UB - University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Highlighted Research Areas

Automation

Reinforcement Learning (Abhijit Gosavi)

Reinforcement Learning (RL) forms the most exciting and challenging frontier of artificial intelligence methods used to solve problems of dynamic optimization in stochastic systems. Research issues under consideration are: developing robust function approximators and modeling smart agents in the presence of other agents.

Stochastic Production Systems (Abhijit Gosavi)

Research focused on: stochastic economic lot-sizing, capacity design of material-handling equipment, and preventive maintenance strategies.

Trust in Automation and Decision Support Systems (Ann Bisantz)

Research in this area includes studies of trust in automated decision aids, particularly under circumstances where information provided by the aids has been degraded or corrupted. A focus of this work has been decision making in aided, adversarial situations, when decision aids include fused or processed information.

Biomechanics and Injury Prevention

Physical Ergonomics Job Analysis (Victor Paquet)

Characterizing the physical risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal disorders has proven quite challenging to researchers. Statistical methods are used to inform the appropriate sampling strategies to take when conducting observational or video-based ergonomics job analyses.

Anthropometry and Digital Modeling of Wheelchair Users (Victor Paquet)

There is very little information about the functional abilities and body dimensions of wheelchair users, making it challenging to design to accommodate this user group. Work includes the development of new anthropometric methods that record 3-dimensional coordinates of body dimensions, the collection of functional and structural anthropometric data, and the development of a database to be used by designers and policy makers and support computerized human models of wheelchair users.

Universal Design of Products and Environments (Victor Paquet)

This work is part of a multidisciplinary center effort to generate strategically important research, development, education, and dissemination deliverables that will allow products and environments to be used easier and more effectively by everyone, including older adults and those with disabilities. The work is expected to advance the fields of rehabilitation engineering and environmental design that integrate universal design principles with the generally accepted models, methods, and metrics of design and engineering.

Decision-Making

Modeling, Analysis, and Support of Human Decision Making (Ann Bisantz)

Research focuses on understanding, modeling, and supporting human decision making in uncertain situations from a perspective that focuses on the environmental factors shaping human performance, and developing and investigating the properties of graphical representations of uncertainty based on blurred or degraded icons, as well as visual, auditory, and tactile representations of spatially distributed uncertainty.

Methods and Applications of Cognitive Work Analysis (Ann Bisantz)

Research includes studies of human decision making in context, as well as needs analysis and modeling for complex systems, such as those found in military command and control.

Health Care

Hospital Modeling and Analysis for Emergency Operations Management (Li Lin)

Computer simulation models are developed for the real-time estimation of hospital capacity after a disaster. Using historical data, generic hospital models are developed for the estimation of steady-state and dynamic capacity in a disaster situation, e.g., earthquake.

Manufacturing and Services

Congestion in Facilities Location and Layout (Rakesh Nagi)

This research aims at developing a common theory base to model movement and resultant congestion in the context of facilities location and facilities layout. The objective is to produce a superior class of models that are expected to provide better performance in real-life applications via the explicit consideration of slow-downs, congestion, flow capacity, and accurate distances. The research tasks include: Planar Facility Location Problem with Generalized Congested Regions and the Connection Location Problem.

Facility Master Planning (Rakesh Nagi)

In the manufacturing context this research explores a strategic facility location, capacity planning (sizing), and production allocation problem, in which the use of fixed and mobile manufacturing facilities are considered simultaneously. Such problems frequently occur at the strategic planning level of industries such as chemical process plants, industrial gases,etc.

In the distribution context this research explores integrated distribution center (DC) selection and space requirement problems on a two-stage network where products are shipped from plants to distribution centers, and then delivered to retailers. The objective of the problem is to minimize total inbound and outbound transportation costs and total DC construction cost, which includes fixed costs related to their locations and variable costs related to their space requirements for given service levels.

Facilities Design (Rakesh Nagi)

This research has produced a number of practical methods for the design or redesign of cellular manufacturing facilities, including: 1) cell formation ; 2) cell and shop layout for designing cells and placing them on the available shop-floor area; 3) material handling flow path (aisle) design; and 4) design of hybrid type facilities that are part cellular and part functional, and may be the best solution when redesigning a functional shop to take advantage of cellular manufacturing.

Sensor Networks (Rakesh Nagi)

Sensors in a data fusion environment over hostile territory are geographically dispersed and change location with time. To collect and process data from these sensors, a flexible network of fusion beds (i.e., clusterheads) is required. We develop MILP models to determine the clusterhead location strategy that maximizes the expected data covered, and a column generation (CG) heuristic.

Variant Design (Rakesh Nagi)

In the distributed and horizontally integrated manufacturing environment in Agile Manufacturing (AM), there is a great demand for new product development methods that are capable of generating new customized assembly designs based on mature component designs that might be dispersed at geographically distributed partner sites. We focus on: 1) new class of assembly models that encapsulate pertinent assembly information to support a number of downstream activities (assembly sequence generation and evaluation, tolerance chain analysis, etc.); 2) assembly variant design methodology; and 3) data-mining methods to formulate Generic Bills-of-Materials.

Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Life Cycle Design (Li Lin)

As corrective efforts to remedy environmental damages have proven insufficient, ineffective, and increasingly costly, it is most effective to prevent the adverse impact to the environment from the very source by designing and manufacturing environmentally friendly "green products." Corporate decision models based on the triple bottom line framework are developed with the support of sustainability valuation methods. A cradle-to-reincarnation approach is used to focus on material selection for green manufacturing.

