On 1 November CWI researcher Leen Stougie was appointed full Professor Operations Research at the VU University Amsterdam.
In Operations Research mathematical methods and models are developed for solving practical problems, like railway and school timetables. This research area is relatively young, about half a century. Stougie thinks that mathematical models aren’t used nearly enough in solving societal or industrial problems. There is still a big gap between theory developed and practical applications.
Stougie performs research in combinatorial optimization with an emphasis on algorithmics. An algorithm is a series of instructions, a kind of step-by-step plan to solve a certain problem systematically. He works on applications in wireless communication, sensor networks, and systems biology. Especially in medicine great new challenges can be found.
In 1980 Stougie arrived at CWI. Since 2000 he has been a researcher in the group Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization. He is also project leader of the BRICKS project Algorithms and Processes in Life Sciences and a member of the executive committee of the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research.
