Operations researcher helps to halt trade of counterfeit PPE

Anonymous — Tue, 04 May 2021 16:35:41 +0000

Operations researcher helps to halt trade of counterfeit PPE Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/04/2021 - 12:35

State officials across the country have seized counterfeit N95 masks. Sometimes, they were caught when entering the country, some were on the brink of being distributed to hospital workers, and others had to be recalled right out of the hands of nurses.

But it isn’t enough to simply know how to spot them once they arrive at the doorsteps of hospitals and essential workers, and a multidisciplinary team has formed at Mason to disrupt the illicit supply chain of counterfeit PPE by identifying the source of counterfeiting respirators and how they enter legitimate supply chains.

Edward Huang from the College of Engineering and Computing and Louise Shelley from the Schar School of Policy and Government received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to combine their expertise and analyze the supply chain for counterfeit goods coming into the United States.

Their project has three parts. The first part is understanding how the illicit supply chains work. The research team will use data and cybersecurity measures to learn how payments are processed, how they are hosting their websites, and how they communicate. “They need to find customers, and the internet is their best way to do that. Criminals usually set up websites, and we can look at those websites to learn where and who they are,” says Huang.

They will also examine the transportation of the goods. “Eventually, they ship to the United States. We are looking at the transportation systems where counterfeiting goods enter legitimate supply chains like airports or seaports,” says Huang.

Fully understanding the path illicit goods take to get into the country allows them to move onto the next step, constructing descriptions of the supply chain that can help find ways to disrupt it. “This kind of criminal activity, if we analyze the people behind it and their overall supply chain, we can find patterns,” says Huang.

Their analysis will eventually lead to studying strategies that government and corporate stakeholders can take to disrupt the chain before it reaches our shores.

Huang and Shelley’s work combines artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data mining, sociological analysis, policy, and more to find patterns that can be disrupted in the supply chain. “As engineers, we have the ability to use these tools like data mining to do great work, but we have to know which questions to ask,” says Huang.

Their five-year grant also includes funding to hire undergraduate students, one in the Schar School and one in the College of Engineering and Computing’s Department of Cyber Security Engineering. Together, the multidisciplinary team’s real-world implementation strategies can help halt the illicit supply chain altogether.

Already, the team has noticed that some counterfeiters are involved in two or three types of illicit activity. “We noticed some of these criminals switched to counterfeit PPE last year because of the pandemic,” says Huang. And it is knowledge like this that helps them understand illicit supply chains long-term and their convergence.

“Counterfeit masks are nearly everywhere during the pandemic. 3M reported more than 38 million counterfeit respirators since March 2020,” says Huang.

Topics

Operations Research

coronavirus; covid-19

Applying a systems engineering mindset to political challenges

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 17:14:01 +0000

Applying a systems engineering mindset to political challenges Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/12/2021 - 13:14

College of Engineering and Computing alumna Mary Barthelson is taking her systems engineering and operations research knowledge to the political stage as she challenges Virginia district 36 state delegate Kenneth Plum in the Democratic primary election.

Mary Barthelson is a Mason two-time Mason alumna who hopes to apply her problem-solving knowledge to politics.

Barthelson has always had an interest in politics, but the past few years have opened her eyes to how she can contribute. “Technology has really gotten ahead of us in the past four years; I felt it was a really important time for people that have a technical background to get into politics.”

Barthelson graduated from Mason in 2014 with her bachelor of science in systems engineering and 2017 with her master’s in systems engineering, focusing on operations research.

“I chose operations research because there wasn’t one discipline in particular that I was interested in. I liked looking at things from a very high level to understand the big picture, and I think operations research fit that description the best,” she says.

And now, she wants to apply that big-picture thinking to Virginia state politics. “Systems engineering is the engineering of problem-solving. We learn to use data to work with stakeholders with a wide range of skill sets to design the best solutions to problems. So, I think that having an engineer’s eye to examine policies and communicate them between legislators and the public can help us avoid challenges that states have run into,” says Barthelson.

Currently, Barthelson works at M.C. Dean as a security engineer. She hopes to channel her knowledge to navigate a path for Virginia out of the current challenges the state is facing with technology. “We are seeing the negative effect technology can have on politics when they’re combined, and we need better laws to protect that,” she says.

She wants to address technology challenges, such as deep fake use in politics, the ubiquity of disinformation, and the shift to green energy.

Besides technology, she hopes to address the funding disparities in low-income schools and help low-income people get into the workforce. “I’m a problem solver. I’m always open to new ideas, and at the end of the day, solving the problem for constituents is what really matters,” she says.

Topics