................................ A PPPPP NN N A A P P N N N A A P P N N N AAAAAAA PPPPP N N N A A P N NN A A P N N ...................................... THE APPLIED PROBABILITY NEWSLETTER The Official Communication of the Applied Probability Society of INFORMS Volume 22 Number 2 June 10, 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE: -------------------------------------------------------------------- COUNCIL NEWS MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR MESSAGE FROM THE WEBSITE EDITOR NOTE REGARDING APPLIED PROBABILITY MUSINGS APPLIED PROBABILITY AWARDS CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: ERLANG PRIZE INFORMS AWARD WINNERS NAE AWARD CARL M. HARRIS SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT INFORMS CONFERENCES MINUTES OF MIAMI BUSINESS MEETING 12TH INFORMS APPLIED PROBABILITY CONFERENCE (BEIJING) TALKS FOR SAN JOSE 2002 INFORMS SPONSORED SESSIONS OTHER CONFERENCES IEEE CONFERENCE ON DECISION AND CONTROL 2002 PERFORMANCE 2002 MISCELLANEOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS NEW BOOK: HANDBOOK OF MARKOV DECISION PROCESSES JOURNAL OF SCHEDULING OPENINGS: ACADEMIC POSITIONS EDITOR'S COORDINATES -------------------------------------------------------------------- MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR -------------------------------------------------------------------- I am pleased to inform you that David Yao and Hong Chen are actively working on our 12st special meeting in Beijing in July, 2003. A contract is signed and a tentative program committee assembled. Information about the meeting is included in this newsletter and will accelerate in the future. During our last National meeting I am pleased that three of our members received national INFORMS awards: Ward Whitt received the John Von Neumann Theory Prize for fundamental contributions to theory, Mike Harrison received the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for the best publications in OR/MS, and Stephen Pollock received the George E Kimball Medal for service to INFORMS. While the honor goes exclusively to these members I feel APS deserves some credit over the years for creating an environment conducive for attracting the best in OR/MS. One of my goals as chair was to promote membership. I am pleased that our membership ended 2001 at its highest level in 5 years although it dropped somewhat in 2002. I hope all members continue to encourage students and our international colleagues to join and participate in APS. I hope faculty will help organize their students to carpool and share hotel rooms if that is what it takes to make it economically feasible for more to attend our national meeting. To encourage early participation in our society can have a profound impact. Our efforts to develop an electronic abstract archive, APEA, is proceeding but is in need of stronger participation from the membership. If one hypothesizes that the value of the service grows with the square of the number of abstracts and the "cost" of preparing an abstract is linear there is a structural challenge of exceeding a critical number of abstracts before the service is self-reinforcing. We are not yet at that level. During the summer a more directed effort will be made to solicit abstracts (to apea@stats.uwo.ca). At the national level, the INFORMS Board voted to restructure itself starting 2003. I expect the new structure will make the Board and the business office more responsive to our members. The level of representation in the new Board is dependent on subdivisions membership. That APS ended 2001 with over 500 members will increased its relative representation. The Board also recently started a Fellows Award. The first set of Fellows will be selected in time for the fall national meeting. Primarily as a result of a history of successful meetings our society has a substantial savings. I encourage members to suggest approaches to invest some of our savings in productive new initiatives to further strengthen our society. More generally, I encourage members to contact me with suggestions and initiatives for further improving our society. Finally, I thank all volunteers present and past for making APS what it is today. In particular, I thank Emmanuel Fernandez for so ably organizing one of the larger upcoming Applied Probability Clusters in my recent memory. I look forward to seeing you in San Jose in the fall and in Beijing next year. Les Servi APS Chair servi@ll.mit.