Christoph Werner (left) receiving the departmental Tony Christer Prize, recognizing the best overall performance in the MSc Operational Research course, from the postgraduate course co-director Dr Kerem Akartunali (right).
Christoph Werner (left) receiving the departmental Tony Christer Prize, recognizing the best overall performance in the MSc Operational Research course, from the postgraduate course co-director Dr Kerem Akartunali (right).
For the third year in a row, a student from the Management Science department at Strathclyde has won a national prize for the best industry-based MSc dissertation. The May Hicks prize is awarded by the Operational Research Society for the best industry-based project in Operational Research in the UK. The 2013 winner was recently announced as Christoph Werner, who graduated from Strathclyde with an MSc in Operational Research with distinction and who is currently doing a PhD in the Department of Management Science. Christoph's project was titled "Developing a Quantitative and Qualitative Tool for Complex Future Health and Social Care Integration Data Management and Analysis", and The Scottish Government was the client of his project.
Health and social care integration is a key area of Scotland's strategy to cope with a steadily ageing population and thus increasing consumption of health and social care services. Christoph’s work investigated qualitative and quantitative aspects of using large data sets obtained from health and social care sources. He developed two customised tools, an interface allowing the visualisation of an organisation's "readiness" to use "big data" analytics effectively, and a dashboard comprising a range of decision support features for resource planning and predictive modelling, such as forecasting and time series analysis.
Strathclyde also won the award in 2011 and 2012. 2012 winner was Geraint Roberts, and 2011 winner was Rutger Alberink, both distinction students from the MSc in Operational Research course. Geraint’s project, titled "GB Rail Efficiency and Benchmarking", was completed for the client Asset Management Consulting Limited (AMCL), who advise the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) on the effective and efficient use of its assets. The dissertation described a pilot project to investigate an internal benchmarking process for GB Rail, where Geraint's analytical approach to overall rail system costs at a regional level was the first of its kind. 2011 winner Rutger's project, titled "Accident Modelling in the Railway Industry: A Railway Station Performance Measure on Passenger Slips, Trips and Falls", was completed for the client Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB), an independent, non-profit organisation supporting and facilitating industry-wide knowledge development to improve the overall level of safety in the rail industry. Rutger's research investigated specific attributes at individual railway stations (stairs, ramps and escalators) to understand their influence on accident statistics, and the recommendations from his work motivated a new initiative to develop an industry standard risk model for station safety risk.
As the new cohort of MSc students are about to start their courses, this gives them an exciting motivation to start soon thinking about their projects next summer, hopefully making it 4 in a row for Strathclyde!