August 7, 2002

Wednesday, August 7, 2002

PhD students face last hurdle
This week's staff positions
Happening today, and other notes

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

PhD students face last hurdle

A trickle of graduate students are completing their thesis work this month, meeting the last requirements in time to graduate at fall convocation in October. Most visibly -- and, to some, scariest -- is the oral examination that gives approval to a PhD thesis and turns a student into a "doctor" for life.

One such student is Elkafi Hassini of UW's department of management sciences, who earned his master's degree in the same department four years ago after undergraduate work at Turkey's Bilkent University. Originally from Tunisia, Hassini has been working on various aspects of material handling, quality control and supply chains. His thesis was supervised by Raymond Vickson of the Waterloo Management of Integrated Manufacturing Systems group (WATMIMS) and deals with "carousel systems", hardware used in warehouses. Says his thesis abstract:

We address the problems of how to allocate storage space to products, how to group and where to store products in multi-carousels storage and retrieval systems: Carousel storage and retrieval systems are increasingly being used in all stages of manufacturing and service operations. Because they are suitable for storing small items and for managing small individual orders, carousel systems are often used by e-commerce companies. In such environments it is vital to optimize the operation of warehouses (in addition to replenishment and stuffing, one must also pick customers' orders). Studies have also found that more than 80% of all operating costs in a typical warehouse are attributed to order-picking and storage operations. Thus, devising optimal location strategies will help reduce warehouses' operating costs considerably. . . .
We looked at a single-server two-carousel system. In this setting carousels are grouped in pods of two carousels and each pod is operated by a single operator. We considered both the single layer and the multi-layer carousel systems. The problem of optimally locating items in the carousels is modeled as a combinatorial optimization problem. The aim is to minimize the carousel's expected rotational time per retrieval. . . .
Our ultimate goal is to develop a decision support system that would group our work and other studies from the literature. We expect that such a product will be useful to carousel systems' manufacturers as well as warehouse managers.

Hassini's thesis is titled "Storage Location and Space Allocation in Carousel Systems", and is on deposit in the engineering graduate studies office until August 26. The oral defence is set for Friday, September 20, at 9:30 a.m., place yet to be announced.

"My work is progressing fine," Hassini said yesterday, and he's looking ahead to what he will do when he's no longer a student: "I've been awarded an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship. I am now in the process of doing campus interviews, and if I do not get an academic job by the end of this year I will take up the post-doc offer."

Other graduate students in all the six faculties are at about the same stage in their life's work. Here are some PhD theses as officially listed by the faculty graduate offices (listed in the Daily Bulletin because the Gazette isn't publishing at this time of year):

Optometry and biology: Vladimir Bantseev, supervised by J. G. Sivak, "Mitochondria of Vertebrate Lenses and Their Optical Role", oral to be held Thursday, August 8, 10 a.m., Optometry room 347.

Chemistry: Tracy Alexandra Kerr, supervised by L. F. Nazar, "Synthesis, Characterization, and Electrochemical Investigation of Novel Electrode Materials for Lithium Ion Batteries", oral to be held Wednesday, August 14, 10 a.m., Chemistry II room 361.

Geography: Yuedong Zhang, supervised by B. Mitchell, "Collaborative Resource Management and a Web-Based Decision Support System: A Case Study of Irrigation Management in Northwestern China", oral to be held Wednesday, August 14, 12 noon, Environmental Studies I room 221.

Psychology: Philip E. Toman, supervised by Richard Steffy, "Factors Influencing Schizotypal Students' Probed Reaction Time", oral to be held Wednesday, August 21, 10 a.m., PAS room 3026.

Physics: Richard Brezina, supervised by W.-K. Liu, "Control of Bond Excitation and Dissociation in HCN Using Laser Pulses", oral to be held Monday, August 26, 2 p.m., Physics room 352.

Civil engineering: Noh M. Abdelrahman, supervised by S. T. Ariaratnam, "Stochastic Stability of Viscoelastic Dynamical Systems", oral date to be announced.

Electrical and computer engineering: Lian Zhao, supervised by J. W. Mark, "Error and Power Control Techniques for DS-CDMA Systems with Applications", oral date to be announced.

This week's staff positions

"University Policy 18," says the human resources department, "provides maximum opportunity for promotion of regular, internal staff members. Those interested in applying for an available position are invited to call Human Resources at ext. 2524 for more information or are welcome to visit during regular working hours to view a detailed job description. Human Resources is located in the General Services Complex, Room 130. A current resume is required with your application.

"Due to the number of applications received, we regret that we can not respond to external applicants who apply to the vacancies listed below unless an interview is scheduled.

"If there are no qualified internal applications, a decision may be made, no earlier than seven working days from the job posting, to seek external candidates. All applications received after this decision will be treated on an equal basis, without consideration of the internal status of the candidate."

On this week's list:

Prep room technician/demonstrator, chemistry, USG 7
Manager, research ethics, office of research, USG 10
Research assistant, offices of development and alumni affairs, USG 4

And a couple of temporary positions:

University Club wait staff, food services
Quantitative data analyst, Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation, September 2002 to March 2004

More information about each job is available on the human resources web site.

And more from HR: "The university welcomes and encourages applications from the designated employment equity groups: visible minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and aboriginal people. For more information call ext. 2524."

[Scoins]
Ron Scoins, retired after 27 years in the faculty of mathematics, was profiled recently in advertising for UW's Keystone Campaign, the on-campus effort to raise $4.5 million as part of Campaign Waterloo. "My passion has always been for attracting the best students to UW," says Scoins, explaining why he's now supporting the math faculty's Descartes scholarship funds through Keystone. "I've also enjoyed following the achievements of these students throughout their years at Waterloo and beyond. I donate to enhance our scholarship program. Universities are about scholarships and all of us are competing for the best students. We need to be able to compete with more established universities for these top scholars." Is it true, he was asked, that you remember the names of all those scholarship recipients? "I couldn't list them all for you now, but yes I do know them all by name. Through the contests, we develop a close relationship with teachers and schools, and especially their top mathematics students."

Happening today, and other notes

Electrical power will be shut down to the entire Ron Eydt Village complex today from 10 a.m. to noon, the plant operations department says.

A "mandatory pre-departure orientation" session for students going on overseas programs in 2002-03 is scheduled for this afternoon, 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1302, says Maria Lango in the international programs office.

Something called the North America, Central America and Caribbean Athletic Association is holding its Under-25 track and field championships this week in San Antonio, and two Warrior stars are members of the Canadian team. Allison Salter will take part in the 800-metre race, coming off a bronze medal performance at the Canadian Senior Championships last month. Dana Ellis -- getting home from the Commonwealth Games just in time -- will represent Canada in the pole vault. Both of them graduated from the kinesiology program this spring.

Also in the world of sports, the world fastpitch championships are being held in Kitchener starting this weekend, and about 200 of the 4,000 participants will be staying at UW's residences; they'll roll in today for a stay of almost two weeks.

The weekly gay and lesbian discussion group is scheduled for tonight at 7:00 in Humanities room 373. This week's topic: "Accessing Local LGBT Community Resources".

UW Graphics reports that Tricia Mumby, who works there as digital production manager, has been elected first vice-president of the College and University Print Management Association of Canada.

A former UW staff member, Lorraine Grieve, died July 13. She came to UW in January 1983 and was administrative assistant in what was then the department of computing services at the time of her retirement in April 1994.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
August 7, 1963: President Gerry Hagey announces creation of the President's Committee on University Discipline.