Health Applications Society Online Seminar on April 22 by Professor Andrew Li

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INFORMS Health Applications Society Online Seminar Series

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Apr 19, 2022, 9:53:14 AM4/19/22
to INFORMS Health Applications Society Online Seminar Series
Dear colleagues,

We are excited to announce our next HAS Online Seminar by the recipient of the 2021 Pierskalla Best Paper Award, Dr. Andrew Li, from Carnegie Mellon University. The details of the seminar are below. Click here to register for the event!

Optimization in the Race to a Liquid Biopsy
Friday, April 22, 1-2pm ET (10-11 am PT)


Abstract: An accurate blood test for early-stage cancer (a "liquid biopsy") is arguably the most important open problem in oncology, and the race to a solution is tantalizingly close to the finish. In this talk, we will discuss the state of this race as of 2022, particularly how technology and data have enabled progress so far, and how optimization will play a role in reaching the finish line.
Along the way, we will address a set of problems that occur in the development of liquid biopsies via the lens of Active Sequential Hypothesis Testing (ASHT), wherein a learner seeks to identify a true hypothesis using the fewest number of actions. Motivated by applications in which the number of hypotheses or actions is massive (such as our own), we propose efficient (greedy, in fact) algorithms and provide the first approximation guarantees for ASHT. Our guarantees are independent of the number of actions and logarithmic in the number of hypotheses. We numerically evaluate the performance of our algorithms using both synthetic and real-world DNA mutation data, demonstrating that our algorithms drastically outperform previous heuristics.

Bio: Dr. Andrew Li is an Assistant Professor of Operations Research, and the BP Junior Faculty Chair, at CMU’s Tepper School of Business. He completed his PhD in the Operations Research Center at MIT. His research interests are in statistics, optimization, and machine learning, with applications to operations management and medicine.

We are also honored to have more extraordinary speakers lined up for the upcoming seminars in the following months. Please block the same time slot 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT) on 4th Friday of May-September on your calendar for:

  • May 27, Professor Oguzhan Alagoz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • June 24, Professor Vishal Gupta, USC Marshall School of Business, the winner of the 2021 Pierskalla Award
  • July 22, Professor Carri Chan, Columbia Business School
  • (August & September: Details coming soon!)
We would like to thank everyone who attended previous seminars! If you couldn't make it before, now you can view the recordings following the links archived in the "Past Seminars" Section of our HAS seminar webpage. If you have any questions, let us know at hassemin...@gmail.com.

You can also find the details of the seminar in the event flyer. Feel free to share it with anyone who could be interested among your colleagues and student groups.

Looking forward to seeing you there and then!

Best regards,

HAS Online Seminar Organization Team
Sanjay Mehrotra (Northwestern)
Sait Tunc (Virginia Tech)
Qiushi Chen (Penn State)
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