Rob van der Mei - Service Logistics: Saving Lives with Mathematics

Abstract:

In life-threatening situations where every second counts, the timely presence of emergency services can make the difference the survival or death.

In this talk, I will give a number of examples of success stories where data analytics, stochastics modeling and optimization have been successfully applied in real-life practice. In doing so, I will also address challenges involved in bringing academic research results to practice.

Biography Rob van der Mei

I am a full professor in Applied Mathematics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Senior Researcher at CWI. Before going to academia, I have been working for over a decade as a consultant and researcher in the ICT industry, working for PTT, KPN, AT&T Labs USA and TNO ICT. My main research activities are in the area of Stochastic Operations Research, at the challenging interface of theory and application. Over the years, I have built up a huge network of research contacts and collaborations with industries and governments, and established many public-private partnerships. My research interests include emergency logistics, performance of ICT systems, freight logistics, transport and mobility, revenue management, queueing theory and data analytics for cyber-crime. Recently, together with Sandjai Bhulai I was awarded the prestigious Huibregtsen Award 2021, a national award for research that unites scientific excellence and innovation with outstanding value to society. I am co-author of some 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings.