Jones Seminar: Turboprop to Flying Car—The rise and rise of aviation OR

Optional ZOOM LINK
Meeting ID: 935 8655 7757
Passcode: 008066

Operations research (OR), the science of decision-making, is built on the four pillars of mathematics, algorithms, economics and human behavior. Since its World War II origins, many significant OR developments have been spurred by real-world challenges in transportation and especially in air transportation. This talk first provides a selective history of the prominent aviation industry events and the key OR innovations that they inspired, including those in our research group at Dartmouth. It then dives into the exciting ongoing developments in the commercialization of electric flying cars and the associated mathematical and algorithmic innovation that they have spurred. Finally, we will wrap up with an overview of recently completed work in our group on rapid decision-making combining OR and machine learning, and a quick peak at the role for transformer networks and agentic AI.

Hosted by Professor Geoff Parker.

About the Speaker(s)

Vikrant Vaze
Associate Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth

Vikrant Vaze is the Stata Family Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering, and executive director of the Master of Engineering Management Program at Dartmouth. He received a BS degree from IIT Bombay in civil engineering, and an MS in transportation, an MS in operations research (OR), and a PhD in systems from MIT. Since 2018, he has served as an associate editor of Transportation Science, the top journal in the field of transportation OR. His research focuses on using optimization, machine learning, and game theory for design and operations of transportation, energy/ climate, and healthcare systems. His research has won a dozen best paper honors from various academic and industrial organizations, including INFORMS, AGIFORS, ATM Seminar and others. He has received an NSF CAREER Award, an Excellence in Teaching Award and an Outstanding Service Award from Thayer, and an Ivy+ Provost Leadership Fellow Award. His work has been widely featured in major media outlets over the past 15 years.

Contact

For more information, contact Ashley Parker at ashley.l.parker@dartmouth.edu.