An IE Graduate Student Organization (IEGSO) Research Symposium will follow the Pritsker Lecture in Grissom Hall, and a reception will take place in the Grissom Hall Student Excellence Center at the same time.

LECTURE TITLE: "Selecting the Best Simulated System: Thinking Differently About an Old Problem and Alan Pritsker’s Influence"

VIDEO

ABSTRACT

Discrete-event, stochastic simulation - the methodology that Alan Pritsker championed - is typically employed to evaluate the feasibility of a system design; assess the design’s sensitivity to unknowns; or to optimize system performance. When the speaker was taking his first simulation course with Dr. Pritsker in 1980, academic thinking about simulation optimization was just beginning to be influenced by the statistical methodologies of ranking & selection (R&S, pioneered by Shanti Gupta in Statistics at Purdue along with Robert Bechhofer at Cornell). In 1995 Dave Goldsman (Georgia Tech) and the speaker enlisted Dr. Pritsker and his Pritsker Corporation as a collaborator on a far-reaching National Science Foundation project to do the basic research and technology transfer needed to take R&S from theory to practice. Today R&S is a standard simulation tool that is built into many simulation languages. Dr. Pritsker’s influence on the work was substantial, and echoes in the speaker’s head even today as we start to rethink R&S in the age of high performance computing. The talk will be a very gentle introduction to R&S (with demos), stories about Dr. Pritsker, and thoughts about the future of R&S based on ongoing work with Purdue IE's Prof. Susan Hunter.

BIO

Dr. Barry L. Nelson is the Walter P. Murphy Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Lancaster University in England. After receiving his PhD in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University in 1983, he spent eleven years on the faculty of The Ohio State University before moving to Northwestern in 1995.

Nelson has published over 100 research papers and three books, including Discrete-Event System Simulation (5th edition, Prentice Hall, 2010) which has been adopted by over 60 universities, and Foundations and Methods of Stochastic Simulation: A First Course (Springer, 2013). He is a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers (IISE, formerly IIE). His teaching has been acknowledged by a Northwestern University Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, a McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science Teacher of the Year Award, and the IIE Operations Research Division Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Operations Research. He is a three-time recipient of the INFORMS Simulation Society Best Simulation Publication Award, and a three-time winner of the IIE Transactions Best Paper Award in Operations.

Nelson has given plenary talks and lectures all over the world, including his Omega Rho Distinguished Lecture in 2011; the 2013 Titans of Simulation Talk; and the keynote address at the 50th Anniversary Winter Simulation Conference in 2017. For more information, see Dr. Nelson's website.

The Alan B. Pritsker Scholars Distinguished Lecture Series is presented by the Purdue School of Industrial Engineering. It is named for the late Alan B. Pritsker, who made major contributions to industrial engineering, particularly in the area of computer simulation. The lecture series reinforces Pritsker's legacy at Purdue and in the field of industrial engineering. As a leader in simulation, Pritsker was pivotal in building the School of Industrial Engineering's reputation, helping it to become a frontrunner in research and thought leadership. Pritsker was on the Purdue faculty from 1970-98. In 1973 he co-founded Pritsker & Associates to use computer simulation technologies to solve problems in industry and government. In 1989 Pritsker Corporation was formed from the merger of Pritsker & Associates and FACTROL.