S.06-90
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
• ?
Senate Committee on University Priorities
Memorandum
TO: Senate
FROM:
John Wal
Chair, SC
Vice Pres
RE:
Centre for Operations Research &
?
DATE: ?
June 20,
Decision Sciences ?
(SCUP 06-28)
At its June
14,
2006 meeting SCUP reviewed and approved the proposal for the
creation of the Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS). This
Centre will be a Schedule B Centre based at SFU Surrey.
Motion
That Senate approve and recommend to the Board of Governors the creation of
the Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS) as a
Schedule B Centre.
end.
C:
A. Punnen
is
0
SCUP 06-28
•
?
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
MEMORANDUM
OFFICE OF VICE-PRESIDENT, RESEARCH
TO: Sarah Dench, Secretary
?
FROM: B. Mario Pinto
Senate Committee on University
?
Vice-President, Research
Planning (SCUP)
RE: Centre for Operations Research and DATE: May 17, 2006
Decision Sciences (CORDS)
Attached is a proposal from Dr. Abraham Punnen, Department of Mathematics,
for the establishment of the Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences
(CORDS) as a Schedule B Centre.
The Governing Committee for Centres and Institutes recommends that the
Centre be granted approval by SCUP. Once approved by SCUP, the proposal is to be
forwarded to Senate, followed by submission to the Board of Governors.
Governing Committee:
Dr. John H. Waterhouse
Vice-President, Academic and Provost
Dr. B. Mario Pinto
Vice-President, Research
Attachment
C: ?
Dr. Michael Plishke, Dean Faculty of Science
Dr. Abraham Punrien, Department of Mathematics
Dr. Tom Archibald, Chair, Department of Mathematics
1
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
?
.
DEAN OF SCIENCE
?
j ?
BLJRNABY. BRITISH COLUMBIA V5A 1S6
Telephone: (604) 291-3771
Fax Number (604) 291-3424
April 7, 2006
Dr. B.M. Pinto
Vice President Research
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Dear Mario:
I write in support of Abraham Punnen's proposal to establish a Schedule B research
center, the Center for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS), to be based
at SFU-Surrey. Dr. Punnen's proposal is an ambitious one and has the potential to make
SFU-Surrey much more visible, both locally and nationally. Operations Research is one of
the priorities for the Faculty of Science at SFU-Surrey and we have already made three
tenure track faculty positions available to the Department of Mathematics in this area.
Dr. Punnen has asked for secretarial support for the Centre for a three-year period. The
Faculty will be creating a CUPE secretarial position at SFU-Surrey in the summer of 2006
and the person hired will be available to provide support to the Centre, as well as to other
Science personnel at the Surrey campus. If more support is needed, I will be prepared to
consider making a second secretarial position available.
The proposal anticipates that the Centre will be self-supporting after an interim period of
perhaps three years. I consider this to be a likely scenario, given the opportunities for
consulting that exist.
In summary, I can see no downside to this proposal and am strongly in favor of creating
the center.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Plishke, Dean
Faculty of Scienc
C: Abraham Punnen?
Tom Archibald
.
3
S IIVI 0 N
F
R A S E 1)
--orh
w=o
2
'
W
'
O.
UNIVERSITY SURREY
.&afiam P FunnJ_'n, P1D
11 February 2006
? . ?
cFrofessorocOpratioizsRs&zrc/
Department of Mathematics
14th Floor Central City Tower
13450
102nd
AVE
Surrey. British C3umb
CANADA V3T 5X3
Dr. Mario Pinto
?
Dr. John Waterhouse
Vice President Research
?
Vice-President, Academic and Provost
Simon Fraser University
?
Simon Fraser University
Dear Dr. Pinto and Dr. Waterhouse,
Attached please find my application for the creation ,a. new research
centre - Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS) - at
SFU Surrey. This is part of a major interdisciplinary effort in creating
. significant research strength at the Surrey campus, drawing expertise from
various departments, supported by several recent hiring in Mathematics in the
area of operation research.
• ?
I look forward to your support and help in making the centre a reality.
Please let me know for any questions or comments.
