Advice / Collaborating on a Research Project in Your Company

Operations Research is highly relevant for optimizing processes across many industries. My group has notably conducted research in

  • Transportation,
  • Supply Chain,
  • Revenue Management,
  • Manufacturing,
  • Predictive Maintenance,

and I provide advice to companies in

  • Energy,
  • Healthcare,
  • Drug development.

As detailed on my research page and in this blog post, I have a strong preference for applying these concepts to industry. Our algorithms often go into production and have received awards for excellence in practice.

I am always happy to discover new industries and discuss with practitioners (OR experts, industrial directors, research directors, etc.) about

  • identifying opportunities to apply AI to optimize industrial processes,
  • technical difficulties on current projects,
  • building the algorithmic architecture of new projects,
  • building the next generation of algorithms.

Please email me if you are interested in such a discussion. However, I receive many such solicitations and days have only 24 hours. Please excuse me if I cannot follow up. I will be more likely to accept a first encounter if you propose

  • a lunch near the 12th arrondissement of Paris,
  • a phone call for 18:00 to 18:20 CET on a weekday (except Friday).

When working with the industry, we generally adhere to the following steps

  1. a first encounter to evaluate if there is potential for collaboration
  2. a 5 to 10 day study to model the problem, evaluate the potential for research, and design algorithms
  3. Depending on the conclusions of the study
    • If there is no need for research, we recommend “off-the-shelf algorithms” to your internal team and answer any technical questions that may arise. If you don’t have such a team, you may consider recruiting an intern from École des Ponts.
    • If there is a need for research, then we can collaborate and consider recruiting an intern or a PhD student.

This is how all our long term partnerships with the industry started.