[CCoE Notice] Room Change: INFORMS UH Lecture Series

[Lindsay Lewis]

INFORMS UH Lecture Series
Jointly Sponsored by Industrial Engineering Department


Title:                  Interdicting Nuclear Smugglers

Speaker:        Professor David Morton, University of Texas at Austin

When:           10:00 am -11:00 am, Friday, February 26, 2010

Where:             E321, Eng. Building D2


Abstract: 

The US government has put significant effort into countering nuclear
proliferation and terrorism. The Second Line of Defense (SLD) program is
part of a global nuclear detection architecture and aims to prevent illicit
trafficking in nuclear and radiological materials by securing international
land borders, seaports, and airports that may be used in smuggling material.
Resource limitations are inevitable, and to maximize effectiveness, limited
detector resources must be carefully allocated.  We describe a class of
network interdiction models to select detector locations in support of SLD.
The models are hierarchical, stochastic, and can involve strategic gaming.
The performance of the detection equipment depends on the material being
sensed, geometric attenuation, shielding, and a number of other factors.
Using a stochastic radiation transport code, we estimate detection
probabilities for a specific set of such parameters, and inform our
interdiction model with these estimates.

Short Bio:

David Morton is an Engineering Foundation Professor in the Graduate Program
in Operations Research within the Mechanical Engineering Department at The
University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include developing and
analyzing algorithms designed to solve mathematical optimization models that
explicitly incorporate uncertainty.  He is the recipient of a Fulbright
Research Scholar Award to study at Charles University in Prague. He was also
awarded:  the National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award in
Science & Engineering, the Rist Paper Prize from the Military Operations
Research Society, the George E. Nicholson Paper Prize, and was a Finalist
for the EURO "Excellence in Practice" Paper Prize for his nuclear smuggling
work. He has a BS in Mathematics and Physics from Stetson University, an MS
and PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University and was a National
Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Gino J. Lim, Ph.D.

Harri and Anjali Agrawal Feculty Fellow and Assistant Prof.

Director, Research and Development Division, SWTC Center

Department of Industrial Engineering

University of Houston

http://www.egr.uh.edu/ie/faculty/?e=lim




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