Sincerely,
Abraham P Punnen
..• ?
............
Application f
research centre
for Operations
r the creation
at the Surrey
Research and
(CORDS)"
of a Schedule B
campus: "Centre
Decision Sciences
1 Introduction
Operations research, the science of optimal decision making, is the discipline
dealing with applications of advanced analytical techniques to choose better de-
cisions among feasible alternatives or to generate the set of feasible alternatives
itself. Although the discipline of operations research has its roots in planning
military operations during the Second World War, modern day applications of
operations research goes far beyond assistance in military missions. Operations
research techniques have been successfully applied in various day to day op-
erations in industry and government including, routing and scheduling in the
transportation industry; production planning in manufacturing; pickup, deliv-
ery, storage, and retrieval of containers at container terminals; supply chain
management; radiation therapy treatment planning in cancer care; telecommu
-
nication network design; environmental management, forecasting and queuing;
financial planning, cluster analysis for medical decision making and biological
networks in medicine. Peripheral areas of applications of the discipline include
cost-benefit analysis, policy analysis, and data mining. Thus the relevance of
operations research in the nation's economy is undisputable.
At SFU, expertise in operations research is spread over various faculties and de-
partments such as Business, Computing Science, Engineering, Interactive Arts
and Technology, Mathematics, Resource and Environmental management, and
Statistics and Actuarial Science. The Mathematics department recently decided
to focus its activities in Surrey centered on operations research and made a se-
nior professor level appointment and two assistant professor level appointments.
The assistant professors will join in September 2006 and the department is plan-
fling two more appointments in the area of operations research for the Surrey
campus. The Business faculty has strength in Management Science and is plan-
ning to hire in the area of supply chain management and computing science has
significant strength in the area of algorithms. Thus SFU in general and SFU
Surrey in particular has acquired significant strength in operations research and
is well positioned to take a leadership role in operations research education in
Canada and to undertake challenging and complex research projects of funda-
mental importance or of applied nature in the area of operations research. In
addition to fundamental research, significant opportunities for consulting activ-
ities with industry and governmental entities also exist in the field of operations
research.
To reinforce and strengthen high quality research in operations research at SFU
.
.
-
-
and make SFU a vital focal point in the area of operations research education
and research, we propose the creation of a Schedule B centre called
Centre for
Operations Research and Decision Sciences
(CORDS) to be located on the Sur-
rey campus with a university wide mandate. The Centre will invariably fortify
the research profile of the Surrey campus and assist further development of the
campus. Many colleagues from various departments at the Burnaby campus
kindly offered support and active involvement in this endeavor and the Cen-
tre will be an exemplary interdisciplinary collaborative research unit between
the two campuses and across various departments. It is noteworthy that similar
centers exist at other prominent research universities across the globe. These in-
clude the operations research centre at MIT, Cambridge; Centre for Operations
Research and Econometrics, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; Supply
chain and logistics engineering center, University of Florida; Centre for research
in transportation, University of Montreal; CASTLE lab, Princeton University;
RUTCOR at the Rutgers University, to cite a few. We have research ties with
many of these centers and the successful operations of these fine research insti-
tutions provide renewed enthusiasm to undertake this major initiative at SFU
Surrey.
2 Computing Facilities
We are in the process of creating a "Computational Optimization Laboratory"
at SFU Surrey. Space for the lab is already allocated. A two processor SUN
• Blade 2000 workstation from the NSERC Equipment grant of Abraham Pun-
nen and another single Xeon processor Dell work station, which also belongs to
Abraham Punnen, will be located in the lab. We also plan to acquire about
10 computers which will be used as the front end to access these workstations
and the highly parallel WestGrid network and other computing facilities within
SFU and elsewhere. The lab will be equipped with state of the art software
and a library of software manuals and reference books for operations research
applications. Some of the software licenses and manuals are already in place.
The computational optimization laboratory will be the primary computing fa-
cility dedicated to operations research applications. Other computing labs at
various locations in both Burnaby and Surrey will also have access to operations
research applications software since the Centre will have members from various
departments and research groups.
