Current Research
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My current research at the University of Toronto in collaboration with Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, under the supervision of Professors Timothy Chan and Teodor Stanescu, focuses on optimization problems related to the development of a novel MRI-guided radiotherapy system. The ideal MRI-based imaging technique for radiotherapy would feature the ability a) to clearly distinguish the soft-tissue tumors from their surrounding anatomical background, and b) to capture and dynamically track internal organ motion manifested as the change in shape and location of the organ volume (e.g. due to breathing).
This project is devoted to proposing a robust optimization framework to tackle the design of an MRI system, which will provide high quality images even in the case of certain system malfunctions.
Previous Research
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Before joining the University of Toronto, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at École Polytechnique Montreal and Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD). My research, under the supervision of Professor Guy Desaulniers, involved developing new models and solutions approaches to address an integrated production-assembly-delivery system, arising in the context of our industrial partner's activities, a large caterer, which includes up to 200 deliveries a day. The project aimed to define an optimization algorithm that simultaneously designs delivery routes, production plans of finished products, and employees' shifts in the kitchen in order to minimize the total costs. The results of this research will form two scientific papers.
Ph.D. Dissertation
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I obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Operations Research from the University of Montreal in December 2013. My Ph.D. research in the Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT) and under the supervision of Professors Michel Gendreau, Teodor Gabriel Crainic and Walter Rei, was devoted to designing efficient optimization methodologies to address a wide array of logistics challenges involving the collection and distribution of dairy products in Quebec. This topic presented several interesting methodological challenges. One such problem concerns the planning aspect of routes, which are employed by a set of vehicles to collect the products of a series of milk production farms daily, followed by a delivery to a processing plant on the same day. During this project, we dealt with two variants of the problem. The first variant involved the design of routing plans when the production level of the farms over the planning horizon was assumed to be fixed, which served as an important stepping-stone for future stages. The second variant incorporated the inherent seasonal variations in the producers' supplies during the planning horizon. This setting behaved very similarly to the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands. For each of these problems, we developed new mathematical models and solution methodologies based on a series of cutting-edge approaches under both exact and metaheuristic frameworks. This research led to my publication of three scientific papers.