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- MESSAGE FROM THE WEBSITE EDITOR -------------------------------------------------------------------- It has been a great year for our society and I feel honored to be covering the events of this magnificient year. This newsletter hightlights many of the achievements and if we have inadvertantly missed something, please accept our apologies and bring the events to our attention. In terms of things to come in the near future, I would like to mention that Michael Rothkopf and Les Servi (our society chair) are nominated to run for the position of President-Elect of INFORMS in the Fall 2002 election. I would also like to encourage the APS members to take a look at the 50th anniversary issue of Operations Research (the Jan-Feb issue of this year), if you have not had a chance to do that as yet. As always, we are soliciting articles for our newsletter and website. Also if there are any ways we could improve the newsletter and website, please do not hesitate to let us know. N. Gautam APS Newsletter and Website Editor ngautam@psu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE REGARDING APPLIED PROBABILITY MUSINGS -------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Colleagues, As you may recall, a couple of years ago I solicited contributions for a retrospective on applied probability, to be included in a book that was supposed to come out at the San Antonio INFORMS meeting in Fall 2000. Each INFORMS Society was asked to contribute a chapter. Several of you were good enough to send me your personal reminiscences. That project did not materialize, however, and instead Larry Wein proposed a Special Issue of Operations Research to celebrate its 50th anniversary. My contribution was grandfathered into this issue, which is about to appear. The final version of my article is about half the length of the original submission. Moreover, the focus of the article has narrowed to cover just queueing models and the personal reminiscences (apart from an abridged version of my own) ended up on the cutting-room floor. It seemed to me that the original version might be of interest, especially to the members of the Applied Probability Society. So I have put a copy of this version, slightly revised, on my web page (in both .ps and .pdf versions). You may access it at: http://www.or.unc.edu/~sandy/ Look under "Recent Publications" for the paper with the title, "Applied Probability in Operations Research: A Retrospective". I would like to take this opportunity to thank Narayan Bhat, Marcel Neuts, Uma Prabhu, Les Servi, and Dick Serfozo for their generous contributions, which appear in the version on my web page. Sincerely, Sandy Stidham Shaler Stidham, Jr., Professor Department of Operations Research CB #3180, Smith Building University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3180 USA tel: (919) 962-3834 fax: (919) 962-0391 e-mail: sandy@email.unc.edu --------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: ERLANG PRIZE --------------------------------------------------------------- THE ERLANG PRIZE FOR YOUNG APPLIED PROBABILISTS CALL FOR NOMINATIONS Sponsored by The Applied Probability Society of INFORMS The Applied Probability Society of INFORMS (APS) is soliciting nominations for the bi-annual Erlang Prize for young applied probabilists. The APS will be awarding the Erlang Prize to a young applied probabilist who has made outstanding contributions to applied probability. The Erlang Prize is a prestigious award for young applied probabilists, providing recognition for exceptional achievement in the early stage of one's career. The previous winners are: Dimitris Bertsimas, Paul Glasserman, Larry Wein, Xiuli Chao, Jim Dai, Balaji Prabharkar and David Tse. This year's Erlang Prize Committee consists of Richard Weber (chair), Larry Wein and Bill Massey. Eligibility: Anyone who is 35 or younger on January 31, 2002 is eligible. Nominations: Anyone can nominate any young applied probabilist. Nominations consist of a description of the significance of the nominee's work and supporting documents. Send nominations to the Prize Committee Chair at the address listed below. Nominations will be held in confidence. Decisions of the Erlang Prize Committee are final. Prizes: The prize consists of a plaque and a $1000 check. The Prize will be awarded at the INFORMS National Meeting in San Jose, California, in November 2002. The winner will be notified approximately one month prior to the San Jose INFORMS National Meeting. Presentation of the Prize will be made by a member of the Erlang Prize Committee at the AP business meeting at the San Jose INFORMS National Meeting. Date: Complete nominations must be received by July 31, 2002. Address: Send four copies of the nominations to: Richard Weber Statistical Laboratory Centre for Mathematical Sciences Wilberforce Road Cambridge CB3 0WB email: rrw1@cam.ac.uk voice: +44-1223-337944 fax: +44-1223-337956 The Prize committee for 2002 is: Richard R. Weber, Chair, Statistical