Travel fund winners at INFORMS Annual Conference 2016

This year, for the first time, INFORMS Student Chapter at Auburn University got financial support from Office of Student Involvement at Auburn University, because of its active and effective role at AU. By this fund INFORMS Student Chapter funded three members to participate at INFORMS Annual Conference in Nashville-Tennessee on Nov 2016. Among several nominees, 3 members were randomly selected by our guest speaker (Dr. Silva) and faculty advisor (Dr. Vinel) at the general meeting, Oct 12th. The lucky winners were: Oguz Toragay, Mohamed Badawy and Qiong Hu. Read about their exciting experience in the conference below:

Oguz Toragay: (Ph.D Student, ISE dept.)

"As one of the students who were lucky enough to win the Nashville INFORMS conference participation fund, I would like to thank all of the people in INFORMS student chapter at Auburn University who are working hard to achieve the organization’s academic goals. For me, participating in INFORMS and being in such an academic atmosphere had numerous outcomes. Some of those valuable outcomes are, attending different sessions and talks, becoming acquainted with people from various fields of research, understanding the general trend in the recent researches in the field, getting some ideas about managing my study plan and helping me to get the most of my academic years, and last but not least, have a chance to observe how the job finding process works. These are only some of the valuable experiences that I had in my first attendance at the INFORMS annual conference. Thanks to INFORMS student chapter at Auburn University, now I have plan to be more active in next year’s conference, and enthusiastically work on my research. I think, being selected and attending the conference were the best occurrence that could have been happened in my first year of study in terms of helping me to make my mind about forming my study years and being prepared for better and deeper researches. I hope this occasion will be beneficial for other students in next years."

Mohamed Badawy: (Ph.D Student, ISE dept.)

"The conference of this year was very beneficial to me. It was my first time to attend a conference. Thus, the opportunity to attend INFORMS 2016 enabled me to be more familiar with how people share their ideas with others in the field of IE. Moreover, attending several sessions had two major benefits; first, I could identify the major aspects required to provide a good presentation, which is a valuable experience that I need for my future presentations; and second, the presented ideas in these sessions inspired me with some valuable research ideas. On the other hand, during the conference days, I started new relationships with students and faculty from different national and international schools. I believe that these relationships will lead to productive collaboration opportunities in the future. Thanks to INFORMS student chapter at Auburn University that gave me this great opportunity. "

Qiong Hu: (Ph.D Student, ISE dept.)

"I am very glad to have an opportunity to join 2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting. During this meeting, I participated at many presentations about new technology and method in Operation Research and Data Analysis which benefits me a lot. At the same time, it is a good chance for the students who want to find a job, since there is a big job affair inviting lots of companies including some famous ones like Facebook. I really appreciate all the hard efforts of INFORMS student chapter at Auburn University that gave me this chance."