[DMANET] PhD fellowship

BRAIN-TRansversal Assessment of Intermodal New Strategies (BRAIN-TRAINS)
For this Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks, HEC-ULg
offers a PhD fellowship starting in March 2014.
BRAIN-TRAINS is a four-year project (2014-2018) with the University of
Antwerp.
HEC® Management School - University of Liege (HEC®-ULg) is the school of
management of the University of Liege. HEC-ULg is one of the leading Belgian
university business schools for graduate and postgraduate programs with more
than 115 full-time faculty members and researchers and more than 2380
students. The school's mission is to train creative managers who will be
responsible for building the future of businesses and organizations in a
cross-cultural world. HEC-ULg is a dynamic institution that heavily promotes
an active pedagogy leading students to actively contribute to their
education. The international vision of HEC-ULg translates into multiple
research activities in management and economics, numerous partnerships with
worldwide companies and universities, and growing internationalization of
its programs and faculty.
HEC-ULg is located in Liège, Belgium's third largest city, and the largest
agglomeration of the French-speaking Walloon region. At the heart of Europe,
Liège is the third inland port of Europe and the seventh freight airport in
Europe.  Recognized for its quality of life and its rich historical
patrimonium, Liège is ideally situated within the Meuse-Rhin Euregio, 40
kilometers from Maastricht (the Netherlands) and 60 kilometers from Aachen
(Germany). It is less than 1.5 hours away from Köln, 2.5 hours from Paris
and 4 hours from London by high-speed train (TGV) starting from the new
magnificent train station designed by the renowned architect Santiago
Calatrava.
HEC-ULg work environment :
http://www.hec.ulg.ac.be/en/hec-ulg-business-school-assets
Mission :
The objective of BRAIN-TRAINS is to determine how rail freight intermodality
can be made successful and how it can contribute to solve the related
market, society and policy-making challenges. Starting point of the project
is the relative weak usage of this mode of transport. The research proposal
aims at building new understanding based on existing knowledge, by
integrating and approaching the problem from an interdisciplinary
perspective. It tackles various issues which are still scientifically
unresolved, for both policy-makers and the transport sector.
HEC-ULg's main work is on the design and the management of intermodal
transport services networks. To do that, road, rail and transhipment costs
can be based on models for calculating operational and external costs of
intermodal and road freight transportation networks. These costs include
different components such as personnel, energy, stock depreciation and
maintenance, and rail infrastructure charges, but also delays through e.g.
customs procedures. External costs include local and global air pollution,
congestion, noise pollution, and traffic accidents. In order to reflect the
real impact of transportation on the environment, those costs will be
incorporated into our models, in interaction with the outputs of the other
partners of the project. Secondly, our research will look into the economic
improvements that an intermodal services network may bring by a better use
of its modal networks and an optimal distribution of the flows on these
networks. More precisely, given a group of demands characterized by their
removal points, their delivery points, the physical properties of the goods
and the times intervals for removal and delivery, transport chains have to
be defined between the removal and delivery points.
The approach comes under the operations research domain and the mathematical
optimization. Design and management of intermodal transport services
networks problems are complex inherently, in regards to the multiplicity of
the objectives, of the constraints and of the parameters. In addition,
taking into account external costs due to emissions might imply the
development of non-linear optimization models.
Candidate profile:
Quantitative skills
Linear and Nonlinear Optimization
Java
Strong academic record
Good knowledge of English
Good drafting ability required
Initiative
Motivation
Contact: sabine.limbourg@ulg.ac.be
Deadline: March 15th, 2014


_____________________________________________________________
Sabine Limbourg - Assistant Professor
QuantOM, Research Centre in Quantitative Methods and Operations Management
HEC - Management School - University of Liège
Rue Louvrex, 14 Building N1 Office 337
4000 Liège - Belgium
sabine.limbourg@ulg.ac.be
Phone : +32 (0) 4 366 31 81 - Fax: +32 (0) 4 366 27 67



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