Ph.D. School

The Ph.D. School will take place on Monday, February 9th, 2026 and will feature lectures from prominent Professors in the field of Operations Research and Optimization affiliated with the host university.

Marco Di Summa, University of Padova, Department of Mathematics [ORCID]

Short bio: Marco Di Summa is a Full Professor of Operations Research at the Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Italy. He earned his Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics from the same university in 2008 and has held research positions at Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (Université catholique de Louvain), the University of Torino, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research focuses on mixed-integer programming, polyhedral theory, and cutting-plane methods in optimization.

Title: TBD
Abstract: TBD

Matteo Fischetti, University of Padova, Department of Information Engineering [ORCID]

Short bio: Matteo Fischetti is full professor of Operations Research at the University of Padua, Italy. He is Associate Editor of the journals “Operations Research” (till 2024) and “Mathematical Programming Computation”. He won the “Best PhD Dissertation on Transportation” prize awarded by ORSA (1987) and the INFORMS Edelman award (2008). In 2015, he won the Harold Larnder Prize awarded by the Canadian Operational Research Society. His research interests include Integer Programming, Combinatorial Optimization, Railway Optimization, Vehicle and Crew Scheduling Problems. Matteo Fischetti published more than 130 papers on top-level international journals of the field; his H-index on Google Scholar is 73.

Title: Benders and Bilevel Optimization
Abstract: In this introductory talk, I will address Benders decomposition methods, and I will present some basic solution methods for Mixed-Integer Bilevel optimization. The talk is intended for Ph.D. students who are not working on these problems, but want to know more about them.

Francesco Rinaldi, University of Padova, Department of Mathematics [ORCID]

Short bio: Francesco Rinaldi is a Full Professor of Mathematics at the University of Padua’s Math Department. He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research from Sapienza University of Rome in 2009. His research focuses on nonlinear and derivative-free optimization, with applications in many scientific fields such as machine learning, medicine and biology.

Title: TBD
Abstract: TBD

Domenico Salvagnin, University of Padova, Department of Information Engineering [ORCID]

Short bio: Domenico Salvagnin is an Associate Professor of Operations Research at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua. He earned his Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics (Operations Research) from the same university in 2009. His research focuses on linear and mixed-integer programming, constraint programming, and hybrid optimization methods. He has received several international awards, including the DIMACS Implementation Challenge (2014) and best paper prizes at CPAIOR 2019 and ICAPS 2019. He has collaborated with IBM ILOG CPLEX and FICO XPRESS and serves as Technical Editor for Mathematical Programming Computation.

Title: Computational Research 101
Abstract: In this talk, we discuss the joy and pain of computational research. We start from basic principles on experimental design, continue with tips and pitfalls in data analysis, and finally argue why software engineering best practices are relevant even in the context of academic research. We conclude with a few comments on how (not) to present empirical results.