Burhaneddin Sandikçi

Burhaneddin Sandikçi studies decision-making problems under uncertainty with special interest in problems in medical decision making and health care operations. He is particularly interested in the mathematical modeling and analysis of such problems. He employs the methodologies of Markov decision processes (MDPs), partially observed MDPs, stochastic programming, and simulation in his research. Samples from his most recent work include: equilibrium analysis of the use of marginal organs for transplantation to help alleviate the burden of organ shortages, which leads to easily implementable policy incentives that increase the equilibrium utilization of organs while also improving the social welfare; modeling and analysis of the use of breast density information and supplemental tests (e.g., ultrasound and MRI) in screening for breast cancer; numerical results demonstrate that incremental benefits of supplemental tests over digital mammography are limited for the overall population except for patients with high risk of breast cancer including patients with extremely dense breasts; and the development of an embarrassingly parallel general bounding method for multistage stochastic programs.

His research has been published in leading journals including Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Mathematical Programming, and SIAM Journal on Optimization/ His work has also been recognized at various levels by INFORMS Decision Analysis Society, INFORMS Bonder Scholarship, and IIE Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award.

A native of Turkey, Sandikçi earned a bachelor''s degree in industrial engineering from Marmara University in Istanbul in 1999. He earned two master''s degrees: one in industrial engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara in 2001 and one in operations research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. He earned a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. Sandikçi joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2008.

Research Activities

• Decision-making under uncertainty with particular interest in problems in medical decision making and healthcare operations.

Publications

• With S. Tunc, "Expanding the donor pool: The use marginal organs for transplantation," Working paper (2017).

• With M. Cevik, " The role of supplemental screening tests and breast density information in screening for breast cancer," Working paper (2017).

• With O.Y. Ozaltin, "A scalable bounding method for multistage stochastic programs," forthcoming in SIAM Journal on Optimization (2017).

• With T. Best, D.D. Eisenstein, and D.O. Meltzer, "Managing hospital inpatient bed capacity through partitioning care into focused wings," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2015).

• With L.M. Maillart, A.J. Schaefer, and M.S. Roberts, "Alleviating the patient's price of privacy through a partially observable waiting list," Management Science (2013). With M. Lubin, R.K. Martin, and C. Petra, "On parallelizing dual decomposition in stochastic integer programming," Operations Research Letters (2013).

• With N. Kong and A.J. Schaefer, “A hierarchy of bounds for stochastic mixed-integer programs,” Mathematical Programming (2013). With L.M. Maillart, A.J. Schaefer, O. Alagoz, and M.S. Roberts, "Estimating the patient's price of privacy in liver transplantation" Operations Research (2008).