If you want to run a better {anything} you have to make better decisions.<\/em><\/p>\nPowell starts from a foundation he calls framing the problem, which begins by simply defining a decision and then identifying five classes of decisions, several of which are routinely overlooked. He then poses three questions: what are the performance metrics, what types of decisions are being made and what are the uncertainties which lay the foundation for any model. He will then present his universal modeling framework for any sequential decision problem, followed by four meta-classes of policies (methods for making decisions) that include any method, including hybrids, that has been presented in the research literature or used in practice. This opens the door to choosing policies that balance factors from how well they work, to how easy they are to use.\u00a0 Powell will prioritize the methods from most to least widely used, based on his experience using each method.<\/p>\n
Even when not using a computer model to make decisions, proper modeling helps people think about problems. This property has been lost on in the jungle of sophisticated methods in the literature.<\/p>\n
Powell will end by making the case for teaching sequential decision analytics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including to less-analytical students in domain-based fields.<\/p>\n
About Warren B. Powell<\/strong><\/p>\nWarren B. Powell is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for 39 years, and is currently a co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Optimal Dynamics as well as Executive-in-Residence at Rutgers Business School. He was the founder and director of CASTLE Lab, which focused on stochastic optimization with applications to freight transportation, energy systems, health, e-commerce, finance and the laboratory sciences, supported by over $50 million in funding from government and industry. Powell pioneered a new universal framework that can be used to model any sequential decision problem, including the identification of four classes of policies that spans every possible method for making decisions, which is documented in his latest book with Wiley: Reinforcement Learning and Stochastic Optimization: A unified framework for sequential decisions. He has published more than 250 papers, five books, and produced more than 60 graduate students and post-docs. He is the 2021 recipient of the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Transportation Science and Logistics and the 2022 Saul Gass Expository Writing Award. Powell is a fellow of Informs, and the recipient of numerous other awards.<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\nAbout the Ross B. Corotis <\/span>Lecture<\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
The\u00a0<\/span>Ross B. Corotis Lecture<\/strong> for Civil and Systems Engineering was established at Johns Hopkins University to commemorate the engineer who established the University’s Department of Civil and Systems Engineering. The lecture is endowed by alumni, faculty, and friends of the department in honor of prominent structural engineer, Ross B. Corotis, which contributes to the ongoing guest seminars in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering and provides for these special lectures.<\/p>\nRoss B. Corotis, NAE, is an emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. He researches the coordinated roles of engineering and social science in framing and communicating long-term hazard risks and resiliency for the built environment. With three degrees from MIT, he was on the faculty at Northwestern University, established the Department of Civil Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and was Dean of Engineering at CU Boulder.<\/p>\n
He has chaired committees on structural safety for ASCE and ACI, the Advisory Committee of IASSAR, served as science advisor for the Department of State in Washington, DC., and was editor of the journals Structural Safety and ASCE\u2019s Journal of Engineering Mechanics. For the National Academies, he served on the Building Research Board, the Disasters Roundtable, the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment, chaired the Laboratory Assessment Board, was founding chair of the Committee on NIST Technical Programs, and was chair of the Civil & Environmental Engineering section of the NAE.<\/p>\n
He is a registered professional engineer and structural engineer, Distinguished Member of ASCE, Fellow of the Structural Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Institutes, recipient of the ASCE OPAL Lifetime Achievement Award in Education, and author of more than 250 publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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The Universal Modeling Framework for Sequential Decision Problems: The Next Generation of AI