Volume 54, Issue 4 Contributors

Bruce E. Ankenman (“Controlled Sequential Bifurcation: A New Factor-Screening Method for Discrete-Event Simulation”) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. Most of his previous research was on the design of physical experiments. Although many of the criteria for good designs for simulation experiments are the same as in physical experiments, the constraints are much fewer (more replication allowed, more automated experimentation expected, etc.). The idea of designing useful experiments free of these usual constraints attracted him to this topic.

Ross Baldick ("Interruptible Electricity Contracts from an Electricity Retailer's Point of View: Valuation and Optimal Interruption") is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.Sc. and B.E. degrees from the University of Sydney, Australia and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His current research involves optimization and economic theory applied to electric power system operations, the public policy and technical issues associated with electric transmission under deregulation, and the robustness of the electricity system to terrorist interdiction.

Jonathan Caulkins (“Quality Cycles and the Strategic Manipulation of Value”), Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School, has been modeling social policy problems including drug markets and related behaviors for 15 years.

I. Robert Chiang (“An Economic Analysis of Interconnection Arrangements between Internet Backbone Providers”) is a senior consultant at Accenture, where he has been project and program manager for various client engagements. He also contributed to improving the organization¬ wide solution delivery methods, processes, and tools.

William Chung ("A New Decomposition Method for Multi-regional Economic Equilibrium Models") is an Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong, Department of Management Sciences. His research interests are in decomposition methods for variational inequality problems with applications to energy policy models and traffic assignment problems. This paper is partly based on his dissertation written at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of J. D. Fuller and Y. June Wu.

Gianni Codato ("Combinatorial Benders' Cuts for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming") is now an engineer working in industry. The paper "Combinatorial Benders' Cuts for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming" is based on Codato's master thesis was awarded the 2003 Camerini-Carraresi prize by the Italian Operation Research Association (AIRO). The paper is part of an ongoing research of Matteo Fischetti and his group at the University of Padova, which addresses the solution of very-hard Mixed-Integer Programs.

Wade D. Cook (“Incorporating Multi-Process Performance Standards into the DEA Framework”) is the Gordon Charlton Shaw Professor of Management Science, Schulich School of Business, York University. Professor Cook's current research interest is in the area of performance modeling in organizations. He has conducted research and consulted with both industry and government on topics relating to benchmarking and efficiency measurement. This work was initiated in response to practical real world problems where production standards are available that influence such measurement.

Qi Feng ("Are Base-stock Policies Optimal in Inventory Problems with Multiple Delivery Modes?") is a Ph.D. student in Operations Management in the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research interests include inventory and supply chain management, software management, and optimal control theory.

Matteo Fischetti (“Combinatorial Benders' Cuts for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming”) is full professor of Operations Research at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova. In 1987 he won the First Prize for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation in Transportation awarded by the Operations Research Society of America. He wrote more than 70 papers published in top-level international journals. His current research interests include Mixed Integer Programming, Polyhedral Combinatorics, Combinatorial Optimization, Vehicle Routing and Crew Scheduling Problems.

Antonio Frangioni (“Solving Nonlinear Single-Unit Commitment Problems with Ramping Constraints”) is Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa. His research interest covers various aspects related to large-scale continuous and combinatorial optimization, such as algorithms for Non-Differentiable optimization, Interior Point methods and Network Flow techniques, with applications to problems such as Network Design and Unit Commitment.

J. David Fuller ("A New Decomposition Method for Multi-regional Economic Equilibrium Models") is a Professor in the Department of Management Sciences, in the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research interests are primarily in mathematical programming models of energy markets, and algorithms for their solution, including decomposition methods.

Claudio Gentile (“Solving Nonlinear Single-Unit Commitment Problems with Ramping Constraints”) is a Researcher at the Institute of System Analysis and Computer Science "Antonio Ruberti" of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. His research interests are in Integer and Mixed Integer Programming, Combinatorial Optimization, Network Flow Problems and Interior Point Methods. This paper is part of a broader research effort focusing on Nonlinear Mixed Integer Programming and Unit Commitment problems.

Salal Humair ("Optimizing Strategic Safety Stock Placement in Supply Chains with Clusters of Commonality") is a Principal Software Engineer at Optiant Inc. His research interests include supply chain design and optimization.

Sergey Kolos ("Interruptible Electricity Contracts from an Electricity Retailer's Point of View: Valuation and Optimal Interruption") is a PhD candidate in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. His research is focused on risk management in energy markets. This work constitutes a part of his dissertation.

Mikhail A. Kubzin (“Planning Machine Maintenance in Two-Machine Shop”) is a Scientific Software Developer with Legion Limited, London, U.K. Mikhail graduated from the Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus, in 2001. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Greenwich, London, UK. His research interests include Computational Complexity and Multi-Agent Simulation. His recent papers have been published in and/or accepted by journals such as Naval Research Logistic and Operations Research Letters.

Qing Li ("Joint Inventory Replenishment and Pricing Control for Systems with Uncertain Yield and Demand") is an Assistant Professor at the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include supply chain management, marketing/operations interfaces, coordination of replenishment and pricing decisions, and multi-item or multi-location inventory systems.

Carlo Miannino (“The Network Packing Problem in Terrestrial Broadcasting”) is an Associate Professor in Operations Research in the University of Rome 1 "La Sapienza". He authored many research papers in Discrete Optimization, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research. Telecommunication networks have been central to the applied part of his research work. He contributed to the development of the methodology adopted by the Italian Communications Authority to realize the Italian National Radio/TV Frequency plan, both for analog and digital technology and participated in several national and European projects. He is associate editor of the International Journal of Mobile Network Design and Innovation.

