Former PhD candidate Bart van Rossum recognised for research on fair work allocation in railway crew planning

The EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award recognises outstanding contributions to Operations Research by PhD candidates and researchers with less than two years of research experience following the completion of their PhD. Since 2015, no Dutch researcher had reached the final of the competition. This year, however, two Dutch finalists were selected: Bart van Rossum and Frank Akkerman of the University of Twente, who was subsequently announced as the winner by the jury.

Research focused on fairness and optimisation

Van Rossum’s research interests include railway crew planning, fairness-oriented optimisation and combinatorial optimisation more broadly. He applies a wide range of mathematical programming techniques, with a particular focus on large-scale column generation. His doctoral research was conducted in close collaboration with Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), the Netherlands’ largest passenger railway operator. The work addresses the challenge of allocating work efficiently while also taking fairness into account.

Academic background

Before joining Eindhoven University of Technology in May 2025, Van Rossum completed his PhD at the Econometric Institute of Erasmus School of Economics under the supervision of Associate Professor Twan Dollevoet and Professor Dennis Huisman. He also holds a Master of Science in Operations Research and Quantitative Logistics from Rotterdam, which he completed cum laude. His research has been published in journals including Transportation Science and Mathematical Programming.