Queues (U.K.), Lines (USA),
Lineups (Canada), Colas (Spanish), etc. They are everywhere, at
airports, in rush-hour traffic, at sporting events, in amusement
parks, in restrooms (!), in health care, in waiting for
promotion, …. The hard science of queues, focusing on math and
physics, was born in Denmark about 105 years ago. Since then,
thousands of articles and scores of books have been written
about ‘queue theory.’ The soft science of queues, focusing on
psychology, was born post WWII. In this talk, we review quickly
both the hard and soft sciences of queues, and then discuss
current topics in queues that bring in both aspects – physics
and psychology. Sample topics: Recent TSA security check queues
at U.S. airports; Disney strategies; in transportation, when
inserting delays speeds service, and more.
Recent News:
The Strange
Science of Why Airport Security Lines Spiral Out of
Control
When It Comes
to Fixing TSA Security Lines, Everyone's Got an Idea
About the Speaker:
Richard C. Larson received his BS and PhD degrees in Electrical
Engineering from MIT where is Mitsui Professor in MIT’s
Institute for Data, Systems and Society. Prof. Larson is author
of over 100 scientific articles, primarily in the fields of
operations research as applied to service industries, health
care, technology-enabled education, urban service systems,
queueing, logistics and workforce planning. He has served as
President of ORSA, (1993-4), is Past-President of INFORMS,
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences,
and has served as consultant to the World Bank, the United
Nations, the City of New York and numerous private companies.
Prof. Larson's research on queues has not only resulted in new
computational techniques, but has also been covered extensively
in national media. Prof. Larson has served as Co-Director of the
MIT Operations Research Center (over 15 years in that post). He
is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is an
INFORMS Founding Fellow. He has been honored with the INFORMS
President's Award, Lanchester Prize (for best publication in one
year) and the Kimball Medal.
Prof. Larson is Founding Director of LINC, Learning
International Networks Consortium, an MIT-based international
technology-enabled education project that will hold its next
international symposium in spring 2016. He is Principal
Investigator of MIT BLOSSOMS, Blended Learning Open Source
Science or Math Studies http://blossoms.mit.edu, focused on high
school STEM education (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics) and STEM teacher Professional Development. This
is an international collaboration with ten countries. Many of
these high school lessons focus on health care and disease
prevention, including diabetes II, pandemic influenza, cancer
and diseases of the eye.
Dr. Larson’s current MIT research includes modeling of
infectious diseases, especially pandemic influenza and MERS;
post-traumatic stress disorder; K-12 STEM education as a complex
system; home energy management; and Ph.D.-level workforce
planning for the NIH.