People

Eva Lee, Ph.D.
Distinguished Scholar in Health Systems, Health System Institute
Director, Center for Operations Research in Medicine and Healthcare
Co-Director, Biomedical Informatics Program, Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Atlanta-CTSI), Emory-Morehouse-Georgia Tech
Associate Professor, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Phone: 404-894-4962
Location: Groseclose Building - Room 426
Email Address:
Personal Homepage: http://www.isye.gatech.edu/people/faculty/Eva_K_Lee/

Bio

Eva K Lee is an Associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Director of the Center for Operations Research in Medicine and HealthCare. She is also a Senior Research Professor at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. Dr. Lee earned a Ph.D. at Rice University in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, and received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Hong Kong Baptist University, where she graduated with Highest Distinction. Dr. Lee was awarded a NSF/NATO postdoctoral fellowship on Scientific Computing, and a postdoctoral fellowship from Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum Informationstechnik Berlin in 1995 for Parallel Computation. In 1996, she received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award for research on integer programming and parallel algorithms and their applications to medical diagnosis and cancer treatment. She was the first OR/IE recipient for the prestigious Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Grant for Young Investigators, awarded for her work on a novel approach for combining biological imaging and optimal treatment design for prostate cancer. In 2004, she was selected as one of the Extraordinary Women Engineers. In 2005, she received the INFORMS Pierskalla award for research excellence in HealthCare and Management Science for her work on emergency response and planning, large-scale prophylaxis dispensing, and resource allocation for bioterrorism and infectious disease outbreaks. In 2006, she was chosen by the American Mathematical Society as the representative mathematician�to speak and discuss individually�with congressional leaders about her research advances in the medical and healthcare domain, and about the importance of mathematics in scientific advances. Together, Lee and Dr. Marco Zaider from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center�were named winners of the 2007 Franz Edelman award for their work�on using operations research�to advance cancer therapeutics.

Dr. Lee works in the area of mathematical programming and large-scale computational algorithms with a primary emphasis on medical/healthcare decision analysis and logistics operations management.She tackles challenging problems in health systems and biomedicine through systems modeling, algorithm and software design, and decision theory analysis. Specific research areas include health risk prediction, early disease prediction and diagnosis, optimal treatment strategies and drug delivery, healthcare outcome analysis and treatment prediction, public health and medical preparedness, large-scale healthcare/medical decision analysis and quality improvement.

Lee's research in logistics focuses on large-scale optimization and algorithmic advances for optimal operations planning and resource allocation. She has developed decision support systems for inventory control; large-scale truck dispatching, scheduling, and transportation logistics; telecommunications; portfolio investment; and emergency treatment response and facility layout and planning.

Lee has received seven patents for innovative medical systems and devices. Her research has been featured and discussed in numerous news media articles, including articles in the New York Times, London Times, Urology Times, Atlanta Business Chronicle, and Homeland Security IAIP Directorate Daily Report. Her cancer research was featured in a TV science news segment for Discoveries and Breakthroughs, Inside Science, Curing Prostate Cancer, broadcast by television stations nationwide.

Lee's teaching includes Engineering Optimization, Operations Research in Medicine and HealthCare, Cancer Biology and Biotechnology, and Biomedical Informatics and Predictive Models. Besides the graduate program in Industrial and Systems Engineering, she is also a program faculty of several interdisciplinary graduate programs, including Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO); Bioinformatics; Bioengineering; and Health Systems.

She is currently the secretary and treasurer for the INFORMS Optimization Society, and� a Subdivision Council member of� the INFORMS Health Applications Section. She is Co-Editor for the Annals of Operations Research sub-series: Operations Research in Medicine -- Computing and Optimization in Medicine and Life Sciences, and Issue Editor for Asia Pacific Journal of Operations Research on Medical and Biological Applications. She also serves on the Editorial Board for Cancer Informatics.

Her love of mathematics and computing is matched by a love of nature and art. In her leisure time, she enjoys painting, calligraphy, poetry, handmade artwork and gardening. She has a deep love of nature, and is fascinated by its beauty and complexity. She loves to collect leaves, petals and other natural things.

Areas of Research

Systems modeling, information technology, and software design for healthcare and medicine
Machine learning and predictive models
Medical decision making, and quality assurance
Operation and process efficiency and cost-effectiveness
Information and decision technology

Selected Honors & Awards

2007, inducted as INFORMS Franz Edelman Award Laureate.
2007, INFORMS Franz Edelman Winner, with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on "Operations Research Advances Cancer Therapeutics."
2005, INFORMS Pierskalla Best Paper Award for research excellence in HealthCare and Management Science for research on "Emergency Treatment Response and Real-Time Staff Allocation for Bioterrorism and Infectious Disease Outbreak."
2004, selected as one of the Extraordinary Women Engineers.
2003, National Science Foundation/National Cancer Institute multi-institutes research award. "Study: A Prototype Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning Toolkit."
2003, National Science Foundation Information Technology Research Award. "Theory and Computation Advances in Cancer Therapeutics."
2002, elected member, NCI/NSF IMRT Optimization Collaborative Working Group.
2000, Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Research Award (First OR/IE recipient). "Advances in Combined Modalities Cancer Treatment."
1996, National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator on "Mixed Integer Programming -- Parallelism and Applications to Medical Diagnosis and Cancer Treatment."
1995, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum Informationstechnik Berlin Postdoctoral Fellowship on "Parallel Computation."
1995, NSF/NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship on "Scientific Computing."
1994, NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship on "Parallel Algorithms."