Plenary Speakers
Margaret L. Brandeau
Margaret L. Brandeau is Coleman F. Fung Professor of Engineering and Professor of Health Policy (by Courtesy) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the development of applied mathematical and economic models to support health policy decisions. Her recent work has examined programs related to HIV and drug abuse prevention and treatment, control of the opioid epidemic, and responses to homelessness. She has published more than 175 peer-reviewed publications in a broad variety of journals and has served on numerous national policy committees.
She is an INFORMS Fellow. From INFORMS, she has received the Philip McCord Morse Lectureship Award, the President’s Award, the Pierskalla Prize (twice), the Saul Gass Expository Writing Award, and the Award for the Advancement of Women in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. She has also received the Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Registry Paper of the Year Award from the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health and the Award for Excellence in Application of Pharmacoeconomics and Health Outcomes Research from the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research. At Stanford she has received the Stanford Medicine Integrated Strategic Plan Star Award, the Eugene L. Grant Faculty Teaching Award from the School of Engineering, and the Graduate Teaching Award from the Department of Management Science and Engineering.
Héctor Cancela
Héctor Cancela holds a PhD. degree in Computer Science from the University of Rennes 1, INRIA Rennes, France (1996), and a Computer Systems Engineer degree from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay (1990).
He is currently the Rector of the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), where he holds a Full Professor position at the Computing Institute at the Engineering School. He was Dean of the Engineering School of the Universidad de la República (2010-2015). He is a Researcher at the National Program for the Development of Basic Sciences (PEDECIBA), Uruguay. His research interests are centered in network models and stochastic models, applied jointly with optimization methods for solving problems in different areas (reliability, communications, transport, production, biological applications, agricultural applications, etc). He has published more than 100 full papers in international journals, indexed conference proceedings and book chapters.
He is currently president of IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies, 2025-2027). He is an IEEE Senior Member, also a member of ACM. He is a former President of CLEI (Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios en Informática – 2016-2020), and a former president of ALIO (Asociación Latino Ibero Americana de Investigación Operativa – 2006-2010).
José Fernando Oliveira
José Fernando Oliveira is Full Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Porto, and a senior researcher at INESC TEC. His research spans a broad range of topics in Operations Research, with a strong focus on cutting and packing problems, the efficient use of raw materials, and the design of advanced metaheuristic and hybrid optimization methods. He has also contributed to vehicle routing, lot sizing, and scheduling in industrial environments, as well as to decision-support models for higher education management, covering workload planning, sustainability, institutional benchmarking, and assessment of programs and teaching staff. In recent years, his work has increasingly addressed challenges in freight transportation—such as cargo stability, weight distribution, and safety frameworks—and in shared mobility, where he has explored integrated pricing and capacity-planning strategies under revenue-management principles. He has published widely in major OR journals, supervised more than fifty graduate theses, and led numerous research and consultancy projects in collaboration with industry and public-sector organizations.
He has held prominent leadership positions in the Portuguese and European Operational Research communities, including presidencies and vice-presidencies of their main societies, and has served on national bodies responsible for higher education accreditation, institutional evaluation, and science funding. He is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Operational Research and serves on several editorial boards. Over the years, he has been an evaluator for research agencies in Portugal and abroad, contributed to strategic initiatives within the University of Porto—including its General Council and Pedagogical Council—and maintained an active role in promoting the advancement and visibility of Operations Research at national and international levels.
Dolores Romero
Dolores Romero Morales is a Professor in Operations Research at Copenhagen Business School. Her areas of expertise include Data Science, Supply Chain Optimization and Revenue Management. In Data Science she investigates explainability/interpretability, fairness and visualization matters. In Supply Chain Optimization she works on environmental issues and robustness. In Revenue Management she works on large-scale network models. Her work has appeared in a variety of leading scholarly journals, including European Journal of Operational Research, Management Science, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research. She has received various distinctions, such as the SEIO Medal for an outstanding contribution to the Operations Research discipline, and since June 2025, she is President-Elect of EURO - The Association of European Operational Research Societies.
Dolores joined Copenhagen Business School in 2014. Prior to coming to Copenhagen Business School, she was a Full Professor at University of Oxford (2003-2014) and an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University (2000-2003). She has a BSc and an MSc in Mathematics from Universidad de Sevilla and a PhD in Operations Research from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Juan G. Villegas
Juan G. Villegas is a Full Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Universidad de Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia) and a Senior Researcher recognized by the Colombian Ministry of Science. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Universidad de los Andes and the Université de Technologie de Troyes. His main research interests include exact and (meta)heuristic optimization methods applied to multi-objective and bilevel problems, facility location, vehicle routing, logistics systems, and circular economy applications. He has coauthored numerous papers in leading international journals and collaborates actively with global research teams. Professor Villegas is member of the research group ALIADO (Analytics and Research for Optimal Decisions) of the Universidad de Antioquia. He has been the president of the Colombian Operational Research Society (ASOCIO-Asociación Colombiana de Investigación Operativa) and the Secretary of the LatinAmerican Asociation of Operational Research (ALIO).