3 Specific Activities
The activities of the Centre are planned in such a way that the Centre will be
self supporting in about three years time. We hope to get initial secretarial
support from the department/Dean to sustain the interim developmental pe-
riod, which will not exceed three years. There are no other additional resource
0
6
implications. The current activities planned include attracting major research
contracts and consultancy works, organize seminars and workshops for indus-
try, government, and academia and organize short-term non-credit courses. As
a long term goal, subject to approval of participating departments, the Centre
also plans to coordinate interdisciplinary M.Sc and PhD programs in the area
of operations research.
Training Aspects
The Centre will be involved in training graduate students
and post-doctoral fellows. It will also be a place for hosting distinguished visit-
ing scholars for short durations.
Major Research Contracts:
Another primary objective of the Centre is to
attract external research grants.
?
This includes various grants from NSERC,
CIHR, MITACS, Federal and provincial governments, other funding agencies
and direct industry research contracts. The Centre, as a collection of individu-
als from various departments, with complementary expertise under a common
umbrella provides additional edge in obtaining and completing group projects.
This will be a significant source of income for the Centre.
Consultancy Work:
These are short projects with immediate applications of
existing knowledge. Again, this will be a revenue source for the Centre.
Seminars and Workshops:
Seminars and workshops provide a forum for
exchange of scientific ideas. ?
We have already started a major international
symposium series, the first of which was held at SFU on January 27, 2006. We
plan to continue this each year. Further, we have initiated a weekly operations
research seminar series on the Surrey campus. Once this Centre is established,
the seminar series will be coordinated by the Centre.
Non-Credit Courses:
We also plan to conduct short-term non-credit courses
in relevant areas of operations research for specialists in industry and other in-
terested general public. This will be another source of income for the Centre.
Software Development
The Centre plans to develop optimization software
for academic as well as Industrial use. Academic software development will be
under open source structure and work closely with COIN-OR (Computational
infrastructure for operations research) , an international body for open source
software in Operations Research. Lou Hafer, director of COIN-OR will also lead
the software development activities of the Centre.
Other advantages:
The contacts and visibility generated through the activi-
ties of the Centre will be valuable assets for SFU with indirect benefits.
Long term goals:As
a long term objective, subject to the approval of par-
ticipating departments, the Centre plans to facilitate interdisciplinary graduate
programs in operations research. This is a major deviation from the activities of
0
other research centers on campus. This activity is modeled after a very success-
ful program at the operations Research center, MIT, Cambridge. Plans include
a dual M.Sc. degree identical to the dual degree M.Sc. program of the opera-
tions research center at MIT, Cambridge with their collaborating departments
and M.Sc and PhD programs in Operations Research.
4 Centre Governance
Schedule:
CORDS shall be a Schedule B university centre under the authority
of the Vice President, Research.
Location: CORDS shall be located at the Surrey campus of SFU.
Administrative Officer:
Vice President, Research at SFU shall be the ad-
ministrative officer for CORDS.
Director:
CORDS shall have a director who shall be elected for a renewable
three-year term. Associate directors may be appointed by the Director in con-
sultation with the membership. Day-to-day administration of CORDS shall be
the responsibility of the Director. The Director shall exercise the rights of the
Centre under the terms of Section 5.1 of R 40.01 and shall meet the obligations
set out in Section 5.2 of R 40.01.
.
Steering Committee:
The Steering Committee consists of the Director and
four additional faculty members of SFU, elected from the general membership
of the Centre. The Director of the centre shall call meetings of the Steering
Committee. All meetings of the Steering Committee shall be chaired by the
Director. The membership on the Steering Committee shall represent at least
three different departments or faculties, whenever possible. The Director, with
majority vote of the Steering Committee could appoint additional members to
the Steering Committee, from outside SFU, such as reputable industries or gov-
ernment agencies. These appointees shall have voting rights in the Steering
Committee meetings and the number of these external members on the Steer-
ing Committee shall not be more than two at any given time. The term of a
member on the Steering Committee shall be for three years.
