Two IE Student Projects Reach INFORMS Competition Finals

17 October 2016 Comments Off on Two IE Student Projects Reach INFORMS Competition Finals

img_2393-620-x-354Two projects completed by the Bilkent University Department of Industrial Engineering graduates have reached the finals of the 2016 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize Competition.

The competition is held annually to recognize a student or group of students who have conducted a significant applied project in operations research or management science and/or original, important theoretical or applied research in operations research or management science while enrolled as an undergraduate. Seven projects have been selected for the finals this year: along with the two projects by Bilkent students, they include five projects by students from MIT, Koç University, the University of Michigan, Purdue University and North Carolina State University.

One of the Bilkent finalists was selected on the basis of an individual project. “Collaborative Decision Making for Air Traffic Management” was prepared by Hale Erkan under the supervision of Prof. Nesim Erkip and Özge Şafak as part of her work for the course IE490-491, Introduction to Research in IE/OR. This project also won Hale the Undergraduate Research Award from the Department of Industrial Engineering.

The other Bilkent finalists are members of a group: Zeynep Yaprak Beşik, Başak Erman, Deniz Berfin Karakoç, Yekta Jehat Mızraklı, Umut Müdüroğlu and Egehan Yanık. They were selected for their IE477-478 System Design project, “Hot Sales Logistics Optimization for ETİ,” conducted under the supervision of Dr. Oğuzhan Vıcıl in collaboration with ETİ Gıda Sanayi A.Ş. The team also won the 14th Bilkent University Industrial Engineering Senior Design Project Contest and Fair (held last May) with this project.

The students will be presenting their work at the 2016 INFORMS annual meeting, which will take place November 13-16 in Nashville in the US.

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is the largest professional society in the world for individuals in the field of operations research, management science and analytics.