  Adrian Perez made a presentation concerning his heavy tail inventory planning project(with co-authors Cas Rosman, and Profs. Corlu and Ben Harris).  Kiki Xu presented a poster concerning her work on applying k-means clustering to disaggregate repair part usage data to support demand forecasting.  Prof. Maleyeff presented the work Frannie Fang, Alex Yang, Bob Jiang, and Kiki Xu have been doing on simulating repair part inventory.

DSLab Completes Plans for a Busy Fall

After a summer of on-campus meetings twice every week, the nine DSLab researchers are gearing up for a busy Fall. In October, three researchers will attend the INFORMS annual conference in Indianapolis. Claire Ding and Kiki Xu will present posters in the graduate poster competition, and Claire and Adrian Perez will make presentations. In November, about 6 researchers will travel to the Decision Science Institute (DSI) conference in Houston. Presentations by the researchers will include MBTA winter storm planning, repair inventory modeling, and long tail inventory planning.

MBTA Team Presents Winter Planning System at ICSS-2022 Conference

The MBTA team co-authored a presentation that Ching-Wei Kuo delivered at the INFORMS International Conference on Service Science (ICSS-2022) on July 4, 2022.  The conference was held in Shenzhen (China) and the MBTA team (Yiwei Song, Xiaotong Ding, and Ching-Wei Kuo) attended virtually.  This work has been ongoing since January 2021.  The presentation, entitled Severity Modeling to Support Public Transit System Storm Planning, concerns the prototype decision support system that the MBTA tested successfully last winter.   The MBTA team acknowledges the contributions and thanks previous team members Shan Ning, Ruojia Peng, and Jingyi Li.  The video of the presentation and Q&A are provided below (listen for the session chair's compliment at the end!).

DSLab Welcomes New Researchers

The DSLab welcomes four new research team members for the Summer 2022 term.  They are all M.S. students at Metropolitan College: Jianbo (Bob) Jiang (Supply Chain Management), Jiaoxue (Michelle) Liu (Applied Business Analytics), Jia (Frannie) Fang (Applied Business Analytics), and Mengya (Amelia) Zhao (Applied Business Analytics). They will work on projects that include mitigating climate change impacts on Boston hospital supply chains, MBTA repair parts inventory control, and research into more effective ways to present DOE results for decision making.

The DSLab held its fourth semi-annual research symposium on June 15, 2022.

Presentations concerned repair inventory modeling (Valeria Kaffaty and Kiki Xu), long tail demand planning (Adrian Perez), climate change impacts on Boston hospitals (Grace Niu), and decision support for distribution planning (supply chain capstone project for Watts Water Technologies, by Jack Liu and Tonglei Zhao). Watch the presentations here.

Adrian Perez presented his work at Annual POMS Conference

Danielle Song wins best graduate student poster award at the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute conference.

_{DSLab research assistants attended the NEDSI conference (April 2022). Pictured (left-to-right): Adrian Perez, Grace Niu, Danielle Song, Claire Ding, David Kuo, Jingran Xu, Caroline Tan, and Pennart Klanwari.}

DSLab researcher Danielle Song won the best graduate student poster award at the 52^nd Northeast Decision Sciences Institute (NEDSI) conference in Newark, New Jersey, on April 8, 2022.  Danielle’s poster, entitled “MBTA Winter Storm Planning: Slick Road Prediction Model,” focused on her application of machine learning methods to assist the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) by creating a more timely and accurate decision support system for allocating labor and equipment resources in preparation for inclement weather.   Seven other DSLab researchers accompanied Danielle and DSLab co-director John Maleyeff to the conference, with DSLab researchers delivering two other presentations.  Pennart Klanwari presented a paper entitled “Climate Change Impacts on Boston Hospitals,” which was co-authored by Jiayi Pan, along with Dr. Canan Corlu and Prof. Dave Weidman. Claire Ding presented a paper entitled “Severity Prediction Models to Support MBTA Winter Storm Planning,” which gave a more comprehensive overview of the MBTA project.  This paper was co-authored by Ruojia Peng, along with Danielle Song and John Maleyeff.  MBTA risk management director Frans Valk and MBTA emergency management director Mark Munroe collaborated on this project. 

DSLab researchers to present three papers at NEDSI Conference in Newark NJ

Five DSLab researchers have co-authored two articles and one poster to be presented at the 52nd Northeast Decision Sciences Institute (NEDSI) meeting on April 7-9 in Newark, New Jersey. The first paper, “Severity Prediction Models to Support MBTA Winter Storm Planning,” was co-authored by Yiwei (Danielle) Song, Ruojia Peng, and Claire Ding, and will be presented by Claire at the meeting. Prof. John Maleyeff supervised this project, with collaboration from Frans Valk and Mark Munroe at the MBTA. The second paper, “Climate Change Impacts on Boston Hospitals,” was co-authored by Pennart Klanwari and Jiayi Pan, and will be presented by Pennart at the meeting.  Profs. Canan Corlu and Dave Weidman supervised this project. The poster, called “MBTA Winter Storm Planning: Slick Road Prediction Model,” was prepared by Danielle Song. It will be entered in a master’s student competition to be held at the conference.

Nine of the 10 current DSLab researchers are expected to attend the conference, along with John Maleyeff and Canan Corlu.