Professor Michael Kirley
Theme Leader
Michael is a Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems. He is the Co-Director of the Melbourne Centre for Data Science. Michael has made significant contributions to the design of data-driven algorithms for optimisation and decision-making, specifically (a) in the analysis and design of evolutionary algorithms; including exploratory landscape analysis with applications in large-scale, open and dynamic environments, (b) parallel multi-objective optimisation algorithms, explicitly looking at alternative deployment framework, and (c) developing new mechanisms and algorithms, inspired by reinforcement learning and evolutionary game theory, to explore decision-making in complex social-ecological systems.
Michael is the joint lead in the research theme INTEGRATE
Professor Andreas Ernst
Theme Leader
Andreas has worked in real-world applications of optimisation for over 25 years, including in supply chains, logistics, mining, services (rostering) and energy. Recent work includes rail planning and scheduling for Pacific National through a Linkage grant and methods using machine learning to improve the performance of optimisation algorithms as part of a ARC Discovery Project with RMIT. Andreas is a Senior Fellow with the Australia Indonesia Centre leading the research on Transport and Logistics in the PAIR program. His research is focused on methods for solving large-scale integer programming problems, including decomposition methods and matheuristics that combine mathematical programming approaches with metaheuristic search.
Andreas is the joint lead in the research theme ADVANCE
Assoc. Professor Alysson M. Costa
Theme Leader
Alysson is an expert in mathematical programming with a focus on mixed-integer programming modelling and decomposition solution algorithms. He has held a Senior Lectureship position since 2017. He obtained PhD in Business Administration (Quantitative Methods) from HEC – University of Montreal. In 2008 he commenced at the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of São Paulo. He has been a chief investigator in several projects funded by CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP, the Spanish Ministry of Education, the European Commission (Marie-Curie Actions) and the ARC. He has 40 journal publications on theory and multidisciplinary applications of optimisation in several applied engineering areas. He has supervised nine PhD students and one post-doc and is the current primary supervisor of three PhD students. Alysson has provided mathematical modelling and algorithmic development input to research on a wide range of application areas, resulting in published outputs with more than 50 co-authors (Scopus).
Alysson is the joint lead in the research theme ADVANCE
Assoc. Professor Guido Tack
Theme Leader
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