Charlie Liu, a senior in operations research at Rice University, was awarded a scholarship from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences to present his research at the annual INFORMS meeting held Oct. 15-18 in Phoenix.
His paper, titled “Strengthened MIP Formulations for the Liver Region Redesign Models of Akshat et al.,” has been submitted for publication with the journal Operations Research Letters.
“Our project aims to use network optimization techniques to promote fairness in the U.S. liver transplant allocation network,” Liu said.
His collaborators were Andrew Schaefer, Noah Harding Chair and professor of computational applied mathematics and operations research (CMOR); Hamidreza Validi, a former postdoc at Rice, now assistant professor of industrial, manufacturing and systems engineering at Texas Tech; and Aysenur Karagoz, a fourth-year doctoral student in CMOR at Rice.
“Charlie has deep and broad research interests and has won many awards for programming,” Schaefer said. “These contests require deep technical knowledge and substantial creativity in applying it. Mathematical rigor and programming are essential skills for operations research majors, and Charlie has excelled in them at the highest level,” Schaefer said.
Earlier this year, Liu received a Goldwater Scholarship, the preeminent award for undergraduates studying natural sciences, engineering or mathematics.