UA Grad Student’s Poster Earns First-Place Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A poster constructed by Shirley (Rong) Li, a third-year operations management doctoral student in the department of information systems, statistics and management science at The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce, earned first place in competition at the Regional Transportation, Supply Chain and Logistics Management Workshop.

The workshop was co-hosted by the INFORMS Deep South Chapter and Mississippi State University.

INFORMS, or the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, serves the scientific and professional needs of operations researchers and those in the management sciences including educators, scientists, students, managers and consultants.

The winning poster was titled “Analysis of an Integrated Maximum Covering and Patrol Routing Problem.”

Li’s faculty adviser is Dr. Burcu Keskin. Li’s poster discussed methods for determining the patrol routes of state troopers for maximum coverage of highway spots with high frequencies of crashes (hot spots).

Using real data from the state of Alabama, she provided recommendations for decision makers concerning the number of state troopers, the critical levels of highway coverage, and addressing the dynamic changes in routes. The analysis can also be used to reallocate resources in the event of a potential budget cut or increase.

“This is important as better state trooper coverage is believed to lead to fewer accidents, lower economic impact due to crashes, and better road safety for everybody,” Keskin said. The research effort was supported by grants through the University Transportation Center for Alabama.

The poster competition and workshop provides an opportunity for faculty and students to present ongoing transportation, supply chain, and logistics management-related research and identify interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities among universities and research centers in the Deep South.

Students who present abstracts of their work are invited to participate in the student poster competition. Student participants give a five-minute presentation to the panel regarding their poster and answer related questions.

The posters are aimed at introducing transportation, supply chain, and logistics management-related research to the engineering and scientific community as well as promoting an exchange of ideas.

INFORMS publishes 12 scholarly journals that describe the latest O.R. methods and applications and a membership magazine with news from across the profession, and it organizes national and international conferences for academics and professionals, as well as for members of the society’s special interest groups.