Professors Louis Plebani, Tamas Terlaky, and George Wilson are teaming up to tackle the problem of assigning and transferring inmates in the PA correctional system. Recently, their proposal Multi-objective Integer Linear Optimization (MILO) Models for Inmates Institutional Assignment was funded by the PA Department of Corrections' Office of Population Management.
Population sizes in various facilities and other institutional factors hamper current processes used to manage decision making around inmate assignments and transfers. The Lehigh team's proposed Inmate Assignment and Transfer Decision Support (IATDS) tool will improve the efficiency and the consistency of such decisions by providing mathematically-optimized recommendations. IATDS is intended to maximize available bed space, reduce the number of inmate transfers, and shorten service treatment queues.
Tamas leads the team, and his research interests include high-performance optimization methods, optimization models, algorithms and software, and solving optimization problems in engineering sciences. Louis' research interests include modeling of manufacturing processes, computational operations research, and automation and process control. George's research interests include applied stochastic processes, optimization modeling, production planning and control, modeling and analysis of logistic systems.
