Focusing on tuberculosis in India, the research team devised an optimization algorithm to better allocate outreach budgets to improve disease control efforts.
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering Sze-chuan Suen
A paper co-authored by USC Viterbi School of Engineering WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering Sze-chuan Suen has been recognized with an honorable mention for the Best Application Paper in the 2021 IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Operations Engineering and Analytics.
The research, titled “Allocating outreach resources for disease control in a dynamic population with information spread,” was co-authored by Bryan Wilder and Milind Tambe from the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.
Outreach and education programs are critical to disease control, as infected individuals must understand disease symptoms in order to seek care in a timely manner, and to not further contribute to the spread of disease to others. The research team sought to address the challenges faced by public health organizations, which often have limited resources for outreach to potentially at-risk populations and must carefully design their campaigns to maximize effectiveness. Focusing on tuberculosis control in India, the research team designed an optimization algorithm to divide a limited outreach budget between population sub-groups to minimize long-term disease prevalence under uncertain population dynamics.
The Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering congratulates Suen and her co-authors on this recognition for their research.
Published on July 29th, 2022
Last updated on August 2nd, 2022