KU Leuven - fully funded PhD studentships in Computer Science, Operational Research

1. PhD on Staffing Optimisation

The research will focus on problems integrating personnel staffing and
rostering. While these two problems are typically addressed separately,
they are intricately linked, allowing for significant efficiency gains
when enabling feedback from one problem to the other, or when solving the
two problems simultaneously. The candidate is expected to develop  
(general) models and algorithms for such integrated problems, in which the
emphasis is on the rostering component and its subproblems.

Detailed information:
https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/53355551

Applications are made online.

2. PhD on Homecare scheduling

The PhD project will be conducted in close cooperation with industrial
partners committed to providing real data.

The research will focus on problems that combine characteristics of
vehicle routing and personnel rostering. A strong emphasis is on the
personnel rostering component, which includes task scheduling as an
important subproblem. The candidate is expected to develop a general
model, suitable for real world cases, which allows for sufficient
flexibility by defining time windows for tasks, allowing tasks to be   
shortened (or lengthened), or exploiting task qualification requirements.
To deal with these new models, new (heuristic and/or exact) search
algorithms will have to be developed by the candidate.

Detailed information:
https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/53351430
 
Applications are made online.

3. PhD on Complexity of personnel rostering

The research will study theoretical models for personnel rostering
problems to gain new insights into the problem's complexity. The common
assumption that all personnel rostering problems are hard is not valid.
Recently, several special cases of such problems have been identified that
can be solved in polynomial time. The candidate is expected to further
establish the theoretical knowledge on personnel rostering problems
through theoretical contributions classifying new rostering problems.

Detailed information:
https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/53351291

Applications are made online.

4. PhD on Berth allocation and optimisation of harbour operations
 
The PhD project will be conducted in close cooperation with industrial
partners committed to providing real data.

The first phase of the PhD aims at developing a decision support approach
for general berth allocation, encompassing berths at tank terminals and at
container terminals with quay cranes.  It requires modelling a general
terminal layout, vessel manoeuvring and blocking constraints, multiple
objectives by different stakeholders, dynamic scheduling and algorithm
development.

In the second phase, the decision support approach will be coupled with
models for other harbour optimization problems, for example, lock
scheduling, terminal operations, human resources scheduling.

Detailed information:
https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/jobsite/vacatures/53348451

Applications are made online.

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Research group CODeS at KU Leuven, Department of Computer Science
Lab: Technology campus Gent

CODeS (Combinatorial Optimisation and Decision Support) conducts
activities in the domain of operational research.  The research group has
a strong track record in modelling, algorithm development and
implementation of decisions support approaches for industrial and societal
optimisation problems.

CODeS' research is often driven by demand.  Challenging optimisation
problems originating from industry, health care, logistics are addressed.
Key research areas include scheduling, timetabling, vehicle routing,
cutting and packing.

CODeS also contributes academically to general search methodologies and
decomposition methods that go beyond optimisation approaches to particular
real world problems.