Dutch Day on Optimization

On 09 November, Maastricht University hosted the Dutch Day on Optimisation. At this one-day workshop speakers from Amsterdam, Twente and Brussels presented some of the latest research in this exciting field.

Put simply, computers are machines, and optimisation is the discipline of “driving” these machines to run as efficiently as possible. Optimisation lies at the intersection of computer science, mathematics and operations research.

The discipline is of crucial importance since many of the real-world problems that we wish to solve with computers, such as timetabling and vehicle routing, are extremely challenging, without optimisation, solutions are poor or take too long to run. Optimisation leverages mathematics to develop algorithms (series of tasks for a computer) that in many cases can solve difficult, large-scale problems to guaranteed optimality or near-optimality in reasonable time.

Man presenting

The Dutch Day on Optimisation is a physical manifestation complementing the online research seminar series "Dutch Seminar on Optimisation", that started during the Covid pandemic. The event is co-organised in Maastricht by researchers from the School of Business and Economics (SBE) and the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), reflecting the important role of optimisation in both these faculties.

The event has been made possible thanks to kind financial support from the participating faculties, the Mathematics Centre Maastricht (MCM) and Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs Limburg (SWOL).

For further information contact Dr. Steven Kelk, or Prof. Tjark Vredeveld.

“Given the growing number of people working on optimisation at Maastricht University we felt that it was natural to host this event. Optimisation is truly a crucial discipline because it helps us squeeze every drop of power out of computers when solving challenging, real-world problems, and there is no shortage of those. It is exciting to host so many researchers from the optimisation community here in Maastricht!”

Co-organisers Prof. Tjark Vredeveld (SBE) and dr. Steven Kelk (FSE)

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