Fall 2017 INFORMS Penn State Chapter welcome meeting was held on Friday, September 15, 2017, from 6:00-7:00 pm in 103 Leonhard building. In the meeting, Cheng-Bang Chen, the president of INFORMS Penn State Chapter, introduced our new board members and provided a presentation about what the INFORMS Penn State Chapter is, what our student chapter did last year and what will be done this year.

Last year, our student chapter held excellent events such as the Axtria networking event, hands-on Python and Matlab workshops, and seminars by famous professors from other universities. In addition, through the support from UPAC funding, many INFORMS student members attended the INFORMS Annual Meeting and IISE Annual Conference.

Welcome Meeting Q&A

This semester, the INFORMS Penn State Chapter will continue providing networking events and hands-on workshops as follows:

• On Friday, 09/29/2017 (5:30-6:30 pm), Rico Polim, a former graduate student at Penn State IE, will give a talk about planning and preparation for job hunting as IE students. This event will be held together with the IISE Penn State Chapter.
• On Tuesday, 10.03/2017 (6:00-8:00 pm), a Matlab hands-on workshop will be provided by senior engineers working at MathWorks.
• October 22-25, networking events at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2017 in Houston, Texas.

UPAC funding will also be provided to attend the INFORMS Annual Meeting to those who are qualified.

2017 Fall INFORMS Welcome Meeting

The Penn State Student Chapter of INFORMS will be attending 2017 INFORMS Annual Meeting from October 22 – 25, Houston, Texas.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead

On 21st and 22nd of April, the national INFORMS held an amazing student leadership conference in Baltimore, student leaders of chapters from USA, Canada, Turkey attended this conference and had a wonderful experience! We learned about Social Excellent Project (TED talk link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvjELOfoMu8) and how to market chapters from Matt Mattson:

We learned about “Organizing Your Chapter for Success” from Mariner Management:

We had Dr. Michael Johnson from UMass Boston speaking about his experience:

When we gather, we matter, Go INFORMS!!! Go Nittany Lions!!!

On April 18, 2017, INFORMS Penn State Student Chapter had alumnus Ajay Gopinath give students an information session about opportunities at Dell.

Ajay got his Master’s degree from Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department in 2015, and he was an active member of INFORMS and CHOT. After he graduated from Penn State, he joined Dell as a Global Operations Manager in the Cloud Client Computing and his current responsibilities include:

• Lead and manage WW operations extended teams and be the primary operations interface to the core product development team
• Responsible for developing strategic global integration and supply chain models for new products to support the demand in various regions across the globe
• Responsible for launch (from initial concept phase to production phase) and ramp of products WW on time, with superior quality and maximum availability

In the session, Ajay talked about:

• Dell technologies
• Global operations team and its strategy
• How global operations team operates Dell’s end-to-end supply chain of products and services.

More than 30 students attended the session and had great conversations with Ajay.

Dell Global Operations – Info Session  

Dell is a collective of customer-obsessed, industry-leading visionaries. At our core is a commitment to diversity, sustainability, and our communities. We believe in working together to build a brighter future, celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit that lives inside us all, and marrying innovation with action. Dell is proud to offer unparalleled growth and development opportunities for our team members. We believe that technology is essential for driving human progress, and we’re committed to providing that technology to people and organizations everywhere, so they can transform the way they work and live.

Dell will be at the campus on April 18, 2017. Come learn about:

• Dell Technologies
• Global Operations Team and its Strategy
• And how Global Operations team operates Dell’s end-to-end Supply Chain of Products and Services.

Venue: 102 Leonard Building

Date: April 18, 2017

Time: 6 PM to 7 PM

Members of PSU INFORMS,

Officer elections are coming up! Take advantage of an excellent opportunity to serve in a significant way. Participating in a leadership role is a challenging, yet rewarding experience.

If you or someone you know are interested in running for the available positions of President, Vice President for Operation, Vice President for Public Affairs, Secretary or Treasurer, please send your name, contact information, and resume to Juxihong Julaiti by March 27th. Once the candidates have been determined, we will have an in-person election on March 30th.

Remember: * Candidates must be paid members of PSU INFORMS. * If you would like to become a member, or don’t know whether you already are, please contact at Juxihong Julaiti.

MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. A proprietary programming language developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, a creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, Fortran, and Python.

Although MATLAB is intended primarily for numerical computing, an optional toolbox uses the MuPAD symbolic engine, allowing access to symbolic computing abilities. An additional package, Simulink, adds graphical multi-domain simulation and model-based design for dynamic and embedded systems.

INFORMS Penn State Student Chapter will have speakers from MATLAB@PSU to give us a hands-on Matlab workshop. The workshop will include:

• Basics of MATLAB
• Input Data
• Preprocess Data and Visualization
• Fit models
• Check the fitness of models
• Create a script
• Automating for Multiple Files Using a Function

The Penn State Student Chapter of INFORMS will be attending 2017 IISE Annual Meeting from May 20-23 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Information on the conference can be found here.

Please fill up the following form, if you want financial support.

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INFORMS Chapter of Penn State will be having their Welcome Meeting for new and current members on Wednesday, January 25, 2017, at 5:30 pm in 103 Leonhard. You can learn more about the opportunities that you can get by becoming an INFORMS member. If you are interested in becoming a member, please contact our treasurer Chen Kan at rcjk5654@psu.eduu to arrange payment or bring your payment to the meeting. Dues are $20/year or $10/semester. Please visit https://sites.psu.edu/informspsu/membership/ for more details.

Moreover, Yuhang Zhou (http://personal.psu.edu/yxz197/), an excellent and very productive Ph.D. candidate who works with Dr.Gordon Pang, will present his research on modern service systems. He will also provide you with the insights on how to manage your time to be a successful graduate student.

The abstract of his talk is shown as follow:

Modern service systems, such as call centers and health care systems, are typical of large scale and have time-varying customer arrival rates and service time requirements. For example, large call centers employ thousands of agents to answer calls from customers. A better understanding of such service systems will help to improve system efficiency, to optimize system managements and to reduce costs. The asymptotic methods in the heavy-traffic regime have been proved very useful to obtain mathematically-tractable approximations for such systems.

In this talk, I will first introduce some basic queueing models. Next, I talk about recent advances in modeling and analyzing modern service systems. In particular, the idea of asymptotic methods in heavy-traffic regime will be discussed.

Pizzas and beverages will be sponsored by INFORMS Chapter and please RSVP below.[gravityform id=”40″ title=”true” description=”true”]

The Pennsylvania State University INFORMS Chapter is proud to be selected as a winner of the INFORMS 2016 Student Chapter Annual Award at Cum Laude level. This award shows the recognition from the INFORMS on the achievements of our student chapter.

The award will be presented at the Student Awards Ceremony at the upcoming INFORMS Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. If you are at the meeting, we hope you will join us and be recognized at this event. The Student Awards Ceremony will be held on November 14, 2016, at 7:30 pm in the Omni – Broadway EF, 2nd Floor.  Please try to arrive at least 15 minutes early.