| Fall 2006 UMASS
Amherst Operations Research / Management Science Seminar Series |
Date: Friday, October 27, 2006 Time: 11:00 AM Location: Isenberg School of Management, Room 112 |
| Speaker: Professor Cynthia
Barnhart Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the Engineering Systems Division Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Biography: Cynthia Barnhart is a Professor
in the Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department and the Engineering Systems Division at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At M.I.T., Professor Barnhart has
served as Co-Director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics
and is currently Co-Director of the Operations Research Center.
She has developed and taught courses including Carrier Systems,
Optimization of Large-Scale Transportation Systems, Airline Schedule
Planning and The Airline Industry. Professor Barnhart's research
activities have focused on the development of optimization models and
methods for designing, planning and operating transportation
systems. Her work has been published in several books and
scholarly journals. She has served in editorial positions for
Operations Research, Transportation Science, and Management Science, as
Director at Large for INFORMS, as President of the INFORMS Women in
Operations Research/ Management Science Forum, and as President of the
INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Section. Professor
Barnhart has been awarded the Franz Edelman Prize for Achievement in
Operations and the Management Sciences, the INFORMS Award for the Best
Paper in Transportation and Logistics, the INFORMS award for the
Advancement of Women in Operations Research and Management Science, the
Mitsui Faculty Development Chair, the Junior Faculty Career Award from
the General Electric Foundation and the Presidential Young Investigator
Award from the National Science Foundation. |
| TITLE: OPTIMIZATION APPROACHES TO AIRLINE INDUSTRY
CHALLENGES |
| Abstract: Commercial aviation operations are supported by an extremely complex transportation system, with airports defining the fixed nodes on which the system is built, and aircraft providing the basic transportation services between these nodes. These services are provided for passengers, who demand transportation between a multitude of origins and destinations, and request specific travel dates and times; and are provided by crews of pilots and flight attendants who operate the aircraft and provide service to passengers. The process of coordinating the schedules and plans for these various entities is referred to as aircraft and crew scheduling, or airline schedule planning. In this paper, we highlight some earlier work in schedule planning, describing the approaches taken and the resulting impacts. We then describe more recent efforts that recognize the dynamic, stochastic nature of the air transportation system and attempt to build improved schedules that are more resilient to disruptions; easier to adjust to realized operating conditions; and achieve improved performance and increased utilization of personnel, aircraft and airport resources. |
| This series is organized by the
UMASS Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is
provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of
Finance and Operations Management, INFORMS, and the John F. Smith
Memorial Fund. For questions, please contact the INFORMS Student Chapter Speaker Series Coordinator, Ms. Trisha Woolley, twoolley@som.umass.edu |