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K-State Today

December 4, 2014

ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series presents Sunderesh S. Heragu

Submitted by Tawny Ochs

ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series and Jessica Heier Stamm, assistant professor in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, will host Sunderesh S. Heragu at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, in 1027 Durland Hall. Heragu will present "Deterministic and Stochastic Models for Health Care Systems."

The lecture abstract is: The Healthcare and Public Health, or HPH, and Emergency Support Services, or ESS, are two of 17 critical infrastructure sectors identified by the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. These two sectors have developed potential capability gaps that may be seen in the Healthcare and Public Health and Emergency Support Services infrastructures in the event of a pandemic influenza attack. In this talk, we discuss the development of a real-time decision support system, or RTDSS, for use by professionals in the Healthcare and Public Health and Emergency Support Services sectors during and immediately after a pandemic influenza or other viral attack. We will demonstrate a few of the many 'status and tracking' and 'planning and analysis' tools that have been developed for use in the real-time decision support system. These include simulation models for mass vaccination clinics, throughput analysis of emergency departments in hospitals, mixed-integer models for location of facilities in the strategic national stockpile network and allocation of patients to hospitals during a pandemic attack. These models utilize real-time data obtained from multiple sources to provide real-time decisions that can be used by Healthcare and Public Health and Emergency Support Services coordinators in a medical emergency.

Heragu is a professor, Donald and Cathey Humphrys chair and head of the School of Industrial Engineering and Management at Oklahoma State University. He also served as the Mary Lee and George F. Duthie chair in engineering logistics in the industrial engineering department and director of the Logistics and Distribution Institute at the University of Louisville. He also was a professor of decision sciences and engineering systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, assistant professor in State University of New York, Plattsburgh and has had visiting appointments at State University of New York, Buffalo, Technical University of Eindhoven and University of Twente, in the Netherlands, and IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.

He is author of the book "Facilities Design," currently in its third edition, and has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles many of which have appeared in journals, magazines, books and conference proceedings. He has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on research projects totaling more than $20 million funded by federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, National Science Foundation, Defense Logistics Agency and private companies such as General Electric.

Heragu is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He has received institute's David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award, Award for Technical Innovation in Industrial Engineering Institute of Industrial Engineers Transactions on Design and Manufacturing Award, Institute of Industrial Engineers Transactions Award for Best Paper published in Feature Applications for a paper co-authored with his student, and the Gold Award of Excellence for Leadership in Facilities Planning and Design.