We are pleased to have brilliant keynote speakers in SEMIT 2022. 

The titles are of top trended subjects and the speeches would be helpful for audiences. Don't miss them!

1- How to publish good scientific papers: editorial secrets, Prof. Ruben Ruiz Garcia

2- How to expand hybrid metaheuristics for flexible jobshop scheduling problems with applications, Prof. Mitsuo Gen

3- Robust stochastic optimal control for defined contribution pension funds, Prof. Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber

4- Contributions from operations research to sustainable mobility, Prof. Maria Grazia Speranza

5- Theory building with big data-driven research, Prof. Arpan Kar 

6- Supply Chain Sustainability: a new era of logistic management, Prof. Kumar Roy

 

 

Short Biography:

RUBEN RUIZ is a Full Professor of Statistics and Operations Research at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. He is co-author of more than 100 papers in International Journals and has participated in presentations of more than 180 papers in national and international conferences. He is editor of the Elsevier journal Operations Research Perspectives (ORP) and co-editor of the JCR-listed journal European Journal of Industrial Engineering (EJIE). He is also an associate editor of other important journals like TOP and Applied Mathematics and Computation as well as a member of the editorial boards of several journals, most notably European Journal of Operational Research and Computers and Operations Research. He is the director of the Applied Optimization Systems Group (SOA) at the Instituto Tecnológico de Informática (ITI) where he is or has been the principal investigator in several public research projects as well as privately funded projects with industrial companies. His research interests include scheduling and routing in real-life scenarios.

 

Abstract:

In this talk, we demonstrate that it is not enough with having groundbreaking research in order to have a high-quality paper published. More often than not, we find that papers are not properly written and ideas are not adequately put on paper. Doing good science is not necessarily correlated with writing good papers. However, the task of writing good papers is often relegated and is not actively learned in Ph.D. programs. Furthermore, there is the issue of knowing all the little details and quirks of the editorial system. The talk goes into detail about the writing process, studying how each part of the paper should be written, with particular attention to papers written in the operations research/management science area. Title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, and references are covered in detail. Later, we analyze the process from journal selection, submission, and peer review, including how to cope with the referee's comments. At the end of the talk, we give useful hints coming from the experience of the editorial work of the speaker.
The contents of the talk are equally interesting to both newcomers to scientific writing as well as to experienced researchers which might find valuable advice at some parts of the process.

 

Short Biography:

Mitsuo Gen received his PhD in Engineering from Kogakuin University, PhD degree in Informatics from Kyoto University and is Senior Research Scientist at FLSI and Visiting Prof. at TUS. He was faculties at Ashikaga Institute of Technology for 1974-2003, at Waseda University for 2003-2010. He was visiting faculties at University of California at Berkeley for 1999.8-2000.3, Texas A&M University for 2000.1-3 & 2000.8-9, Hanyang University in S. Korea for 2010-2012 and National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan for 2012-2014. His research field is Evolutionary Computation, Manufacturing Scheduling and Logistics Systems. He is coauthor of the following books: Genetic Algorithms and Engineering Design, 1997 and Genetic Algorithms and Engineering Optimization, 2000, John Wiley & Sons, New York; Network Models and Optimization: Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm Approach, 2008 and Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms, 2010, Springer, London.

Abstract:

In the real-world of scheduling systems, there are many combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) imposing on more complex structure, nonlinear constraints, and multiple objectives. The COPs make the problem intractable to the traditional approaches because of NP-hard ones. Flexible Jobshop Scheduling Problem (FJSP) is a generalization of the jobshop and parallel machine environment, which provides a closer real manufacturing systems.

In order to develop an efficient algorithm whose reasonable computational time for NP-hard COPs, we have to consider 1) quality of solution, 2) computational time and 3) effectiveness of the nondominated solutions for multiobjective COP. As a subset of metaheuristics, Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) is a generic population-based metaheuristic such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA). EA is a very powerful and broadly applicable stochastic search and optimization technique which is effective for solving various NP hard problems.

In this keynote talk, we will summarize the real-world manufacturing scheduling models based on FJSP and a variant of hybrid EA algorithms for solving FJSP, fuzzy-FJSP and large scale FJSP. For expanding GA to hybrid metaheuristics, a sequent of the advanced developments will be introduced such as hybrid GA with PSO and Cauchy distribution for a fuzzy FJSP (IEEE Trans. Semicon. Auto., 2018) and hybrid cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm for a large-scale FJSP (IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Systems, 2019).

