Welcome!

The Chair of Combinatorial Optimization is part of the Computer Science Department of the RWTH Aachen University. Led by Prof. Christina Büsing, we focus on using discrete mathematical optimisation. Our research centers around decision problems where the number of solutions may be finite, but exponentially large and/or impractical to search exhaustively in practise. We believe that understanding the structural properties of such problems can help find better solutions, faster algorithms and novel opportunities.

In line with the UN Sustainable development goals, our research aims to support the provision of safe, effective, quality and affordable healthcare. Accordingly, we focus on healthcare cooperations such as improving bed management in hospitals, developing scheduling algorithms with GPs and rethinking workload sharing for pharmacies. Here, we provide on clear, well-defined models and algorithms that are understandable for and driven by practitioners. Especially in healthcare, managing risk, uncertainty and limited planning horizons is a constant challenge, which we address using robst optimisation that can cover different scenarios and that allows for protection against adverse events.

We strive for excellence in teaching. This is not just limited to our university teaching: via the CAMMP project, we support mathematics education at school and provide research oriented seminars for university students. Furthermore, we work on fostering gender equality in STEM, both as a special focus of CAMMP and through the WoCa-Lunches, which take place throughout the term. Here, female Bachelor's and Master's students get both information and support in finding opportunities in academica, e.g. for doing a PhD.

If you are interested in hearing more about our work, we invite you to register to the combi-colloquium mailing list, which is used to inform about student talks, and talks held and events planned both by our group and fellow researcher.