After traveling to Mississippi State University to present findings on research at the Regional Transportation, Supply Chain and Logistics Management Workshop, UA graduate student Shirley (Rong) Li was awarded first place in competition.

Li presented her winning poster titled “Analysis of an Integrated Maximum Covering and Patrol Routing Problem.” The workshop was done in conjunction with The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and featured students from around the Southeastern area.

“I was excited [to win], and I feel lucky,” Li said.

At the workshop, which INFORMS co-hosted, each student participant gave a five-minute presentation about his or her poster and answered questions afterward. The project focused on routing for police vehicles, and there was research done to determine an effective route in respect to factors such as traffic.

INFORMS is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research, management science and business analytics, according to the official website.

The workshop, which gives students an opportunity to present their findings, serves as an environment for sharing ideas and thoughts.

“Basically, the question which was answered in the project was where to go for the state trooper cars and when to go so that [troopers] can efficiently use their resources which are available to them,” Li said.

The poster includes an introduction, literature review, model, solution, experiments and conclusions, along with multiple diagrams.

Li is a third-year doctoral student in the operations management field in the department of information studies, statistics and management science. Burcu Keskin, Li’s faculty adviser, said Li is not only one of the department’s top students, but she is also a special student.

“She’s one of our best operations management Ph.D. students,” Keskin said. “This is not one of her only qualities. She’s also very social in addition to her research. She was the president of the INFORMS student chapter for a year and a half, and during her presidency, the student chapter was nominated for a cum laude national award.”

Li is also an ambassador for the graduate school.

Keskin and Li do research together and have also written a paper together. Keskin advises Li on topics for research. The subject of Li’s winning poster came from research done by Keskin and a colleague, Allen Parrish, from the computer science department.

“She didn’t do the bare minimum like typical graduate students,” Keskin said. “She gave more than 100 percent at many times. She was the one who developed the main solution.”

There were two other students who assisted with the project; Dana Steil from the computer science department and Sarah Spiller from the finance department contributed to the development.

“I don’t really think there is too much competition going on [in the workshop], because most of us know each other so we just take it lightly,” Li said. “I actually made some friends from Mississippi State and met some professors from other universities.”