Wednesday, April 26, 2017

[DMANET] PhD position in operations research available at Ecole des Ponts Paristech (Paris, France)

We invite applications for a fully funded PhD position in Operations Research and Machine Learning. The PhD should start no later than October 2017.

Title: demand models and schedule design for airlines

Operations Research has been successfully optimizing airline industry processes for more than sixty years. The topic of "schedule design" provides tools to decide which market to serve, with what frequency, and how to schedule flight legs to meet these frequencies. Mathematically, this requires to model demand and customer preferences, and then find the set of flight legs to operate that maximizes the predicted profit.

Two recent trends challenge the traditional approaches to schedule design. First, the air transportation industry moved from a monopolistic to a very competitive environment, which calls for a new generation of demand models. Second, the amount of data made available by information technologies opens new opportunities to better take into account the uncertainty of demand. These new stochastic models notably enable to evaluate and control risk when optimizing the flight legs schedule.

The objective of this PhD is to set up new approaches to schedule design that responds to these challenges.

* Research supervision and environment
Scientific supervisors: Frédéric Meunier and Axel Parmentier

This PhD takes place in the context of the Operations Research and Machine Learning chair between Air France and the Ecole des Ponts Paristech. The candidate will share its time between the Cermics, the applied mathematics center of the Ecole des Ponts Paristech, and the Operations Research department of Air France.

Ecole des Ponts Paristech is one of the top French universities, and Paris provides a startling research environment in mathematics and computer science.

* Candidate profile
Students are expected to carry out top-level research. They will develop efficient solution algorithms to difficult planning problems. They must have a master degree in Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related field. They should demonstrate good programming skills. Knowledge of mathematical programming is required, experience in stochastic optimization, machine learning, or game theory is an asset. Even though they may learn French during their stay, French knowledge is not mandatory.

* Application procedure
Interested candidates should send their application package electronically to Axel Parmentier (axel.parmentier@enpc.fr). The application should contain the following documents:
- Cover letter explaining the motivation for the PhD, your research/career interests, as well as your preferred starting date
- Detailed curriculum vitae with list of publications (if any)
- Grade records of Bachelor and Master programs
- Reference letters or contact details of references (one of them should be the supervisor of the candidate's Master studies)

Applications are opened from now. The position is limited to three years. If you have further questions regarding this position, please contact Axel Parmentier (axel.parmentier@enpc.fr).
Position will remain available until filled.


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