Laboratory, Cambridge Lawrence M. Wein, Sloan School of Management, MIT William A. Massey, Operations Research & Financial Engineering, Princeton --------------------------------------------------------------- INFORMS AWARD WINNERS --------------------------------------------------------------- Several members of the Applied Probability Society won prizes at the INFORMS conference in Miami. Pictures are available at the APS website (http://www.ie.psu.edu/aps) by clicking on "Prize Winners". The Fredrick W. Lanchester Prize was awarded to J. Michael Harrison for a series of papers in performance analysis and control of Brownian networks. The Lanchester Prize is awarded for the best published work in OR/MS. The John von Neumann Theory Prize for 2001 was awarded to Ward Whitt. The von Neumann Prize is awarded for fundamental contribution to theory. One of the recepients of the George E. Kimball Medal for 2001 was Stephen M. Pollock. The Kimball Medal is awarded for service to INFORMS. The 2001 Best Publication Award of the APS of INFORMS went to Edward G. Coffman, Jr., Anatolii A. Puhalskii and Martin I. Reiman for a pair of papers on Heavy Traffic Averaging Principle for Polling Systems (Annals of Applied Probability 5: 681-719, 1995 and Mathematics of Operations Research 23: 257-304, 1998). --------------------------------------------------------------- NAE AWARD --------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen M. Pollock, Herrick Professor of Manufacturing and Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He was elected for his contributions to the education, science, and analysis of public and private sector operational systems. Prof. Pollock is an active member of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society. Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature of engineering theory and practice," and those who have demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology." The following is a list of INFORMS members already in NAE of which several are applied probabilists. Bixby, Blumstein, Bonder, Cook, Dantzig, Disney, Fisher, Geoffrion, Glover, Hess, Hillier, Hodgson, Howard, Iglehart, Johnson (Ellis), Keeney, Kuo, Larson, Little, Magnanti, Manne, Maxwell, Nadler, Nemhauser, Pollock, Pritzker, Ratliff, Solberg, Tien, Veinott and Whitt. --------------------------------------------------------------- CARL M. HARRIS SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT --------------------------------------------------------------- Upon Carl's untimely death two years ago, George Mason University set up the Carl M. Harris Scholarship Endowment. The fund is used to provide scholarships to outstanding students in operations research. We wish to keep Carl's name alive and are going out on a call for donations in order to raise funds sufficient for maintaining a perpetual scholarship endowment in his name. Carl was a vital member of the Applied Probability community which he dearly loved and contributed to so greatly, and we hope that you can help us attain this goal. Contributions should be sent to: The Carl M. Harris Scholarship Endowment The George Mason Foundation Director of Development, IT&E MS 5C8 George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 --------------------------------------------------------------- MINUTES OF MIAMI BUSINESS MEETING --------------------------------------------------------------- Minutes of the Applied Probability Society's Business Meeting Miami, November 5, 2001 Submitted by: Hayriye Ayhan 1. Les Servi opened the meeting at 6:15pm. 2. Les Servi announced that J. Michael Harrison won the Lanchaster Prize and Ward Whitt won the von Neumann Prize. 3. Les Servi mentioned that number of members of the Applied Probability Society has been increasing over the years. As of 2001, Applied Probability Society has 459 members. He also added that there were 347 participants at the New York meeting. 4. The 2001 Best Publication Award of the Applied Probability Society went to Edward G. Coffman, Jr., Anatolii A. Puhalskii and Martin I. Reiman for a pair of papers on A Heavy Traffic Averaging Principle for Polling Systems (Annals of Applied Probability 5: 681-719, 1995 and Mathematics of Operations Research 23: 257-304, 1998). Larry Wein presented the award to Marty Reiman. 5. Les Servi announced that David Stanford, Emmanuel Fernandez and Ulrich Rieder are the departing council members. Guy Latouche will replace Ulrich Rieder as the international liaison member. Eugene Feinberg and Mark Lewis were also voted as the new council members. Les Servi also announced that Marty Puterman is leaving the Prize committee and he will be replaced by Richard Weber. Erlang Prize nominations should be emailed to Richard Weber at R.R.Weber@statslab.cam.ac.uk 6. Les Servi mentioned that Larry Wein is the editor of 50th Anniversary Issue of Operations Research. Stuart Dreyfus, Samuel Karlin, Leonard Kleinrock, Jim Jackson, Sandy Stidham, and Peter Whittle are some of the contributors. 