Lecture 1: Heuristics for Vehicle Routing Problems

Speaker: Thibaut Vidal

Short bio: Thibaut Vidal is professor at the department of computer science of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. Previously he was postdoctoral researcher at LIDS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. He obtained a joint Ph.D in computer science from the University of Montreal, Canada, and from Troyes University of Technology, France. His main domains of expertise relate to combinatorial optimization, metaheuristics, integer and dynamic programming, and convex optimization, with applications to supply chain management, resource allocation, signal processing, and machine learning. He has authored nearly 50 articles in reputed international journals such as "Operations Research", "Transportation Science", "SIAM Journal on Optimization", "European Journal of Operational Research" and “Computers & Operations Research”. Prof. Vidal is the recipient of two TSL best paper awards, for the years 2014 and 2016, from the Transportation Science and Logistics Section of INFORMS, and the 2016 EJOR best paper award in the category “Theory and methodology”. He also received Young Researcher Prize of ROADEF - French Operations Research and Decision Support Society in 2013. 

Lecture 2: Introduction to Approximation Algorithms

Speaker: Nguyen T. Thanh

Short bio: Nguyễn Trung Thành is lecturer at Haiphong University. He obtained a PhD degree on computer science at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany. He was postdoctoral researcher at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and New York University. He published more than 10 articles on high-quality journals in the filed of operations research. His research interests include artificial intelligence and multiagent systems (resource allocation, social network, game theory, and smart grid), and combinatorial optimization and theoretical computer science (approximation algorithm, computational complexity, and discrete geometry).

Lecture 3: Basic Mathematical Programming Models for Optimization Problems

Speaker: Ha M. Hoang

Short bio: Hà Minh Hoàng is now working at Operations Research Lab (ORLab), VNU University of Engineering and Technology. He obtained a master degree from Troyes University of Technology, France and a PhD degree at Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France, both on operations research. He has published more than 10 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. In 2017, he got Vietnam Golden Globe Award given by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Hồ Chí Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee. 

TA: Nguyen Minh Hai