Events Calendar

Epstein ISE Department Seminar

Speaker: Dr. Ali E. Abbas, Art Davis Faculty Scholar, Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Talk Title: "Bracing for Today's National Security Decisions"

Abstract: Some of the significant features of our era include the prevalence of large-scale systems; advances in artificial intelligence, medicine and public policy; the role of social networks in predicting behavior and toppling governments, and the presence of multiple stakeholders with multiple objectives. Amidst these features lie eminent possibilities of cyber and biological attacks that pose significant threats to our infrastructure; liberty and pursuit of happiness. To remain ahead, National security policies within this era must proactively capitalize on advancements in different disciplines using multidisciplinary teams that can operate together coherently and communicate their results to policy makers.

In this talk, I will show examples of how tools derived in different disciplines can be unified into a theory of decision making that enhances national security decisions. These tools include connections between advances in utility theory (economics) and information theory to better predict adversary behavior; connections between the recent advances in multiattribute utility theory and controls theory for better mechanisms of information gathering with unmanned vehicles in hostile environments; ongoing work on connections between social networks and public policy, and essential decision analysis tools tailored to guide planetary defense missions conducted by NASA.

TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014
RONALD TUTOR HALL (RTH) ROOM 526
10:00 - 11:00 AM


Biography: Ali E. Abbas received an M.S. in electrical engineering; M.S. in engineering economic systems & operations research; PhD in management science and engineering, and PhD minor in electrical engineering all from the school of engineering at Stanford University. His research interests include all aspects of decision making under uncertainty (broadly defined), information theory, signal processing, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics. He is co-author of two forthcoming books “The Foundations of Decision Analysis” with Ronald Howard, and the single-author book “the Foundations of Multiattribute Utility”. He is also an associate Editor for both the Operations Research and Decision Analysis journals of INFORMS and is the decision analysis area editor for IIE Transactions.

Dr. Abbas is the Art Davis Faculty Scholar in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He previously worked as a Lecturer in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and in Schlumberger Oilfield Services, where he held several international positions in Wireline logging, operations management, and international training. He has organized numerous workshops including the decision analysis tracks of INFORMS 2007, 2008 and the Bayesian inference and Maximum Entropy conference in 2005. He received numerous National Science Foundation Awards including the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2008; the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS (DAS) Best Publication Award in 2011; the National Science Foundation I-Corps award in 2012, and the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS first runner up and second runner up publication awards in 2013. Dr. Abbas’ work has been featured in numerous media outlets including CBS, The Huffington Post, the WSJ, the National Science Foundation (NSF) discoveries, INFORMS Podcasts, and he has had a recent TV appearance on “Chicago Tonight”. Dr. Abbas has also been invited to attend economic policy discussions on social welfare at the Houses of Parliament.


Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

More Information: Seminar-Abbas.doc

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Georgia Lum