Alumni

Bhagya is a PhD student at Monash University. My project is titled “Road Pavement Maintenance Scheduling Accounting for Minimizing Congestion.” The primary objective of my research is to optimize the scheduling of pavement upgrades with the following goals in mind: minimizing traffic disruption across the Melbourne road network, ensuring upgrades are completed on time, and matching the work scheduled to the available equipment and appropriately skilled people. My supervisors are former OPTIMA CI Professor Mark Wallace and Associate Investigator Dr Ilankaikone Senthooran. Also there are two other non optima supervisors Dr Graeme Gange and Professor Le Hai Vu.

Dr João Luiz Junho Pereira is a Brazilian postdoctoral researcher from the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA) visiting OPTIMA. He loves to improve the human way of living and creating resources using Artificial Intelligence. He received his PhD from the Federal University of Itajubá, which was winner of the biggest award  in Brazilian science, the 2023 CAPES, after creating the first metaheuristic for multi-objective optimization from Brazil and the first in the world Inspired by Lightning and applied it, other metaheuristics, and machine learning to solve the most diverse and complex problems in mechanical engineering and beyond. His main areas of activities are optimization with metaheuristics, machine learning, design of experiments (DOE), and finite element method. If you have an interesting problem, don’t hesitate to get in touch with him to apply the most modern and current optimization techniques to push the frontiers of knowledge of everything that is known about it.

Sina Mohri is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering at the University of Melbourne, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, and in the Department of Management & Marketing at Swinburne University of Technology, with his fellowship extending until 2027. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne in October 2024. Sina’s research centers on mathematical modeling in Operations Research, Operations Management, and Transportation Engineering, with a focus on developing innovative urban freight solutions to promote sustainability and smarter cities.

OPTIMA Associate Investigator Maria Vrakopoulou is a Lecturer in the Power and Energy System group at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Melbourne. She received her diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece in May 2008, and her PhD degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, at ETH Zurich, Switzerland in June 2014. Dr. Vrakopoulou pursued her research as a post-doc in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA for a year, and then she earned a 3-year Marie Curie fellowship award to continue her post-doctoral research in the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Her research interests concentrate on the optimization and analysis of planning and operation problems for power systems under renewable generation uncertainty.

Rasul’s area of expertise is Operations Research (OR) and more broadly data science and prescriptive analytics (data-driven decision making). He has in-depth knowledge of a wide range of mathematical, statistical and optimisation techniques and software tools that are crucial for research and practice of decision making. Defining, modelling, and solving real-world optimisation problems through state-of-the-art mathematical programming techniques constitutes a significant part of his experience. Rasul believes in research translation and has a track record of real case studies in supply chain network design and resource planning. He has a track record of publications in top-tier OR journals and considerable expertise in developing decision support software for service and manufacturing industries.

Rasul received his PhD in Mathematics from the University of Newcastle in 2020. In his PhD, he employed machine learning, dynamic programming, mixed integer linear programming and two-stage stochastic programming approaches to solve variants of a supply chain network design problem. He developed decomposition algorithms that scale well with the number of uncertain scenarios, conducted extensive benchmarking under various scenarios, and provided managerial insights for a real case study. In his post-doctoral role at Deakin University, Rasul applied his expertise to develop a decision support system (called optimiser engine) for a real-world resource planning problem. An extensive simulation study demonstrated that the proposed optimiser significantly improves the efficiency of client’s operations over time, thereby potentially saving millions of dollars for them. Due to the significance of the theoretical and practical contributions, this work was selected as a semi-finalist of INFORMS Franz Edelman Award (2021).

Reza’s research aims to develop smart grid solutions to efficiently deliver sustainable, economic and secure electricity supply. His team is interested in the efficient integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in power networks, monitoring and visibility of power networks, and power system protection. He has been the recipient of the 2019 Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility and the IEEE Power and Energy Society Basil Papadias Award. Reza received his PhD from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2016. He collaborates with OPTIMA CI Hyndman.

Daniel’s PhD research was completed as part of the Priestley Scholarship Award jointly with the University of Melbourne and the University of Birmingham. His thesis, supervised by OPTIMA CI, Professor Michael Kirley, contributed in several areas within evolutionary computation for dynamic multi-objective optimisation problems.
Daniel was appointed Research Fellow in Industrial Mathematics at the University of Birmingham, with upcoming projects including working on predictive algorithms for clean-air turbulence and in graph-based analysis of information transmission in social networks.

Estefania’s research focuses on the testing, refinement, and implementation of optimisation algorithms for solving real-world problems in conjunction with simulations modelling. Presently she works with the Melbourne Defence Enterprise. Her research interests lie in optimisation, evolutionary computation and machine learning.

Daniel Bustos is a computer engineer with a MSc in computer science and a PhD in operations research and transport engineering, specialising in techniques such as mathematical programming, heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms, and simulation modeling.

An Analytics Engineer, Achini’s PhD at the University of Melbourne focused on discrete stochastic optimisation and other optimisation techniques for scheduling problems. Her project was titled “Simulation and Optimisation approach for staff rostering of a blood donor centre”. The project scope was to determine a method for finding the optimal configuration of staff shifts based on the predicted staffing demand using a simulation model that captures the uncertainty in the donation process. Achini was co-supervised by OPTIMA CIs Dr Joyce Zhang and Prof. Mark Fackrell.