Two ISyE faculty win Seed Grant Award

We are proud to announce that two ISyE faculty, Yiling Zhang and William Cooper, have won a Center for Transportation Studies Seed Grant Award for their study "Increasing Food Access: Integrated Vehicle Routing and Assortment Planning for Mobile Markets."

The goal of their study is to help mobile grocery stores better serve communities that don't have convenient access to grocery stores. Non-profits and organizations have been working with mobile grocery markets to bring healthy food options to communities that don't have them within walking or public transit distance. Every community has a unique cultural background and demand for grocery items will differ in each. This presents a complex problem of coordination between the non-profits who know and serve the communities and the grocery retailers who need to stay in business. The goal of this research is to (1) develop a theoretical framework for designing routes and assortment plans while accounting for endogenous demand uncertainties, and (2) to develop efficient algorithms that can support operations of mobile markets.

The Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) at the University of Minnesota supports transportation education and research. The CTS Seed Grant will give this study the financial foundation it needs to expand and eventually gain funding from outside sources.