Membership:
The Director and Associate Director(s) of the Centre shall be
regular employees of SFU. Since one of the long term goals of the Centre is to
coordinate a graduate program in Operations Research, regular membership in
the Centre shall be available only to faculty members of Simon Fraser University,
including adjunct pyofessors and lecturers. Regular membership in the Centre
shall be obtained through a majority vote of the Steering Committee following
application to the Director. Associate memberships, which entitle individuals
to all the benefits of regular membership, except a vote in Centre proceedings
,A-
1]
dealing with academic matters, shall be available to other individuals with an
interest in operations research. Associate members must be approved in the
same fashion as regular members. Only regular members of the Centre are el-
igible to participate in discussions and meetings related to academic matters.
Additional categories of membership may be established by the Director in con-
sultation with the membership and with the approval of the Administrative
Officer.
Changes:
Any additions and/or changes in the governance procedures outlined
above shall be made with majority approval of the regular members, the Steer-
ing Committee and the Administrative Officer.
Initial Membership:
The initial membership of the Centre for Operations
Research and Decision Sciences will include the following individuals, who have
agreed to participate:
Initial Director:
Abraham P Punnen (Mathematics, Surrey)
Initial Steering
Committee:
(Bojan Mohar, Lou Hafer, Kristine Rothley,
Randall Pyke)
Members:
1.
Binay Battacharya (Computer Science, Burnaby)
2. Petra Berenbrink (Computer Science, Burnaby)
3.
Funda Ergun (Computer Science, Burnaby)
4.
Luis Goddyn (Mathematics, Burnaby)
5.
Arvind Gupta (Computer Science, Burnaby)
6.
Lou Hafer (Computer Science, Burnaby)
7.
Pavol Hell (Computer Science, Burnaby)
8.
Natalia Kouzniak (Mathematics, Surrey)
9.
Ramesh Krishnamurty (Computer Science, Burnaby)
10.
Vive Kumar (SlAT, Surrey)
11.
Ernie Love (Business Administration, Burnaby)
12.
Zhaosong Lu (Mathematics, Surrey, from September,2006)
13.
Bojan Mohar (Mathematics, Burnaby)
14.
Adam Oberman (Matheamtics, Burnaby)
15. Abraham P Punnen (Mathematics, Surrey)
16. Randall Pyke (Mathematics, Surrey)
17.
Kristine Rothley (REM, Burnaby)
18.
S. Cenk Sahinaip (Computer Science, Burnaby)
19.
Mehrdad Saif (Engineering, Burnaby)
20. Tamon Stephen (Mathematics, Surrey, from September 2006)
Associate Members:
Various associate members from other universities, NRC,
and local industries shall join as associate members.
.
.
(c)
SF11 L i
brary
?
z ?
06/02/2006 04:22 PM
SFU Library Home> About the SFU Library> Collection
s> Librar
y
Course Assessments> cords.htm
Library Assessment for
Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences (CORDS)?
June 2, 2006
This is the Library's report on the proposed Centre for Operations Research and Decision Sciences.
The SFU Library supports the establishment of this Centre as outlined in the proposal. The SFU Library is actively
collectin g
in the areas of Operations Research at the Burnaby Campus. As the Centre will be located on the SFU Surrey
Campus, there are library costs associated with it. There are several subject headings in the Blackwell's profile (SFU's
major book wholesaler) that will cover most of the published materials to support research at this centre. The main
subject heading is (6380) Operations Research, which generates approximately 30 new titles
I
year at an average book
price of $120. It is recommended that the Surrey Library add this heading to its book approval profile. Doing so will
enable the comprehensive collecting required to maintain an upper-level research collection suitable for this Centre.
Total library cost:
$2,000 one-time money to build a core collection
$3,600
/
year ongoing money
The Library will request funding from existing allocations designated for the Surrey campus. There are no costs to the
Centre, or the Department of Mathematics.
Maintained by: Megan Crouch [mcrouch@sfu.ca
]
Content last modified: 02/06/2006
Display for print I Display low bandwidth
http:/ Avww.Iib.sfu.ca/about/collections/CourSeaSSeSSmefltS/COrdS.htm
?
1