Samitha Samaranayake

Dissertation: Routing strategies for the reliable and efficient utilization of road networks

Advisor: Alexandre Bayen

PhD Systems Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2014

MS Management Science and Engineering (Operations Research), Stanford University, 2009

MEng Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003

BS Computer Science, Massachusettes Institute of Technology, 2002

Cornell University Present 

• Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Graduate Field Faculty in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, the Center for Applied Math and the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell. 

My primary research interest is in mathematical modeling and algorithm design for large-scale transportation network problems, and my current focus is on problems at the intersection of public transit and ride-sharing. In particular, I am interested in hybrid transit systems---services that are designed from the ground-up to fully integrate traditional fixed-line public transit and agile, demand-responsive modes. 

I look at these problems through the lens of Algorithm Engineering, which focuses on developing theoretical insights from successful data-driven and heuristic approaches, and vice-versa (heuristics from theory). While the general formulations of the underlying technical questions in this domain typically lead to complex optimization problems with known hardness results, tractable solutions can sometimes be obtained by exploiting domain-specific characteristics that arise in specific transportation systems. I also work closely with public transit agencies and private shuttle operators to gain domain-specific practical insights, calibration of models using real-data, and validation through simulation and real world deployment of our algorithms.