Join us in welcoming Sara Shashaani, one of ISE’s assistant professors, as she discusses simulation optimization. Alums and friends of the program are always welcome.
Simulation Optimization for Operations Engineering and Data-enabled Decision Support
With an upward trend, the field of simulation optimization is evolving to aid in finding near-optimal solutions more rapidly and reliably. Apart from the traditional simulations of engineering operations, the Digital Twins and Big Data era provide opportunities for simulation optimization research to tackle high-impact decision-making under uncertainty. My research stirs a middle ground between rigorous statistical analysis of Monte Carlo sampling and mathematical analysis of numerical optimization. The resulting algorithmic developments have contributed to 1) closing computational gaps in the theory and practice of simulation optimization and 2) foundational approaches for learning (from data) that are informed by uncertainty. This talk will present an overview of these contributions and their significance, along with their impact on real-world engineering problems.
Sara Shashaani joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2019. Before joining the NC State faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she worked on designing and improving probabilistic predictive models specifically used for hurricane-induced power outages, with challenges in highly imbalanced datasets and a large set of explanatory variables. Her dissertation research in derivative-free simulation optimization awarded her a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University in 2016. Besides her research, she is passionate about activities that target the environment, community wellness, and science communication.
