What's Your StORy? Rishabh Bhandawat

Name: Rishabh Bhandawat

Affiliation: University at Buffalo

Title: Industrial Engineering PhD candidate and Instructor

INFORMS member for 3 years

I am currently an Instructor at the University at Buffalo, where I teach a 300 Level course called Engineering Economy. This course is basically teaching engineering students to think about project management and selection from a financial perspective.

Looking at the program ahead of time before you come to the conference is a good strategy, and if you like somebody’s work and you may want to collaborate with them, there’s no harm in going up to them to chat or ask for advice. I always think if you don’t ask, the answer is no. So always ask. Almost everyone is approachable, so there’s no harm in starting a conversation.

There are two things that happened. When I started my master’s program, I didn’t anticipate working in O.R. I wasn’t looking at a concentration, but eventually my research interests aligned with O.R. I went to my first INFORMS conference because my advisor thought I had work that was ready and presentable. I then joined INFORMS as a student member a few days before the conference. Second, the INFORMS student chapter at the University at Buffalo was doing elections and I joined the student chapter. I started off helping with events, and now I am on the eBoard for communications for the student chapters. It’s so nice to see that in the years I’ve been a part of the student chapter, the chapter has grown so much.

As a student leader, the Student Leadership Conference is beneficial. The opportunity to come and present at INFORMS, the numerous awards that are available, access to so many socialites and their work, INFORMS Connect for job opportunities. You can always reach out with questions, and there’s someone interested in answering. INFORMS Connect is also a tool that I like to use.

I did not know that I wanted to study O.R. – I didn’t even plan on doing research. One thing led to another, I took a facility location class with Dr. Batta and a couple months later, I realized I wanted to do research. I thought, “Can we do something food related and location planning in a food facility?” That evolved into my master’s thesis for location optimization for a food truck. Completely different from what I had thought. I liked what I was doing and then I decided to join the PhD program.

I like food in general, so it’s hard for me to just pick one.

I am the moderator of the community page. Any discussions that the members of the community have, if there is anything that could be hurtful, I have to either remove them or modify them or change the language. But, if it is very hurtful to someone’s sentiments, I have to remove them from the page. I also work toward LGBTQ representation within INFORMS. One thing that members can do, not just for LGBTQ, is to fill out their information – go back to when they signed up, complete their profile. A large number of members are undefined so they either don’t have their gender information or their ethnicity filled in. I want to add more genders to the selection drop down, not just male and female. Someone can say they don’t identify as any particular one. It would be beneficial to the community if all INFORMS members completed their profiles so we know what population we are catering to, that way the diversity community can help members that are underrepresented –even if only a few people need something.

A thought that popped into my head during the Annual Meeting in Phoenix was that there were no single-stall or gender-neutral bathrooms. They are all male or female. If someone doesn’t identify as one, or if someone is too shy to use either one, they either have to go back to their hotel room, which sometimes in a busy schedule running around from one workshop to another, can be a little difficult. A few gender-neutral bathrooms or single-stall bathrooms can be set aside for anyone to use. Also, a mentorship program for LGBTQ: the mentor need not identify as LGBTQ but as an ally to help other members propagate through graduate school or post doc, even young professors can learn from more experienced professors.

I personally use Instagram the most. It’s just easier, and I also use Twitter. Instagram because even if I’m not paying attention, sometimes my thumb just goes to the icon. However, I get a lot more information on events and things happening at different student chapters and also within INFORMS through Twitter. I use Instagram more for recreational fun. But if I were to post something that happened today, or if there was a cool thing happening, I would post that on Twitter or get that information from Twitter. I would not really associate Instagram with that.  

A typical weekend is catching up on grading, and I’m part of a dodgeball league, so playing dodgeball. Then there is an after party that comes with the dodgeball league, so I go unwind a little. And then just relax a little, do some recreational reading – not scientific journals or research journals – and catch up on TV shows.

Grey’s Anatomy. I think I watch more TV shows than a graduate student should.
 

That’s difficult! Oprah. I just want to see how she has advocated for women and grown as a person from nothing to everything. And maybe if we were looking in my field, I would want to talk to Dr. Bob Bixby from Gurobi to see how he developed Gurobi and how his team developed CPLEX.

Something in the healthcare and/or food supply chain industry. Potentially work toward making lives easier in third world countries for health and food equity. There’s more food in certain areas and everyone should be given the same amount of food or healthy food access. The healthcare sector is another field that peaks my interest, as I would like to optimize various processes in our healthcare sector. I believe food and care access are a basic human necessity and no person should have unfair access to healthy food and proper care. Despite whatever socioeconomic standard they are born into, they should at least have food, clean water and proper care. It’s a complicated, difficult problem to work toward, but nothing that is unachievable.