7. Les Servi is the Applied Probability program chair of the IFORS meeting which will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland from July 8 to July 12 2002. Anyone interested in giving a talk should contact Les Servi at servi@ll.mit.edu. Emmanuel Fernandez is the Applied Probability Cluster chair at the INFORMS National meeting which will be held in San Jose, CA from November 7 to November 10 2002. Anyone interested in organizing a session should contact Emmanuel Fernandez at emmanuel@ececs.uc.edu 8. Les Servi announced that Applied Probability Society is one of the richest subdivisions of INFORMS. One suggestion to spend some of the money is to introduce a student paper/presentation prize. Costis Maglaras talked on the awards given to the students by the other subdivisions in INFORMS. Any suggestions on this paper/presentation prize should be emailed to Les Servi at servi@ll.mit.edu. 9. Gideon Weiss announced that Haifa will not be able to host the 12th INFORMS Applied Probability meeting due to security reasons. Society members at the meeting voted that China should be considered as a possible host. 10. Winfried Grassmann encouraged the attendees to submit abstracts to Applied Probability Electronic Abstracts (APEA). Abstracts can be emailed to Winfried Grassmann at grassman@cs.usask.edu or posted at www.cs.usask.ca/apea 11. Dean Hartley who is the board representative of the Applied Probability Society talked about the INFORMS Board restructuring. The current INFORMS Board Structure consists of 20 members: 5 executive committee, 6 VPs, 5 divisions directors and 4 directors-at-large. The VPs have functional responsibility for effective operation of their areas. The directors-at-large generally assume liaison responsibility for groups of committees: awards, education, outreach, membership and member services. The 5 division directors represent constituencies of subdivisions. The Strategic Planning committee of INFORMS proposes the following new board structure 1. President 2. President-elect 3. Past-president 4. Secretary 5. Treasurer 6. VP Education 7. VP Information Technology 8. VP Meetings 9. VP Membership and Professional Recognition 10. VP Outreach (International Activities) 11. VP Practice 12. VP Publications 13. VP Sections/Societies 14. VP Chapters/Fora They also propose a new committee, the Subdivision Standing Committee (SSC) which consists of 12 members elected by the members of subdivisions. Each of the Society with at least 500 members as of July 1 each year will elect one member to the SSC for the following year. Membership includes all members - regular, students and non-INFORMS members. There are currently three such Societies. Sections with at least 25 members (including Societies below 500 members), as a whole, will elect four members. Chapters with at least 25 members, as a whole, will elect four members. Fora with at least 25 members, as a whole, will elect one member. When a Section becomes a Society (or a Society returns above 500 members), they get a dedicated member and the total number of members increases by one. The maximum size of the SSC is 18. Once that number is reached, new Societies get a vote and remaining seats are split among Sections, Chapters and Fora. The SSC structure, rights and responsibilities will be spelled out in the Bylaws Hence, the key change is that the new Board will be functionally oriented (focusing on meeting, publications, membership, etc) and the Subdivision Standing Committee will be a body which represents the subdivisions and will meet regularly with the president of INFORMS. 12. The meeting was adjourned at 7:16pm. ================================================================= Hayriye Ayhan http://www.isye.gatech.edu/people/faculty/Hayriye_Ayhan/ School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332-0205 Phone:(404)894-2308 Fax : (404)894-2301 --------------------------------------------------------------- 12TH INFORMS APPLIED PROBABILITY CONFERENCE (BEIJING) --------------------------------------------------------------- The next Applied Probability Conference will be held in Beijing, China at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel from June 25-27, 2003. Please mark down these dates on your calendar. A call for papers will be circulated to the APS members in the next newsletter. In order to get special rates for the rooms as well as other conference facilities, it is required that a certain minimum number of guests stay