March 18, 2015: Invited Speaker Seminar: Integer Linear Programming Based Statistical Techniques for Causal Inference

Dr. Md. Noor-E-Alam

Wednesday, March 18 at 9:45 a.m.
Room EV003.309

Abstract

This talk will address a topic in a cutting edge field, which is operations research techniques applied to problems in data analytics. This is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research, as organizations are fiercely struggling to realize valuable information from large-scale data that are being accumulated continuously in business, healthcare, Internet marketing, and governance. These observational data are increasingly used for understanding important cause and effect relationships. For example, we might want to know whether a particular drug causes a significant side effect or whether a public health policy has a profound impact on health status, or we might want to know whether a view of an Internet advertisement results in an increased chance of purchase. This research developed a methodological frameworks to solve such critical problems with ILP based statistical techniques. One of the key idea is to develop robust techniques to handle uncertainty in data driven decision making, particularly as applied to healthcare. This involves development of mathematical models and their solution techniques using operations research methods.

Biography

Noor is working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, affiliated with Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Operations Research Center (ORC), and Sloan School of Management. He has completed his PhD in Engineering Management in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta (UofA) in 2013. His previous works on "multi-criteria decision making" and "advanced integer linear programming techniques for large-scale grid based location problems" have appeared in several top-tier journals, including "European Journal of Operational Research" and "Knowledge-Based Systems". His current research interests lie in the intersection of operations research and data analytics, particularly as applied to healthcare, manufacturing systems and supply chain. Prior coming to the UofA, he served as a faculty member (first as a Lecturer and then as an Assistant Professor) in the Department of Industrial and Production Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET). He also previously received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Industrial and Production Engineering from BUET. He is the receipt of many prestigious awards including NSERC PDF and Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship.