Paper Info
Title
Allocating Students to Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects Using Discrete Optimization
Abstract
AbstractWe discuss an allocation mechanism of capstone projects to senior-year undergraduate students, which the recently established Singapore University of Technology and Design SUTD has implemented. A distinguishing feature of these projects is that they are multidisciplinary ; each project must involve students from at least two disciplines. This is an instance of a bipartite many-to-one matching problem with one-sided preferences and with additional lower and upper bounds on the number of students from the disciplines that must be matched to projects. This leads to challenges in applying many existing algorithms. We propose the use of discrete optimization to find an allocation that considers both efficiency and fairness. This provides flexibility in incorporating side constraints, which are often introduced in the final project allocation using inputs from the various stakeholders. Over a three-year period from 2015 to 2017, the average rank of the project allocated to the student is roughly halfway between their top two choices, with around 78 percent of the students assigned to projects in their top-three choices. We discuss practical design and optimization issues that arise in developing such an allocation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1287/inte.2017.0940
Periodicals
Keywords
Field
DocType
project allocation, discrete optimization, multidisciplinary
Multidisciplinary approach,Discrete optimization,Engineering management,Capstone,Engineering,Management science
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
48
3
0092-2102
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
11
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thomas L. Magnanti11662263.65
Karthik Natarajan240731.52