Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Achieving Universal Liaisons And Healthcare Contact Center Centralization Through The Use Of Decision Support Tools, Jared S. Fiacco

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Healthcare contact centers often experience a large volume of calls and traditional standardized guidelines can be difficult to follow during an active call. While more common workflows can be memorized, they change often because Healthcare is a dynamic field. Constant updates to workflows, an abundance of different processes and provider preferences, and a fast paced environment can lead Customer Service Liaisons (CSLs) to handle patient inquiries incorrectly. Active decision support tools enable a CSL to follow an updated workflow without needing to navigate through complex guidelines and emails. This research shows that contact center centralization through the use of decision …

Design And Qualification Of A Robust Polyurethane Based Conformal Coating Process For Sodimms, Rajat Dhiman

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Conformal coatings protect printed circuit board assemblies, including the electronic components that the assemblies are populated with. A variety of materials and application methods can be used to conformally coat assemblies. The process setup is crucial to repeatable process reliability. The manual spray based conformal coating is widely used. This method of application was selected due to its compatibility, affordability, and efficiency with the required application. Polyurethanes, one of the families of conformal coatings, provide resistance against abrasion, heat, and chemicals while reducing the risk of tin whiskers. In order to minimize the need for rework and create an efficient, …

Assessing The Tensile And Fatigue Behavior Of Aerosol Jet Printed Nano Silver Particle Traces On Polyimide Substrates, Roshan Muralidharan

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Flexible interconnects are integral to flexible hybrid electronics. Aerosol jet, inkjet or screen printing offer various advantages and disadvantages compared to electroplating, but the behavior of printed metal traces under various types of loading is very different and not yet well understood. This thesis presents an assessment of the electromechanical behavior of aerosol jet printed Nano silver particles on two common polyimide substrates, Upilex and Kapton.

There are many different aspects to electromechanical testing of flexible interconnects, but this work focuses on the effects of tension and cyclic loading. In comparison to the much more widely researched electroplated copper or …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling And In Situ Physics-Based Monitoring Of Aerosol Jet Printing Toward Functional Assurance Of Additively-Manufactured, Flexible And Hybrid Electronics, Roozbeh (Ross) Salary

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Aerosol jet printing (AJP)—a direct-write, additive manufacturing technique—has emerged as the process of choice particularly for the fabrication of flexible and hybrid electronics. AJP has paved the way for high-resolution device fabrication with high placement accuracy, edge definition, and adhesion. In addition, AJP accommodates a broad range of ink viscosity, and allows for printing on non-planer surfaces. Despite the unique advantages and host of strategic applications, AJP is a highly unstable and complex process, prone to gradual drifts in machine behavior and deposited material. Hence, real-time monitoring and control of AJP process is a burgeoning need. In pursuit of this …

The Role Of Criticality Of Gene Regulatory Networks On Emergent Properties Of Biological Systems, Hyobin Kim

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The relationship between criticality of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and dynamics of GRNs at a single cell level has been vigorously studied. However, the relationship between the criticality of GRNs and properties of multicellular organisms at a higher level has not been fully explored. Here we aim at revealing potential roles of the criticality of GRNs at a multicellular and hierarchical level, using a random Boolean network as a GRN. We perform three studies. Firstly, we propose a GRN-based morphogenetic model, and delve into the role of the criticality of GRNs in morphogenesis at a multicellular level. Secondly, we include …

Ensemble Machine Learning To Predict Family Consent For Organ Donation, Md Ehsan Khan

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

There is ever increasing disparity between number of organs needed for transplantation and numbers available for donation to save lives. As a result, thousands of people die every year waiting for organs. Therefore, it is now more important than ever before to take serious actions to decrease this disparity. One way to bridge gap between organ demand and supply is to increase family consent for organ donation. This research studied the factors associated with family consent. Machine Learning approach had been used in very few literature to understand factors related to family consent. This study uses six Ensemble Machine Learning …

Utilizing Data Mining Techniques And Ensemble Learning To Predict Development Of Surgical Site Infections In Gynecologic Cancer Patients, John R. Mcdonough

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Surgical site infections are costly to both patients and hospitals, increase patient mortality, and are the most common form of a hospital acquired infection. Gynecological cancer surgery patients are already at higher risk of developing an infection due to the suppression of their immune system. This research leverages popular data mining techniques to create a prediction model to identify high risk patients. Implemented techniques include logistic regression, naive Bayes, recursive partitioning and regression trees, random forest, feed forward neural network, k-nearest neighbor, and support vector machines with linear kernel. Weighted stacked generalization was implemented to improve upon the individual base …

