Big Data for the Big House with Tamás Terlaky, Dr. Mohammad Shahabsafa and Anshul Sharma

Sponsored by the University of Louisville: Remember when a call from jail sparked an ISE project assigning inmates to various facilities in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections? And how that led to a startup company? Probably not, but Professor Tamás Terlaky of Lehigh University does. He and two of his former students, Dr. Mohammad Shahabsafa and Anshul Sharma, talk about how considering all inmate needs upfront reduces violence in the system, speeds up inmate treatment and counseling, trims transportation costs and pares down the manpower needed to make assignments – which could save the corrections department nearly $20 million in five years.