Meet this year's plenary speakers

Michel Gendreau is Professor of Operations Research in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering of Polytechnique Montréal (Canada). His main research area is the application of operations research methods to a wide range of problem areas: transportation and logistics systems planning and operation, energy production and storage, healthcare, and telecommunications. Dr. Gendreau has published more than 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, as well as numerous book chapters. He is also the co-editor of eight books dealing with transportation planning and scheduling, as well as with metaheuristics.

Dr. Gendreau was the Director of the Centre for Research on Transportation (formerly CRT and now CIRRELT) from 1999 to 2007. He was Editor in chief of Transportation Science from 2009 to 2014 and has been a member of the editorial board of several other journals. A former President of the Canadian Operational Research Society, he was also Vice-President of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) from 2001 to 2003, from 2007 to 2009, and from 2013 to 2015, as well as Vice-President, International Activities of The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) from 2006 to 2009.

In 2001, he received the Merit Award of the Canadian Operational Research Society in recognition of his contributions to the development of O.R. in Canada. He was elected Fellow of INFORMS in 2010 and became a fellow of IFORS in 2022. In 2015, Dr. Gendreau received the prestigious Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award of the Transportation Science & Logistics Society of INFORMS.

Jeroen Mulder works for the Air France-KLM Group CIO Office as technology innovation project manager. He has a background in mathematics, a PhD in algebraic geometry, and more than 25 years of experience as operations research analyst and data scientist. He has extensive experience in setting up simulation, optimisation, and statistical models for various business divisions, like Operations Control Centre, Hub Control Centre, Engineering and Maintenance, and Revenue Management at Air France-KLM.

Jeroen worked and lived in Paris for five years as part of the French Operations Research team responsible for developing the forecasting and optimisation models in the joint Revenue Management system of Air France-KLM.

In his current role as technology innovation project manager his mission is to accelerate innovation inside Air France-KLM with new technologies judging the right balance between benefits and risks. Examples of such technologies include Generative AI and Quantum technologies.