Robust Vehicle Routing In Disaster Relief And Ride-Sharing: Models And Algorithms, Yinglei Li

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

In this dissertation, the variants of vehicle routing problems (VRPs) are specifically considered in two applications: disaster relief routing and ride-sharing. In disaster relief operations, VRPs are important, especially in the immediate response phase, as vehicles are an essential part of the supply chain for delivering critical supplies. This dissertation addresses the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) and the split delivery vehicle routing problem (SDVRP) with uncertain travel times and demands when planning vehicle routes for delivering critical supplies to the affected population in need after a disaster. A robust optimization approach is used for the CVRP and the SDVRP …

Process Development For High Powered Amplifier Au/Sn Eutectic Die Attach Via Vacuum Furnace, Zachary F. Blanden

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This research was conducted to develop and qualify a vacuum GaAs semiconductor monolithic microwave integrated circuit die attach process. Research was done to understand the causes and effects of voiding levels on device performance and reliability. Simultaneous investigation was done to qualify vacuum-attach as a successful methodology by which minimal voiding levels were achieved. After an initial vacuum-attach trial was completed to verify the methodology, internal accept/reject criteria were developed to qualify die attach interfaces. A dual phase attachment methodology was created to minimize tolerance stacking resulting in more consistent component placement. MATLAB image processing code was developed to quantify …

Modeling Of Selection Of Supply Sources For Hospitals, Siva Raghava Sai Rohith Valiveti

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Most of the hospitals in the USA carry out their purchasing of supplies, including pharmaceuticals, through Group Purchasing Organizations (GPO). GPO is an organization, which aggregates procuring volumes of their member hospitals and negotiates low prices from manufacturers or vendors. According to 2013 statistics, 98% of hospitals in U.S. are purchasing their bulk health care products through GPOs, and it saves U.S. health care industry approximately $36 billion annually. Through these hospitals enjoy advantages by purchasing through their GPOs, there are some disadvantages such as paying membership fees to their GPOs, restricting the purchasing power of the hospitals outside their …

Predictive Modeling Of Fuel Efficiency Of Trucks, Srivatsa Bindingnolle Narasimha

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This research studied the behavior of several controllable variables that affect the fuel efficiency of trucks. Re-routing is the process of modifying the parameters of the routes for a set of trips to optimize fuel consumption and also to increase customer satisfaction through efficient deliveries. This is an important process undertaken by a food distribution company to modify the trips to adapt to the immediate necessities. A predictive model was developed to calculate the change in Miles per Gallon (MPG) whenever a re-route is performed on a region of a particular distribution area. The data that was used, was from …

Robustness Of Complex Networks To Global Perturbations, Samuel Heiserman

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This thesis studies the robustness of complex dynamical networks with non-trivial topologies against global perturbations, following Robert May’s seminal work on network stability, in order to find critical stability thresholds of global perturbations and to determine if their impact varies across different network topologies. Numerical analysis is used as the primary research method. Dynamical networks are randomly generated in the form of a coefficient matrix of stable linear differential equations. The networks are then inflicted with global perturbation (i.e., addition of another random matrix with varying magnitudes) and their stabilities are tested for each perturbation magnitude, to determine at what …

Modeling Collective Dynamics Of Social Systems: Incorporating Various Social Mechanisms Into Agent-Based Models, Dene L. Farrell

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

I present three original papers demonstrating complex behavior arising from collective dynamics in agent-based models (ABM) focusing on evolutionary and cognitive mechanisms. The first report demonstrates the coupled emergence of cooperation and selfish punishment behavior in groups of individuals playing an iterated public goods game. The second report demonstrates the effects of mental modeling within groups of decision makers. The third report demonstrates a synthesis of evolutionary and cognitive mechanisms.

Genetic Stigmergy: Framework And Applications, Joshua A. Brandoff

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Stigmergy has long been studied and recognized as an effective system for self-organization among social insects. Through the use of chemical agents known as pheromones, insect colonies are capable of complex collective behavior often beyond the scope of an individual agent. In an effort to develop human-made systems with the same robustness, scientists have created artificial analogues of pheromone-based stigmergy, but these systems often suffer from scalability and complexity issues due to the problems associated with mimicking the physics of pheromone diffusion. In this thesis, an alternative stigmergic framework called 'Genetic Stigmergy' is introduced. Using this framework, agents can indirectly …