Soobok Yoon

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Soobok Yoon is currently pursuing his PhD in civil engineering at Monash University. His research revolves around tackling the charging scheduling problems for electric vehicle fleets operating within the Monash microgrid, particularly developing smart charging algorithms. Furthermore, his scholarly pursuits extend to optimizing the infrastructure design and investment strategies of smart charging systems.

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Liam Timms

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Liam is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, working on distributed optimisation with applications to making road planning more environmentally friendly.

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Helen Allison

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Helen Allison is a dynamic Education and Outreach Officer with over 6 years of experience in higher education. She is a passionate careers educator who enjoys working with students to develop lifelong skills for successful careers. Her keen interest in the development of PhD students has led her to work on numerous projects aimed at enhancing their skills and employability. Helen thrives on helping students articulate their experience in a meaningful way and enjoys empowering them to make informed choices about their future. She is committed to promoting science education through outreach activities and has worked on many programs and projects towards this goal.

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Dr Jip J. Dekker

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Jip is an OPTIMA research fellow based at Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on programming languages and tools to model and solve combinatorial optimisation problems. In particular, his research has involved the improved implementation and optimisation of the MiniZinc constraint modelling language and the creation of advanced interfaces to different types of solving technologies. Jip works with OPTIMA CIs Professor Peter Stuckey and Assoc. Professor Guido Tack.

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Zahra Namazian

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Zahra’s project title is “Optimising multi-item retail inventories using Artificial Intelligence”.

She is based at our Monash University node, working with our industry partner MECCA Industries. OPTIMA Deputy Director Prof. Peter Stuckey supervises her, alongside Monash supervisor Prof. John Betts.

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Zhuo Wei

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Zhuo’s project is titled “Data-driven optimisation for safe coordination of distributed energy resources in distribution networks.” She is supervised by OPTIMA CI Prof. Maria Garcia de la Banda

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Vivek Katial

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Vivek’s project title is Instance Space Analysis of Quantum Optimisation Algorithms.”

His research is on investigating the strengths and weaknesses of Quantum Computing in solving combinatorial optimisation problems. By adapting the instance space analysis framework to the quantum context, he can identify how different quantum algorithms solve different problems. He is currently looking into vehicle routing (VRP) and constraint satisfaction (SAT) problems and solving them using both universal gate-based and adiabatic quantum algorithms.” OPTIMA Director Prof. Kate Smith-Miles supervise him.

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Dr Charlotte Hurry

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Charlotte is a project manager, researcher, and higher education professional with 20 experience working in universities, including in the project teams of two ARC Centre’s of Excellence at Monash University. Her experience includes operational and strategic management, research administration, financial management, KPI and financial reporting, research project development, event management, industry engagement, outreach, communications, equity, diversity and inclusion, governance, project management and delivery. She is highly experienced in developing training programs for students and early career researchers. In 2009, Charlotte graduated with a first-class honours in population genetics and conservation biology from Monash University in Melbourne. In 2016, Charlotte completed a PhD at Griffith University, Queensland, in the population genetics, systematics and freshwater ecology of freshwater mountain crayfish.

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Assoc. Professor Guido Tack

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Guido is an Associate Professor in the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Information Technology. His research focuses on combinatorial optimisation, in particular architecture and implementation techniques for constraint solvers, translation of constraint modelling languages, and industrial applications. Guido leads the development of the MiniZinc constraint modelling language and toolchain, and he is one of the leading developers of Gecode, a state-of-the-art constraint programming library. Guido’s broader research interests include programming languages and computational logic.

Guido is the joint lead in the research theme INTEGRATE

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Dr Lele (Joyce) Zhang

Diversity and Inclusion Sub-Committee

Joyce is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. She has received a Bachelors Degree in Engineering from Southeast University, China, and a PhD in Operations Research from UoM. Her areas of expertise are broadly mathematical modelling and optimisation, traffic flow theory, Monte Carlo simulation, scheduling theory, Operations Research, City Logistics, and time series analysis. She is an Associate Investigator of ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) and a Chief Investigator of ARC Training Centre in Optimisation Technologies, Integrated Methodologies, and Applications (OPTIMA). She is involved in Physical Internet Lab at UoM. She also has research collaborations with several industries in logistics, transport and healthcare, including Toll, Transport of Victoria, and Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.

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