Doctoral study in Operations Research

Pursuing a PhD at our University gives you access to a high-calibre research community – you may have the opportunity to publish papers, attend international conferences and develop your network in academia and industry.

Operations Research (OR) is the science of utilising advanced mathematical theory/computational methods to help make better decisions, and is one of the foundations of artificial intelligence. It utilises ideas from areas including mathematical modelling, optimisation, simulation, statistical modelling, decisions analysis, and data science to solve real-world problems.

Analytics is the capture, management, organisation, and visualisation of data to inform better decision making. Computational Analytics embeds this data into a mathematical/statistical model that enables the decision-making process to be automated and/or optimised. Computational Analytics is the engineering behind data science and data-driven decision making in the real-world.

We welcome research proposals in topics relating to Operations Research and Computational Analytics in either our key application areas or our key research areas.

Application Areas

• Electricity pricing
• Healthcare Delivery
• Transport

Research Areas

• Multi-objective Optimisation
• Integer Programming
• Stochastic Programming
• Machine Learning
• Data Science
• Time Series Analysis

Dr Mike O’Sullivan and Associate Professor Cameron Walker

Dr Michael O’Sullivan and Associate Professor Cameron Walker are active researchers in the Operations Research and Computational Analytics (ORCA) group, along with other global experts in areas that include electricity pricing, healthcare delivery, rostering/scheduling, and machine learning. Their extensive list of research collaborations includes supervision at doctoral level. Dr O’Sullivan’s main focus includes applying OR and Analytics to complex, real-world decision making problems. Associate Professor Walker investigates spatial and statistical modelling, and optimal decision making in complex systems. Both have been involved with research applications in the financial, healthcare and infrastructure planning industries.

More experts in Operations Research:

• Associate Professor Andrew Mason
• Professor Andy Philpott
• Dr Andrea Raith
• Dr Andreas W. Kempa-Liehr
• Emeritus Professor David Ryan
• Dr Tony Downward

• Integrated Modelling of Patient Pathways and Staff Workflows | Supervised by Associate Professor Cameron Walker and Dr Michael O’Sullivan
• Conceptual Modelling Framework for Simulation of Construction Systems | Supervised by Dr Vicente Gonzalez, Dr Michael O’Sullivan, and Associate Professor Cameron Walker
• Advanced Optimisation for General Medicine Rostering | Supervised by Dr Michael O’Sullivan and Associate Professor Cameron Walker
• Predicting Cloud Infrastructure Utilisation Rostering | Supervised by Dr Michael O’Sullivan and Associate Professor Cameron Walker
• Decision Modelling in Systems with State-Dependent Feature Space Dimensionality | Supervised by Dr Andreas W. Kempa-Liehr
• Automated Time Series Feature Extraction for Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence | Supervised by Dr Andreas W. Kempa-Liehr

There are several scholarships you may be eligible for when you decide to pursue your PhD in Operations Research, including the University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships.

For general student enquiries, please contact the Student Hubs.

If you would like to find out more about studying Operations Research, you can contact a Postgraduate Adviser.