Amy R. Ward

Associate Professor of Operations Management

The Marshall School of Business

University of Southern California

Bridge Hall 401H

Los Angeles, CA  90089

Email:  amyward@marshall.usc.edu

 

Academic Degrees

Ph.D., 2001, Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering

M.S., 1997,  Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering

B.A.,  1996, Claremont McKenna College, Mathematics

 

Academic Family Tree

 

Teaching (at USC)

1.  Undergraduate Core Course:  Operations (Spring 2007, 2008, 2009)

2.  Ph.D. Course:  The Heavy Traffic Approach to the Control of Stochastic Systems (Spring 2007, 2009)

3.  Ph.D. Course:  Markov Decision Processes (Fall 2009, Spring 2012)  (Please see http://www.extendsim.com for information on the  simulation software ExtendSim that we will use in the course, and to purchase it.)

4.  Ph.D. Course:  Queueing (Spring 2011)  (Please see http://www.extendsim.com for information on the  simulation software ExtendSim that we will use in the course, and to purchase it.)

 

Working Papers

1.  Jeunghyun Kim and Amy R. Ward, Dynamic Scheduling of a GI/GI/1+GI Queue with Two Customer Classes, First Submitted January, 2012. [ pdf ]

2.  Josh Reed, Amy R Ward, and Dongyuan Zhan, On the Generalized Skorokhod Problem, First Submitted January, 2011. [ pdf ]

3.  Mor Armony and Amy R. Ward, Blind Fair Routing in Large-Scale Service Systems, Updated October 2011. [ pdf ]

4.  Samim Ghamami and Amy R. Ward, Dynamic Scheduling of an N-System with Reneging, Updated December 2010. [ pdf ]

 

Journal Publications

1. Amy R. Ward (2011) Asymptotic Analysis of Queueing Systems with Reneging:  A Survey of Results for FIFO, Single Class Models, Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science 16(1), 1-14.

·        Associated tutorial talk given at INFORMS 2011 [ pdf ]

2.  Yasar Levent Kocaga and Amy R. Ward (2010) Admission Control for a Multi-Server Queue with Abandonment, Queueing Systems, 65(3), 275-323.

3.  Mor Armony and Amy R. Ward (2010), Fair Dynamic Routing in Large-Scale Heterogeneous-Server Systems, Operations Research 58(3), 624-637.

4.  Vasiliki Kostami and Amy R. Ward (2009), Managing Service Systems with an Offline Waiting Option and Customer Abandonment, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 11(4), 644-656.

5.  Erica L. Plambeck and Amy R. Ward (2008), Optimal Control of a High Volume Assemble-to-Order System with Leadtime Quotation and Expediting, Queueing Systems 60(1/2), 1-69.

6.  Josh Reed and Amy R. Ward (2008), Approximating the GI/GI/1+GI Queue with a Nonlinear Drift Diffusion:  Hazard Rate Scaling in Heavy Traffic, Mathematics of Operations Research 33(3), 606-644.

7.  Amy R. Ward and Sunil Kumar (2008), Asymptotically Optimal Admission Control of a Queue with Impatient Customers, Mathematics of Operations Research 33(1), 167-202.

8.  Erica L. Plambeck and Amy R. Ward (2006), Optimal Control of a High Volume Assemble-to-Order System, Mathematics of Operations Research 31(3), 453-477.

9.  Erica L. Plambeck and Amy R. Ward (2006), Note:  A Separation Principle for a Class of Assemble-to-Order Systems with Expediting, Operations Research 55(3), 603-609.

10.  Amy R. Ward and Peter W. Glynn (2005), A Diffusion Approximation for a GI/GI/1 Queue with Balking of Reneging, Queueing Systems 50(4), 371-400.

11. Amy R. Ward and Peter W. Glynn (2003), Properties of the Reflected Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process, Queueing Systems 44(2), 109-123.

12.  Amy R. Ward and Peter W. Glynn (2003), A Diffusion Approximation for a Markovian Queue with Reneging, Queueing Systems 43(1/2), 103-128.

13.  Amy R. Ward and Nicholas Bambos (2003), On Stability of Queueing Networks with Job Deadlines, Journal of Applied Probability 40(2), 293-304.

14. Yih-Choung The and Amy R. Ward (2002), Critical Thresholds for Dynamic Routing in Queueing Networks, Queueing Systems 42(3), 297-316.

15.  Amy R. Ward, Peter W. Glynn, and Kathy Richardson, Internet Service Performance Failure Detection, Performance Evaluation Review 26(3), 38-43.

 

Book Chapters

1.  Amy R. Ward and Ward Whitt (2002), Predicting Response Times in Processor-Sharing Queues, In D. MacDonald and S.R.E. Turner, editors, Analysis of Communication Networks:  Call Centres, Traffic, and Performance, Fields Institute Communication Series, 28, American Mathematical Society, Providence, 1-29.

 

Conference Proceedings

1.  Josh Reed and Amy R. Ward (2004), A Diffusion Approximation for a Generalized Jackson Network with Reneging, In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, Sept. 29-Oct. 1.

2.  Amy R. Ward, Peter W. Glynn, and Kathy Richardson (1998), Internet Service Performance Failure Detection, In Proceedings of the 1998 Internet Server Performance Workshop, Madison, WI, 103-109.

3.  Stephen G. Eick and Amy R. Ward (1996), An Interactive Visualization for Message Sequence Charts, In Proceedings for the Fourth Workshop on Program Comprehension, IEEE Computer Society Press, 2-8.