Integration of Control-Theoretic and Discrete-Event Simulations (Li Lin)

This research focuses on bridging the disparity of control-theoretic models and real systems being represented by using discrete-event simulation to capture the system's complex operations. Parameters of the control models are estimated directly from simulation results.

Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (Bahattin Koc)

Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) is fabricating geometrically complex objects layer by layer directly from a computer-aided design CAD model. RP&M can not only reduce the total lead time but also provides pass-customization production cycle.

Nano-Manufacturing (Bahattin Koc)

Nano-manufacturing technologies attempts to fabricate nano-scale objects, sized less than 100 nm. There is a big need in design and fabrication of nano-structured components, devices, and systems.

Computational Geometry for Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (Bahattin Koc)

Computational geometry for Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) deals with solving complex geometric problems which can be found in any computational problem in computer-aided design and manufacturing. Algorithmic study of geometric problems can be used in development of advanced CAD/CAM technologies.

Computer Graphics and 3D Geometry Modeling (Bahattin Koc)

Computer graphics and 3D geometry modeling techniques are used to represent and visualize 3D objects.

Biomedical Engineering (Bahattin Koc)

Applying rapid prototyping techniques in biomedical engineering, artificial tissues, bones, implants, and biomedical devices are fabricated. Three-dimensional biomedical models are created from CT scan or MRI data. Physical biomedical objects are then fabricated using rapid prototyping techniques directly from the computer-aided model of a biomedical object.

Airline Revenue Management (Abhijit Gosavi)

The science of revenue management deals with strategies that can help maximize the profits made by an airline industry by optimal customer selection and pricing. Revenue management is the most critical function in keeping an airline profitable.

Optimization and Data Fusion

Optimizing Multiple Unmanned Vehicles (Moises Sudit)

The potential advantages of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) over manned aircraft are significant and motivate the development of advanced UAV technologies. As the use of these systems increase, a number of logistical issues requiring Operations Research models and techniques become apparent. The main interest is in the use of Discrete Optimization in finding implementable solutions to the NP-Hard problems that arise from the introduction of UAVs. Furthermore, most of these problems occur in Dynamic Environments, where special methodologies are required.

Sensor Networks (Moises Sudit)

Wireless sensor networks will likely alter the way we live our everyday lives in the future. With this new paradigm, a set of completely new spatial, as well as temporal issues will be apposed upon us that we must identify and understand, so that we can overcome them in the most effective manor. The research interests are in modeling and solving problems that arise from multiple sensors working in a particular situation.

Heuristic Optimization (Moises Sudit)

"Theory without action is unproductive, but action without theory is blind." As problems in industry, military, and day-to-day life become more complex, the solution strategies become impractical in obtaining optimal solutions. The need to create theoretically-sound approximate procedures are critical in the future of all type of engineering and management problems.

Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (Ismael Regis de Farias)

A wide variety of problems in fields as diverse as manufacturing, transportation, and medicine can be modeled as integer programming problems. Research in this area is focused on the development of theory and computational methods to tackle industry size integer programming models efficiently.

Nonlinear Programming (Ismael Regis de Farias)

Many problems in areas such as finance and chemical processes involve optimization problems with nonlinear objectives and constraints. Finding global optima to such problems is a difficult task. Research interest are in developing theory and computational tools to solve medium to large-scale continuous, as well as integer nonlinear programming models.

Algorithmic Game Theory (Ismael Regis de Farias)

Many problems in economics and social sciences can be modeled as finding equilibria in games. One example is auctions. Research in this area is devoted to the study of computational complexity of games and the use of mathematical programming approaches to finding equilibria.

Quality

Human Factors in Aircraft Maintenance (Colin G. Drury)

Many accidents in commercial aviation are associated with maintenance errors, often resulting from human error. Error reduction efforts in research and industry have focused on applying human factors principles to improve the tasks of the aviation maintenance technician. Improvements have included better tools and equipment, better work environment, and improved organizational effectiveness.

Human Reliability in Aircraft Inspection (Colin G. Drury)

Continued airworthiness of commercial aircraft depends on detecting unsafe conditions (e.g., cracks, corrosion, wiring defects) with high reliability. Even in high-technology inspection systems the human inspector plays a key role in ensuring reliability. Our research and applications cover all aspects of designing inspection tasks to fit the inspector better.

Human Factors in Quality Systems (Colin G. Drury)

The success of modern quality systems, such as Six-Sigma or Total Quality Management, depends critically on the people in the system. We have used human factors engineering techniques to explore and improve human performance in manufacturing and service quality systems. Improvements in quality due to human factors are considerable.

Engineering Metrology (Abhijit Gosavi)

Statistical and operations research tools form the critical component of measurement software in most Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs). Measurements with CMMs are critical in the inspection and quality control of micro-machined and nano-machined parts.

Scheduling

Location Problems with Congestion (Rajan Batta)

Location problems with congestion focus on developing models to strategically locate emergency units in an environment where such congestion effects are prevalent.

Transportation and Logistics

Routing of Hazardous Materials (Rajan Batta)

The volume of hazardous materials (250,000 shipments daily) and the accompanying risk to which citizens are exposed necessitates the development of a set of guidelines to regulate its transport.

Routing of Automated Guided Vehicles (Rajan Batta)

Automated guided vehicles are driverless vehicles that transport product in a manufacturing facility. The resultant control problems are challenging from an OR perspective.

Applied Routing and Scheduling (Rajan Batta)

Perhaps the most significant applications of OR are in routing and scheduling. These problems are based on real-world situations found in companies.

Transportation Injury Research (Rajan Batta)

These problems relate to the prevention of transportation-related injuries. One example is the benchmarking study of an automated call notification device.