at the Sheraton. Therefore the organizers would like to urge you to stay at the Sheraton which provides very competitive rates (for example deluxe single room is $110+tax with free American Buffet Breakfast). Room rate is valid from June 21 to June 30, 2003. (Hotel registration form will be put on our website.) Questions and comments contact David Yao or Hong Chen -------------------------------------------------------------------- TALKS FOR SAN JOSE 2002 INFORMS SPONSORED SESSIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------- Conference: INFORMS San Jose, CA, November 17-20, 2002 Session cluster sponsored by the Applied Probability Society Cluster organizer: Emmanuel Fernandez Address: Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering & Computer Science 811L Rhodes Hall University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH 45221-0030 Email: emmanuel@ececs.uc.edu Web: smitlab.ececs.uc.edu Phone: (513) 556-4785 (Fax: (513) 556-7326) Session 1 Title: Topics in Queueing Networks Session Chair: Sunil Kumar, Stanford University. 1. "Discrete Proportional Processor Sharing Service Policies for Multiclass Queueing Networks" by Jim Dai. 2. "Functional differential equation models for congestion control" by Ray Srikant. 3. "Queueing Networks with Customer Choice in Routing" by Sunil Kumar. 4. "Title: To be determined" by Peter Glynn. Session 2 Title: Numerical Methods in Queueing Analysis Session Co - Chairs: John Shortle, George Mason University, and Martin J. Fischer, Mitretek Systems 1. "The Accuracy of Eigenvalue Solutions in QBD Processes with Tridiagonal Matrices" by Winfried Grassmann. 2. "Using Symbolic Computation to Derive Moments of the Time to Ruin" by Steve Drekic. 3. "Analytical Properties of the Waiting Time in Variants of M/D/1 Queue" by Percy Brill. 4. "Why Simulating Queues with Pareto Service is So Difficult" by John Shortle, Donald Gross, Denise M. B. Masi. Session 3 Title: Brownian Motion Models of Stochastic Networks Session Chair: John Hasenbein, University of Texas at Austin 1. "Drift Control of Regulated Brownian Motion on a Bounded Interval" by Baris Ata, J. Michael Harrison. 2. "Asymptotically Optimal Dynamic Pricing for a Telecommunications Service Provider" by Martin I. Reiman. 3. "A Brownian Model of Stochastic Processing Network" by Hong Chen. 4. "Managing Parallel-Server Operations: Insights from Heavy Traffic Theory" by Melanie A. Rubino, J. Michael Harrison. Session 4. Title: Analysis and optimization of complex (multi-type) stochastic systems Session Chair: Kevin D.Glazebrook, University of Edinburgh, UK. 1. "Analyzing the limiting behavior of a muti-class strict-priority fluid queue by stochastic discretization" by I. Adan, E. Tzenova and V.G. Kulkarni. 2. "On the Markov Block Replacement Policy in Multivariate Repairable Systems" by H. Li and S.H. Xu. 3. "Optimal policies for single class M/G/1 systems with a charge for service and index heuristics for multi-class systems with general holding costs" by K.D.Glazebrook, R.R.Lumley, P.S.Ansell and J.Nino-Mora. 4. "Priority Markov Chains of M/G/1 Type" by H.R. Gail, Sid Hantler and B. A. Taylor. Session 5. Title: Stochastic control of queues Session Chair: Karl Sigman, Columbia University 1. "Title: forthcoming", by Garud N. Iyengar. 2. "Title: forthcoming", by Assaf J. Zeevi. 3. "Stochastic admission control with queueing" by Jan Cosyn and Karl Sigman. Session 6. Title: Dynamic Stochastic Spatial Models in Medicine Session Chair: Lawrence M. Wein, Stanford University 1. "Optimal Directed Evolution for Protein Design" by Yuval Nov and Lawrence M. Wein. 2. "Optimizing the Choice of Influenza Vaccines" by Joseph T. Wu, Lawrence M. Wein and Alan S. Perelson. 3. "Design and Analysis of a Novel Approach to Drug Delivery" by Lawrence M. Wein, Robert Langer and Noah Lotan. Session 7. Title: Operational Models in Semiconductor Manufacturing I Session Co-Chairs: Emmanuel Fernandez, University of Cincinnati and Michael Fu, University of Maryland, 1. "FORCe - A factory operations research for semiconductor manufacturing excellence" by Mani Janakiram, Frank H. Robertson, John Fowler and K. J. Stanley. 2. "Performance Analysis of Demand Planning Approaches for Aggregating, Forecasting and Disaggregating Interrelated Demands" by Argon Chen and Jakey Lan. 3. "Strategic Capacity Planning for the Semiconductor Industry: Current Industrial Practice and New Directions" by Woohnghee Tim Huh, Robin Roundy. 4. "Incorporating Production Planning into Preventive Maintenance Scheduling in Semiconductor Fabs" by Xiaodong Yao, Michael Fu, Steven Marcus and Emmanuel Fernandez. Session 8. Title: Operational Models in Semiconductor Manufacturing II Session Co-Chairs: Emmanuel Fernandez, University of Cincinnati and Michael Fu, University of Maryland, 1. "Approximating resource dedication in re-entrant queueing networks" by Ayzer Mungan, Theresa Roeder, and Lee Schruben. 