General Information
Project Description
Weekly Project Updates
Links and Sources
Weekly Updates
As the program goes on updates will be made on this page to show my progress with my research as well as on going activities that happen from the start of the program until it's completion.
Week 1:
Moved into Richardson apartments and went through introduction of what the program offers and other information. Met with Dr. Ming Xie and Dr. E.A Elsayed to get a briefing on the current problem and the progress that is being made with the topic of optimum strategies of container inspection at Port-of-Entry.
Week 2:
Was given four papers to read: Multiobjective Optimization of Port of Entry Inspection Policy, Port of Entry Inspection: Sensor Deployment Policy Optimization ,Container Inspection PDF file, and chapter 7 of Christina Young's thesis, she is a PhD student that is working on the problem. Also was suggested to get well acquainted with MATLAB. Presented my first powerpoint which explained my problem to fellow DIMACS students and directors of the program.
Week 3:
Met with Dr. E.A Elsayed and Christina Young to tighten my problem and work on something specific. Was given an objective function with specified constraints, tightened the constaints and worked on the equations.
Week 4:
Met with Dr E.A Elsayed ran by him the objective function and ideas. Once this was developed needed to develop a method to calculate a lower bound on the minimum tardiness value without actually building the schedule. Began reading up on lower bound, and trying to formulate ideas.
Week 5:
Found and tested a lower bound technique in terms of just specific containers.
Week 6:
Met with Dr. E.A Elsayed and discussed what I found and what other approaches I can use to find other lowerbound methods. Began brainstorming a lower bound for specific inspection stations. A little more difficult. Have some ideas, and began trying to write MATLAB code to test them.
Week 7:
Continued lowerbound approach in terms of specific inspection stations. Found a possible idea, needed to test it and see if it works well. Worked on final powerpoint and practiced. Presented my results and my project to fellow DIMACS students and directors.
Week 8:
My lowerbound technique wasn't working too well, scratched the original idea. Currently brainstorming new ideas. Talked to Dr. E.A Elsayed about future opportunities in the field and what else could be done within the confines of the problem. Taking a month off until school begins in September, going to review project and might continue work with another mentor in Bio - Mathematics.