Vijay S. Mookerjee (“An Economic Analysis of Interconnection Arrangements between Internet Backbone Providers”) is a Professor of Information Systems at the School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas. He holds a Ph.D. in Management, with a major in MIS, from Purdue University. His current research interests include optimal software development methodologies, storage and cache management, and the economic design of expert and machine learning systems.

Barry L. Nelson (Controlled Sequential Bifurcation: A New Factor-Screening Method for Discrete-Event Simulation”) is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University. His longstanding goal is to provide simulation practitioners with general-purpose experiment design and analysis tools that take application-specific, as opposed to statistical, information as input and yield sound experiment designs and useful inference as outputs. For factor screening, this means incorporating engineering knowledge about the cost of making changes in a system and the value of the achieved improvements into the experiment design, which is accomplished in the present paper.

Shun-chen Niu ("A Piecewise-Diffusion Model of New-Product Demands") is a Professor in the School of Management of the University of Texas at Dallas. His primary research interest has been in queuing theory. This paper is part of his recent effort to better understand new-product diffusion.

Fabrizio Rossi (“The Network Packing Problem in Terrestrial Broadcasting”) is an Associate Professor of Operations Research in the Department of Computer Science at the University of L'Aquila, Italy. His research interests include ap¬plications of combinatorial optimization and integer programming to telecommunication networks.

Suresh P. Sethi ("Are Base-stock Policies Optimal in Inventory Problems with Multiple Delivery Modes?")
is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Operations Management and Director of the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks (C4iSN) at the School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas. Prof. Sethi is an INFORMS Fellow. His research interests include supply chain management, production planning and inventory control, scheduling in robotic cells, software pricing and development, consumption-portfolio problems, corporate finance, marketing, and optimal control theory.

David Simchi-Levi ("Performance Analysis and Evaluation of Assemble-to-Order Systems with Stochastic Sequential Lead Times") is a professor of Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The work described in this paper is part of a larger research project he conducted with some of his current and former Ph.D. students. The project deals with the analysis and management of Assemble-to-Order Systems and in particular with the challenge of positioning safety-stock in general multi-stage supply chains.

Stefano Smriglio (“The Network Packing Problem in Terrestrial Broadcasting”) is an Assistant Professor of Operations Research at the Univer¬sity of L 'Aquila, Italy" His research is concerned with Combinatorial Optimization and Integer Programming and their application to telecommunication problems.

Vitaly A. Strusevich (“Planning Machine Maintenance in Two-Machine Shop”) is a Professor of Operational Research at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich, London, U.K. Professor Strusevich holds a Candidate of Science (PhD equivalent) degree from the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk and a PhD from Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is a recipient of the highest research award of his home country of Belarus, The State Prize in Science and Technology (1998). His research interests include Combinatorial Optimization and Deterministic Machine Scheduling. He has co-authored several books, edited three volumes and published more than 70 papers in refereed journals. He is on the editorial boards of IIE Transactions (Focused Issues on Scheduling and Logistics) and Computers & Operations Research.

Yong Tan (“An Economic Analysis of Interconnection Arrangements between Internet Backbone Providers”) is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Neal and Jan Dempsey Faculty Fellow at the University of Washington Business School. His current research interests include operational and economic models of electronic commerce, network pricing and contracts, software engineering, and peer-to-peer networks.

Stathis Tompaidis ("Interruptible Electricity Contracts from an Electricity Retailer's Point of View: Valuation and Optimal Interruption") is an Assistant Professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, MSIS department. His research interests include energy finance, real options and the application of computational methods in finance.

Hong Wan (“Controlled Sequential Bifurcation: A New Factor-Screening Method for Discrete-Event Simulation”) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. She is interested in the design of simulation experiments for systems with little prior knowledge. Her goal is to develop sequential designs with guaranteed performance to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness, which is accomplished in this paper.

Sean Willems ("Optimizing Strategic Safety Stock Placement in Supply Chains with Clusters of Commonality") is an assistant professor of Operations and Technology Management at Boston University and the Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Optiant Inc. This research provides a mathematical foundation for his work with HP that was a finalist for the Edelman award in 2003. His research interests include multi-echelon inventory optimization and supply chain configuration.

Y. June Wu ("A New Decomposition Method for Multi-regional Economic Equilibrium Models") is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include optimization models, solution algorithms, and their application to energy markets, environmental management and urban transportation problems.

Houmin Yan ("Are Base-stock Policies Optimal in Inventory Problems with Multiple Delivery Modes?") is a Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in supply chain management.

Hanqin Zhang ("Are Base-stock Policies Optimal in Inventory Problems with Multiple Delivery Modes?") is a Professor at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Prof. Zhang's research interests include inventory models, stochastic manufacturing systems, and queueing networks.

Yao Zhao ("Performance Analysis and Evaluation of Assemble-to-Order Systems with Stochastic Sequential Lead Times") is an assistant professor in the Department of Management Science and Information Systems at Rutgers University, Newark. This paper is part of a general research interest in analyzing and coordinating inventory policies in multi-item and/or multi-stage supply chains.

Shaohui Zheng ("Joint Inventory Replenishment and Pricing Control for Systems with Uncertain Yield and Demand") is an Associate Professor at the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include interface of supply chain and marketing, coordinated approaches in supply chain management, and production and quality control.

Joe Zhu (“Incorporating Multi-Process Performance Standards into the DEA Framework”) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Professor Zhu’s current research is concentrated in quantitative models in performance evaluation and benchmarking. He has published extensively in this area and is a consultant to industry.