Short Biography:

Gerhard-Wilhelm Weber is a Professor at Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland, at Faculty of Engineering Management. His research is on mathematics, statistics, operational research, data science, machine learning, finance, economics, medicine, neuro-, bio- and earth-sciences, development, cosmology and spirituality. He is involved in the organization of scientific life internationally. He received Diploma and Doctorate in Mathematics, and Economics / Business Administration, at RWTH Aachen, and Habilitation at TU Darmstadt (Germany). He replaced professorships at University of Cologne, and TU Chemnitz, Germany. At Institute of Applied Mathematics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, he was a Professor in Financial Mathematics and Scientific Computing, and Assistant to the Director, and has been a member of five further graduate schools, institutes and departments of METU. G.-W. Weber has affiliations at Universities of Siegen (Germany), Federation University (Ballarat, Australia), University of Aveiro (Portugal), University of North Sumatra (Medan, Indonesia), Malaysia University of Technology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, KTO Karatay University (Konya, Turkey), Vidyasagar University (Midnapore, India), Mazandaran University of Science and Technology (Babol, Iran), Istinye University (Istanbul, Turkey), Georgian International Academy of Sciences, at EURO (Association of European OR Societies) where he is “Advisor to EURO Conferences” and IFORS (International Federation of OR Societies), where he is member in many national OR societies, working groups, IFORS Newsletter and IFORS Developing Countries Online Resources, at Pacific Optimization Research Activity Group, etc. G.-W. Weber has supervised many MSc. and PhD. students, authored and edited numerous books and articles, and given many presentations from a diversity of areas, in theory, methods and practice. He has been a member of many international editorial, special issue and award boards; he participated at numerous research projects; G.-W. Weber received various recognitions.    

 

 Abstract:

In the present work, we study the problem of optimal management of defined contribution pension funds, during the distribution phase, under the effect of inflation, mortality, and model uncertainty. More precisely, we consider a class of employees, who, at the time of retirement, enter a life assurance contract with the same insurance firm. The fund manager of the firm collects the entry fees to a portfolio savings account and this wealth is to be invested optimally in a Black-Scholes type financial market. As such schemes usually last for many years, we extend our framework, by: (i) augmenting the financial market with an inflation-adjusted bond, and (ii) taking into account mortality of the fund members.  Model uncertainty aspects are introduced as the fund manager does not fully trust the model he/she faces. By resorting to robust control and dynamic programming techniques, we provide: (a) closed-form solutions for the case of the exponential utility function, (b) a detailed numerical study of the qualitative features of the problem at hand that elucidates the effect of robustness and inflation on the optimal investment decisions.

Short Biography:

M.Grazia Speranza is full professor of Operations Research at the University of Brescia, where she served as Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business and Deputy Rector.  She is currently President of IFORS (International Federation of the Operational Research Societies) and a former President of EURO (association of European Operational Research Societies) and of TSL (Transportation Science and Logistics society of INFORMS). As EURO President she founded the EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization and the EURO Journal on Decision Processes.

Grazia’s research focuses on mixed integer programming and combinatorial optimization with applications to transportation, supply chain management, scheduling and portfolio selection. She models real problems, designs exact and heuristic algorithms, and applies worst-case analysis to off-line problems and competitive analysis to on-line problems. Recent research is oriented towards the study of routing problems enabled by technological developments. Grazia is author of about 200 papers that appeared in international journals and volumes. She has been plenary speaker at several international conferences and member of the scientific committee of the major international conferences in the field. She was visiting professor at the London School of Economics and at Brunel University during her sabbatical and has given talks and seminars at many universities around the world.  She has been guest editor of special issues of journals, editor of several international journals and is co-editor-in-chief of the series of books ‘EURO Advanced Tutorials in Operational Research’.

Grazie has been a member of many evaluation committees, including the European Research Council (ERC) mathematics panel. She is included in https://100esperte.it/ and in the book ‘100 donne contro gli stereotipi per la scienza', Egea, 2017 as one of the best 100 Italian women in the STEM area. In 2019 she was awarded with the Laurea honoris causa by the University of Freiburg, Switzerland. She is a member of the Academy of Sciences of the University of Bologna.

Abstract:

Technological changes have been dramatic in the last decades. Collaboration and coordination opportunities in transportation have become enormous.  A systemic approach to problems and advanced analytical methods are even more vital than in the past. In this talk the main trends in mobility of people and freight will be discussed and some research directions will be presented with examples of operations research contributions which include the use of simulation in a bike-sharing system, of route optimization in the sequential booking of loading/unloading areas and of linear programming in the coordination of satnavs.

Short Biography:

Arpan Kar is Associate Professor in Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. His research interests are in the domain of data science, digital transformation, internet ecosystems, social media and ICT-based public policy. He has authored over a 150 peer reviewed articles and edited 7 research monographs. He is the recipient of Research Excellence Award by Clarivate Analytics India (Web of Science) for highest research citations between 2015-2020. He is the recipient of Basant Kumar Birla Distinguished Researcher Award for the highest count of ABDC A*/ABS 4/FT50 level publications in India between the period 2014 - 2019. In terms of teaching cases, he is the recipient of the Best Seller Award from Ivey Cases / Harvard Business Publishing in 2020. He is the Editor in Chief of International Journal of Information Management Data Insights, published by Elsevier. He is also Associate / Coordinating Editor in International Journal of Electronic Government Research, Journal of Public Affairs, Information Systems Frontiers and Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management. 

