Bissan Ghaddar is the John M. Thompson Chair in Engineering Leadership and Innovation and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Sustainability at the Ivey Business School working on problems at the intersection of machine learning and non-linear optimization. She is also affiliated with university of Waterloo and DTU. Bissan holds a PhD in Management Science from the University of Waterloo. Before joining academia, she worked on energy, water, and transportation network optimization at IBM Research and on inventory management problems at the Centre for Operational Research and Analysis, Department of National Defence Canada. Her work has been published in prestigious journals such as Mathematical Programming, INFORMS Journal on Computing, SIAM Journal on Optimization, among others. Her research has been supported by national and international grants including NSERC, OCE, Cisco, H2020, and Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. She serves as the Research Lead at the Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre and is a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, engaged in the research cluster on AI, Global Governance, and International Public Policy. She is the Associate Editor for the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization. She was recently awarded the best survey paper award at the EURO conference in Copenhagen and the Distinguished International Associate by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
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1:17:21
Subject to: Dominique de Werra
Dominique de Werra is an emeritus professor of Operations Research at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. His research fields include Combinatorial Optimization, Graph Theory, Scheduling and Timetabling. After spending a few years as an assistant professor in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo (Canada) he joined the Math Department of EPFL. He conducted a collection of Operational Research projects (applied as well as theoretical) with a number of industrial partners. He is an associate editor of Discrete Applied Mathematics, Discrete Mathematics, Annals of Operations Research and a member of a dozen of editorial boards of international journals. From 1990 to 2000 Dominique de Werra was the Vice-President of EPFL; he was in charge of the international relations and represented his institution in many academy networks in Europe (like the CLUSTER network of excellence which he chaired). He was also in charge of all education programs of EPFL. He was President of IFORS (the International Federation of Operational Research Societies) from 2010 to 2012. In 1987-1988 he was President of EURO, the European Association of Operational Research Societies. In 1985–1986 he was President of ASRO, the Swiss Operations Research Society. In 1995 he was the laureate of the EURO Gold Medal. He has obtained Honorary Degrees from the University of Paris, the Technical University of Poznan (Poland) and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). In 2012 he was awarded the EURO Distinguished Service Medal. He published over 200 papers in international scientific journals. He also wrote and edited several books. He was member of many committees in various countries of Europe and America (evaluation of institutions, accreditation, strategic orientation, etc.).
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1:25:07
Subject to: Harilaos Psaraftis
Harilaos N. Psaraftis is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). His areas of interest are maritime logistics, intermodal logistics, port logistics, and green logistics. He has a PhD from MIT, where he was a faculty member from 1979 to 1989, receiving tenure in 1985. He was a Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) from 1989 to 2013 and at DTU from 2013 to 2023. He also served as CEO of the port of Piraeus from 1996 to 2002. He has published extensively and has received several academic and industry awards. His latest book is entitled “Sustainable Shipping: A Cross-Disciplinary View”, Springer (2019).
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1:22:54
Subject to: Hugo Scolnik
Hugo Sconlik is regarded as one of the pioneers of Informatics in Argentina. In 1985 he created the Computer Science Department, of which he is currently Full Professor, at the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Cryptography is Hugo's focal area of research, gaining him recognition as a leading figure in this field. He is the co-author of the Argentine Electronic Signature Law enacted in 2001. That said, his research interests are not limited to cryptography and comprise other areas such as numerical analysis, mathematical models and even robotics. Hugo has published about 50 scientific papers and two books. He was awarded the 2003 Konex Platinum prize for the best trajectory in Science and Technology in Argentina of the decade 1993-2003 and in 2005 the Sadosky prize for the best trajectory in Informatics. He was twice elected Vice President at Large of IFORS (International Federation for Operations Research Societies). Hugo has also been quite active besides academia, both in the private (corporate) sector and as consultant to multiple public and international organizations, and frequently appears in the media. He was a Founding Partner of two leading firms that develop products and solutions for SET and identity protection. Hugo holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Zurich and a PhD (Honoris Causa) from the University of Cuyo in Argentina.
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2:24:04
Subject to: Karen Aardal
Karen Aardal is a Full Professor at TU Delft, in the Netherlands, specializing in integer and combinatorial optimization, with a focus on algebraic methods for solving integer optimization problems. Her research also includes algorithm analysis and practical applications in health and logistics. Karen has been actively involved in professional societies, serving as Chair of the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and as a member of its Publications and Executive Committees. She has also been a board member of the INFORMS Computing Society for three terms. Her editorial contributions include roles as Area Editor for “Design and Analysis of Algorithms” at the INFORMS Journal on Computing and as Associate Editor for journals such as Mathematical Programming Series B, Networks, Operations Research Letters, and the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization. In addition, she co-edited the Handbook on Discrete Optimization, as well as volumes of Mathematical Programming Series B, and she chaired the Program Committee of IPCO 2023. Karen's service extends to national and international scientific organizations. She was a member of the Dutch Mathematics Council (2016–2021) and currently serves on the advisory committee of CWI Amsterdam, and the board of ENW at the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Recognized for her significant contributions to the field, Karen was named an INFORMS Fellow in 2019.
"Subject to" offers a series of informal conversations with relevant figures in the fields of Operations Research, Combinatorial Optimization and Logistics, and they are hosted by Anand Subramanian, an Associate Professor at Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil.
About the host:
Anand was born and raised in João Pessoa, Brazil. His parents are Indian immigrants who moved to Brazil in the early 1970s. He is an author of more 60 articles published in prestigious international journals.
France