2. "A Geometric Model of Capacity Requirement Analysis for Aggregate Product Demands" by Yon-Chun Chou and J-Z Lin. 3. "A Markov Decision Process Model for Dynamic Capacity Allocation" by Ying He, Shalabh Bhatnagar, Michael C. Fu and Steven I. Marcu. 4. "Preventive Maintenance Optimization for Unreliable Queueing Systems" by Xiaodong Yao, Michael Fu, Steven Marcus and Emmanuel Fernandez. Session 9. TUTORIAL: Scheduling Multiclass Queueing Networks via Fluid Models Speakers: John Hasenbein and Ron Billings, University of Texas at Austin Session 10. Title: Stochastic Modeling in Military Applications Session Chair: Jeffrey P. Kharoufeh, Air Force Institute of Technology 1. "A Stochastic Decision Model for Cooperative Path-Planning for Autonomous Vehicles" by Matt Flint, Emmanuel Fernandez and Marios Polycarpou. 2. "Threshold-based policies for a distributed multi-agent architecture" by Natarajan Gautam. 3. "Transient Analysis of a Sortie Generation Process Using Cumulant Functions" by Tim Matis. 4. "Stochastic Modeling for Aircraft Prognostics" by Steven Cox and Jeff Kharoufeh. Session 11. Title: Stochastic Modeling in Military Applications Session Co-Chairs: Jeffrey P. Kharoufeh, AFIT and Emmanuel Fernandez, The University of Cincinnati "Panel Discussion: Threats, Security and Stochastic OR" Panelists: Dr. Dick Deckro, AFIT Col Mike McGinnis, Ph.D., United States Military Academy Lt Col Edward Pohl, United States Military Academy Session 12. TUTORIAL: Using Random Equations for Reliable IP Transport Speaker: Michael Luby, Cofounder and CTO, Digital Fountain, Inc. Session 13. Title: Queueing Systems: Analysis and Control I Session Chair: Amy Ward, Georgia Tech. 1. "Non-sufficiency of Pseudostation conditions in Fluid and Stochastic Networks" by John Hasenbein. 2. "Title: Not available" by Shane Henderson. 3. "Stabilizing Kelly Networks with Setups" by Otis Jennings and Jim Dai. 4. "Performance Measure Approximations for GI/GI/1 Queues with Reneging" by Amy R. Ward and Peter W. Glynn. Session 14 Title: Queueing Systems: Analysis and Control II Session Chair: Mark E. Lewis, U. Michigan 1. "Optimality of D-Policies for an Mx/G/1 Queue with a Removable Server" by Eugene A. Feinberg, and Offer Kella. 2. "Cyclic Queueing Networks with Subexponential Service Times" by Hayriye Ayhan, Zibigniew Palmowski and Sabine Schlegel. 3. "Dynamic Load Balancing in Parallel Queueing Systems: Stability and Optimal Control" by Douglas G. Down and Mark E. Lewis. 4. "Approximations for Queue Design under Arrival Rate Uncertainty" by Andrew Ross and J. George Shanthikumar. Session 15. Title: Queueing Systems: Analysis and Control III Session Chair: Mark E. Lewis, U. Michigan 1. "Title: Not Supplied" by Jerome Coumbs-Reyes and Robert D. Foley. 2. "A Quasi Birth and Death Process with an Infinite Sublevel" by Wayne S. Horn, David Stanford and Guy Latouche. 3. "Title: Not Supplied" by Hyun-soo Ahn. 4. "Optimal Pricing for a Bandwidth Loss Model with Quality of Service Constraints" by William A. Massey, Robert C. Hampshire and Qiong Wang. Session 16. Title: Pricing in Communication Networks Session Chair: Mark E. Lewis, U. Michigan 1. "Network Pricing with Stochastic Demand and Multiple QoS Classes" by Jussi Keppo, Sofia Rinaz and Gaurav Shah. 2. "Provisioning Bandwidth for Real-Time Services" by Robert C. Hampshire, William A. Massey, Debasis Mitra and Qiong Wang. 3. "Uniform Pricing in a Single Server Service Facility" by Serhan Ziya, Hayriye Ayhan and Robert D. Foley. 4. "Pricing Control Policies for a Queueing System with Periodically Varying Parameters" by Eunghwan Yoon and Mark E. Lewis. --------------------------------------------------------------- IEEE CONFERENCE ON DECISION AND CONTROL 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------- Members of INFORMS are invited to participate (at a reduced registration fee) in the 2002 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Dec. 10-13 in Las Vegas. There will be sessions on control in communication and transportation network, discrete-event systems, stochastic systems, etc. More information can be found at http://www.eecs.tulane.edu/cdc02/ --------------------------------------------------------------- PERFORMANCE 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------- IFIP WG 7.3 International Symposium on Computer Performance Modeling, Measurement and Evaluation September 22 - 27, 2002 Rome, Italy Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to: * Performance-oriented design and evaluation studies of: Internet servers, Web architectures, communication