School of Mathematics

Three School of Mathematics students take part in MOPTA competition

The team "NP Die Hard", consisting of Paula Fermin Cueto, Ivona Gjeroska and Albert Sola from the SoM, have competed in the international MOPTA competition this year. They contested, with the help of their advisor Prof. Miguel Anjos, over the course of 3 months between February and May.

The team was asked to develop a solution method for a capacitated vehicle routing problem where they had to optimize the location of multiple depots, the size of the fleet and the routes of trucks that could return to the depot to reload at any point; all of this had to be integrated into a user interface. The purpose of the competition was to bring together diverse groups of contestants with interests in both discrete and continuous optimization.

Due to the ongoing epidemic the team had to learn how to be effective while working remotely; this was accomplished via clear communication between members (and the use of trello)!

Since starting, the team has made it into the finals. The next step is to improve their previous solutions and prepare for the presentation that takes place in the final stage.

More detail can be found here: https://coral.ise.lehigh.edu/~mopta/competition