Biography
Fatih Safa Erenay is a 4th year Ph.D. student of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara/Turkey. He is currently working on OR applications in healthcare under the supervision of Professor Oguzhan Alagoz. Specifically, he applies stochastic modeling and optimization tools, such as Markov Decision Processes (MDP), Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDP) and simulation models, to the medical decision making problems on cancer screening and liver allocation.
He works on improving liver allocation system with a multi-disciplinary team consisting of OR/OM experts and clinicians. Basically, they use fluid models to develop a better liver allocation policy to distribute the donated livers to the patients with End Stage Liver Disease. Their paper, with title A Broader View of Designing Liver Allocation System, received the Best Paper Award of INFORMS Service Science Section.
His dissertation is entitled as Optimal Screening Policy for Colorectal Cancer Prevention and Surveillance. He uses a POMDP model to determine the optimal lifetime colorectal cancer screening policy for a specific patient given age, gender, and personal history. His poster presentation on this study received the Best Scientific Poster Presentation Award at IERC Annual Conference 2009, while another poster presentation has been chosen as a finalist at the Interactive Session Poster Competition at INFORMS Annual Meeting 2009.