networks, computer architectures, database systems, operating systems, Web server software, distributed systems, multimedia systems, mobile and wireless systems, file and I/O systems, memory systems, real-time systems, and fault-tolerant systems. * Techniques and algorithms for: analytic modeling, performance optimization, queueing analysis, stochastic modeling, model verification and validation, power analysis, hybrid models, experimental design, system measurement and monitoring, reliability analysis, workload characterization, simulation, and statistical analysis. IMPORTANT DATES: Submission of full papers and Proposals for special sessions: March 24, 2002 Notification of acceptance: May 25, 2002 Camera-Ready papers: June 20, 2002 For Further Information: info@perf2002.uniroma2.it http://perf2002.uniroma2.it --------------------------------------------------------------- NEW BOOK: HANDBOOK OF MARKOV DECISION PROCESSES --------------------------------------------------------------- Handbook of Markov Decision Processes Methods and Applications Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston/Dordrecht/London, 2002(565 pages) edited by Eugene A. Feinberg, SUNY at Stony Brook, USA Adam Shwartz, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel This book, written by a group of leading experts in Markov Decision Processes, covers all of the basics and most state of the art results in discrete time Markov Decision Processes, and includes several key applications including neuro-dynamic programming, financial, telecommunication, and water reservoir management applications. For details, samples, and a special introductory offer ($99.00 instead of $175.00) go to http://www.ee.technion.ac.il/~adam/MDPHandBook (Israel) or http://www.ams.sunysb.edu/~feinberg/MDPHandBook (USA) --------------------------------------------------------------- JOURNAL OF SCHEDULING --------------------------------------------------------------- Journal of Scheduling is a unique, international forum for the publication of all forms of scheduling oriented research. The scope of the journal includes: - Techniques and applications of scheduling across a variety of disciplines - Quality theoretical, experimental and applied research - The very latest computational and algorithmic advances - Solutions to real life scheduling problems To find out more about the journal, and to see for yourself the quality and value the Journal of Scheduling could add to your research, please visit www.interscience.wiley.com/journalofscheduling and download your free online sample copy today. If you have any further questions about the journal, please contact Zo Mitchell at Technology_uk@wiley.co.uk Thank you for your time, we look forward to hearing from you. (submitted by Rhonda Righter) --------------------------------------------------------------- OPENINGS: ACADEMIC POSITIONS --------------------------------------------------------------- Niagara University, a private Catholic institution sponsored by the Vincentian Community, has a tenure-track opening for an assistant or associate professor in the area of production/operations and general management starting Fall, 2002 in the Department of Commerce in the College of Business Administration. The College of Business Administration is AACSB accredited and offers undergraduate majors in accounting and commerce with concentrations in management, human resource management, transportation/logistics, marketing, economics & finance, and international business in addition to an MBA. Responsibilities include teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in the following areas: production/operations management and general management. The candidate must have an earned Ph.D. and a commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and service. Interested persons should forward a curriculum vita and letter of intent to Dr. Michael Ishman, Chair, Search Committee, College of Business Administration, Niagara University, New York 14109. Inquiries and applications may be made via e-mail to ishman@niagara.edu. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Niagara University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply. -------------------------------------------------------------------- EDITOR'S COORDINATES -------------------------------------------------------------------- I look forward to receiving your input for the Applied Probability Newsletter and the Web page. Natarajan Gautam, Ph.D. Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 Phone: 814-865-1239; Fax: 814-863-4745 mailto : ngautam@psu.edu http://www.ie.psu.edu/people/faculty/gautam.htm Applied Probability Society Home Page: ====================================================================