Description:

The Center for Engineering and Health welcomes Dr. Sze-chuan Suen of the University of Southern California fro the latest entry in our seminar series.

Abstract: More than 1 in 7 American adults has chronic kidney disease (CKD), and as many as 9 in 10 do not know they have it. People with diabetes or hypertension are at higher risk for CKD, and diagnosed diabetics and hypertensive patients are currently recommended to receive CKD screening at least once a year, although some clinicians believe screening more frequently would be beneficial. CKD diagnosis and progression also vary by demographic factors, such as age and race. I present several models from a series of applied projects to address questions around optimal screening frequency among diabetics and hypertensive patients, identifying non-diabetic, non-hypertensive patients for screening, and evaluating the societal cost and health impacts of these proposed policies. We draw from techniques in simulation, Markov decision processes, machine learning, and cost-effectiveness analysis.

Bio: Sze-chuan Suen is an Associate Professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD in the department of Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2016. Her research interests include developing applied mathematical models to identify epidemiological trends and evaluate health policies to support informed decision-making. Sze was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2023, and her work has been recognized through several paper competitions -- winner of the INFORMS Pierskalla Best Paper Award in 2017, a finalist in 2019, and a finalist in the Junior Faculty Forum Paper Competition in 2019. Her work has also been honorably mentioned in the Competition for Best Application Paper in the 2021 IISE Transactions Focus Issue on Operations Engineering and Analytics. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.