UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME), in collaboration with the Department of Supply Chain and Information Systems (SCIS) in the Smeal College of Business, will host the 2020 INFORMS Simulation Society Workshop (I-SIM) from June 21 to 24 on the University Park campus.
Titled "From Data to Decision-making: Contending with Uncertainty and Non-Stationarity in Simulation Theory," the workshop will focus on addressing a range of opportunities and challenges that arise from employing data to drive simulation methodologies. These challenges range from utilizing data to address uncertainty and risk, contending with the underlying unpredictable data processes and reflecting on the fundamental questions in simulation methodologies.
“I see the workshop as crucial to the community in terms of providing avenues for students and researchers to learn about the field as well as bring forth new questions and provide novel insights,” said Uday V. Shanbhag, Gary and Sheila Bello Chair Professor of Industrial Engineering and workshop co-chair.
The workshop, which offers a deeper dive into the material that is often unavailable in larger conferences, aims to develop new avenues and research agendas to cope with the rise of online and data streaming technologies with regard to the development of simulation techniques. Attendees will address questions that lie within practical problems for engineering and the applied sciences and will network with like-minded individuals to share insights between the simulation community and allied communities in optimization, applied probability and statistics.
"Business leaders are challenged to understand increasingly complex and fast-moving processes,” Russell Barton, distinguished professor of supply chain and information systems and workshop co-chair, said. “For more than 50 years, discrete-event simulation has been a powerful tool for gaining insight on business operations, but the simulation of today is far different. Our workshop will help researchers develop simulation methods that are relevant to the rapidly changing environment of big data and Industry 4.0."
Some of the sessions offered through the event include keynotes, panels and a poster session.
“This workshop is an opportunity to take stock in state-of-the-art simulation,” Saurabh Bansal, associate professor of supply chain management and workshop organizing committee member, said. “It enables people to see where the field will go, both in terms of methods and within a diverse set of applications for fields such as climate change and human health models that are both increasingly becoming important to our society.”
I-SIM 2020 will also offer "S3: Simulation Summer School," a day-long event held on June 21 for graduate students and young faculty members that focuses on a collection of foundational topics in simulation theory. Registration for the summer school closes on Feb. 22.
“This is the first time that I-SIM will hold a summer school and I think it is a great opportunity for graduate students and young researchers such as myself to learn new research tools," Eunhye Song, Harold and Inge Marcus Early Career Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering and workshop organizing committee member, said.
The I-SIM workshop received $10,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, as well as funding from Penn State's College of Engineering, IME, Smeal College of Business, SCIS and the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Additional I-SIM organizing committee members include Guzin Bayrakshan, Ohio State University; Henry Lam, Columbia University; Enlu Zhou, Georgia Tech; and Farzad Yousefian, Oklahoma State University.