He has received numerous awards from reputed organizations like Clarivate Research Excellence Award, Basant Kumar Birla Distinguished Researcher Award, 3 International Federation of Information Processing best paper awards, ACM ICEGOV Best Research Paper Award, TCS Best Research Project Award, PMI Young Research Scholar Award, Association of Indian Management Schools Faculty Research Award, IIT Delhi Teaching Excellence award, Best Seller Award from Ivey/Harvard Case Publishing, and many more best paper awards in conferences. He has undertaken over 40 research, consultancy and training projects from national and international organizations. 

Abstracts:

1- Data access on various digital platforms, is changing the nature of Information Systems (IS) research. These research studies often characterized by the use large datasets, comprising of structured and unstructured data, from various platforms. The questions that such studies address, in turn, may attempt to use methods from computational science like sentiment mining, text mining, network science and image analytics to derive insights. However, there is often a criticism of weak theoretical contribution in many of these studies, due to a lack of generalizable findings. We provide directions to contribute back to the IS discipline, whereby findings can explain more about the phenomenon surrounding the interaction of people with technology artefacts and the ecosystem. Our directions attempt to address this gap in extant literature and provide insights on the methodological adaptations required in “big data studies” to be converted into “IS research” and contribute to theory building for the nomological network.

2- Most researchers fail to make an impact in publishing in a reputed journal because of fundamental shortcomings of their study and how they have developed it. As an editor, these shortcomings are somewhat generalizable, and applies to many manuscripts which are mostly desk rejected. An editorial perspective would be shared surrounding how to carve out an impactful research for management scholars who would want to publish their findings in top platforms for research dissemination.

Short Biography:

Sankar Kumar Roy obtained M.Sc in Applied Mathematics in 1996 from Vidyasagar University and  Ph. D in 2003 from the Dept. of Mathematics. IIT, Kharagpur, India  Dr. Roy is serving as a Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics with Oceanology and Computer Programming, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal from the year 2016 to till now.    He also served as a Head of his own department during 2013-2015.  He delivered a talk as an invited Speaker in the International Webinar, International Faculty Series on “Opportunities and Challenges for Data Sciences in the field of Natural Sciences in the Further” in the State Islamic University of North Sumatera, Jakarta, Indonesia on May 8, 2021. He was selected for awarding International Travel Fellowship for attending and contributing paper in ICIAM 2019, July 2019 at University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. He visited as a research scientist for delivering invited talks at the Dept. of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence   in the University of Granada, Spain in July 2019. He also visited and delivered talk at the Dept. of Operations Research and Statistics, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, July, 2019. He delivered a talk in Joint ORSC/EURO International Conference on Continuous Optimization, 2015, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China, May, 2015. He visited three times in Bangladesh for delivering invited talk in Khulna University, 2015; in Rajshahi University, 2016; and Dhaka University, 2017. He delivered more than 30 invited lectures in India and Abroad. His research interests are mainly on Transportation Problem, Game Theory, Inventory Management and Facility-location Problem, and Bio-Mathematics. He has published more than 120 articles (most of the articles have been published in Q1/SCI/SCIE journals with good impact factors) in the area of Operations Research. His h-index is 29 and i-10 index is 77 with total citations 2387 (Google Scholar). Thirteen (13) Ph. D students have been awarded under his supervision, another two (02) students have been submitted their theses under his guidance and eight (08) students are pursuing Ph. D under his guidance.  He is life member of Calcutta Mathematical Society, Operations Research Society of India (ORSI, Calcutta Chapter), International Society for Development and Sustainability (ISDS), Japan and Senior Member of IEDRC, Hong Kong. He is also associated in EURO stream organizer from 2016 to till now.   He has been selected as Top 2% of scientists in the World in all disciplines during a single calendar year 2019 and 2020 also (two consecutive years) based on the Stanford University Study He has been also enlisted in World Scientist and University Rankings 2021.

Abstract:

As environmental and social obligations are a critical focal point in today’s industrial sector, a supply chain formed on sustainable platforms enables more collaboration prospects.  Sustainability in all aspects boosts the professional image and helps it gain competitive advantages. Sustainable techniques and resources also assist to increase the efficiency of buildings, vehicles, machinery and man-power, resulting in significant cost savings. Because of the complexities in the real-world supply chain problems, uncertainty is a significant factor to consider.  Further, due to the several goals of company(ies), multiple objectives or multiple attributes need to be chosen in a supply chain problem. Therefore, multi-objective or multi-attribute decision making problems play a vital role in supply chain management problems.