Francesca Da Ros Wins the 2026 AIROYoung Dissertation Award

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

IOLab congratulates Francesca Da Ros on winning the 2026 AIROYoung Dissertation Award with her thesis, Chronicles on Metaheuristic Optimization: Components, Applications, and Large Language Models. The award ceremony took place on 10 September 2026 during the national ODS conference in Galzignano Terme, Italy.

The AIROYoung Dissertation Award is presented by the Italian Operations Research Society to the best doctoral dissertation in Decision Sciences defended at an Italian university during the relevant period. The selection process evaluates both the dissertation and its related scientific publications and concludes with a presentation by the finalists at the ODS conference.

Francesca Da Ros at the AIROYoung Dissertation Award ceremony during ODS 2026.

Francesca’s research investigates advanced optimization techniques for complex decision-making, with a strong focus on real-world applications. One case study addresses the scheduling of production cycles for industrial furnaces, seeking to improve production efficiency while reducing energy consumption and making the process more sustainable.

A second application concerns home healthcare planning. Optimization methods are used to organize caregivers’ visits and activities while considering not only service efficiency, but also individual patient needs and the personalization of care.

Alongside these applications, the dissertation examines how the behavior of optimization algorithms can be better understood and compared. It also investigates how generative artificial intelligence systems, particularly large language models, can support optimization processes.

Railway Capacity Paper Named Best Application Paper Runner-Up at CP 2026

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper A Scheduling-Based Approach to Railway Capacity Estimation for Industrial Freight Junctions, by Luca Di Gaspero, Alessia Grosso, and Giovanni Longo, received the Best Application Paper Runner-Up recognition at the 32nd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2026).

The work presents a scheduling-based approach to estimating railway capacity in industrial freight junctions, bringing constraint programming techniques to a complex real-world transportation problem.

CP 2026 took place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 20 to 23 July 2026 as part of the Federated Logic Conference. The paper was presented on 21 July in the Scheduling; Timetabling session.

See the official CP 2026 schedule and the announcement on LinkedIn.

Awards | Intelligent Optimization Lab

Francesca Da Ros Wins the 2026 AIROYoung Dissertation Award

Railway Capacity Paper Named Best Application Paper Runner-Up at CP 2026