Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) 1997


It has been a good tradition of the MDA Project for many years to have excellent participants of YSSP. You can find a number of reports (click here to enter a catalog with MDA Publications) of MDA YSSP participants since 1989. Although the MDA Project discontinues with the end of 1996, the research activities I am involved in will be continued with the RMP Project. Such research is dedicated to development of new methods for decision support and decision analysis and to application of such methods, primarily in collaboration with other projects at IIASA, to specific decision problems. However, a participant of YSSP can bring with his/her model and use the methods (click here to find a summary of relevant research) and software tools (click here to find a summary of distributable software) developed here for the analysis of such model.

I would like to encourage your application for YSSP'97, if you are interested in developing prototypes for (parts of) decision support systems related to applied projects at IIASA, primarily involving environmental problems. The goal of this activity is to gather experience with new decision support tools, and apply these tools to realistic decision problems. Depending on the abilities and interests of participants, there are several possible realizations. The methodology may touch upon several aspects of decision support, such as problem specification, data manipulation, integration of rule based and algorithmic approaches, formulation, solution and analysis of a specific type of mathematical programming problem. Examples of application areas include land-use, regional model of acidification, and the Asian-Pacific Integrated (environmental-economic) Model (AIM). The idea is to work in a small group consisting of one or two YSSP participants and one or two IIASA staff members.

My priority will given for candidates, who would like to contribute to either development or use of methodologies and tools for multiple-criteria model analysis. I encourage exploration and enhancements of the ISAAP (modular tool for Interactive Specification and Analysis of Aspiration-Based Preferences).
If you would like to: then please contact me to discuss details of such activities.

An ability to cooperate with staff members and other YSSP participants with different backgrounds and researchers from other projects is important. Depending on the topic, the main prerequisite is knowledge of the problem area or with operations research methods. The ideal candidate has a combined knowledge in both areas. Experience in C++ programming language is strongly desired, but not necessary.

You can find out information about the IIASA's YSSP and about the application procedure (please do note that the deadline for applications in February 7, 1997) by clicking here (this page includes also application forms in PS and PDF formats).

Please bear in mind that the competition is hard and only well prepared applications have a good chance to be accepted.
Here are the points worth to consider:

If you consider an application to YSSP and if you have specific questions related to research that I can supervise during YSSP'97, then please do not hesitate to contact me:
marek@iiasa.ac.at

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