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Canada Research Chair in Large Transportation Network Optimization
Objectives
The chair carries out basic and applied research on the development of optimization software for managing personnel and vehicles in large transportation systems. This involves the development and effective implementation of new mathematical optimization techniques to address large-scale problems. Research at the chair also examines the issue of re-engineering the decision-making processes used by transportation firms. The chair studies new decision-making sequences to enable information to be used as it becomes available. Research also focuses on the development of optimization models for treating the problems raised by reorganizations of the decision-making process, and for evaluating the resulting gains.
Program
The chair's research aims to:
1. Develop new optimization idea to reduce computer time.
2. Treat extremely large-scale organizational, scheduling and planning problems;
3. Consider new factors at certain stages;
4. Develop optimization methods that simultaneously address several stages of decision-making processes;
5. Study new decision sequences and business models of large transportation companies.
The chair is equipped with some 50 computer workstations and servers. The chair also has access to the powerful parallel computing resources of the Réseau Québécois de Calcul Haute Performance, of which Dr. Soumis was a founder. The chair's laboratories are located in the Research Centre GERAD André-Aisenstadts building of Université de Montréal.
The chair works in partnership with many large transportation companies, including Air Canada, VIA Rail, CN, and Bombardier, as well as many foreign interests. The firms Ad-Opt and GIRO commercialize the software developed by the chair and, together with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), provide a budget of approximately $1,000,000 annually.