As a Fulbrighter, I am working with Prof. Jose Correa at the University of Chile where my research is in operations research and theoretical computer science. My main project has been modeling fare evasion in the Transantiago bus network. For this, we visited an actual fare evasion booth in mid march and observed the policemen and fare inspectors’ process of checking passengers on buses. This helped us gain better insight in the fare inspection process, the amount of time it takes per bus, and other data points that would improve our model. We also made a presentation to Conicyt in mid march to extend the project’s grant funding for the other Chilean researchers on the project.

As for my contribution to the work, I am in the process of implementing an updated linear program, factoring in constraints of the policemen now not able to work across all of Santiago but only within their districts. This in turn would affect the probabilities of where we choose to place inspectors. My immediate collaborators for this project also include Bastian Bahamondes, Felipe Subiare, Andreas Wiese, Abner Turkieltaub, and Charles Thraves.

I am also working on another project with Jose Correa and Mathieu Mari on modeling multi armed bandits in the context of unknown priors of bandit types. This project is still beginning, and we are hoping to observe theoretical properties of this problem which has applications such as in designing clinical trials. My plans for the near future are to continue my research. I am wrapping up a project from my masters’ at MIT and we are hoping to submit the paper by early May. The actions I need to take are simply more research. The fare inspection project that we are working on has tremendous potential to better place policemen and fare inspectors to maximize the number of evaders caught given a limited police budget constraint.