Operations Research

My Approach

Operations research is where I started. My PhD at McGill was in supply chain optimization, where I built BioGeSTO, a geospatial and temporal optimization framework for modeling biofuel supply chains across the United States. That work grounded me in the discipline of turning messy real-world problems into mathematical models that produce actionable solutions.

After my PhD, I spent a year and a half at Lean Systems applying these same techniques to transportation and aviation. The problems were different, but the core skill was the same: formulate the objective, define the constraints, solve, and then translate the result into something a non-technical stakeholder can act on.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Supply Chain Optimization

During my PhD, I developed BioGeSTO (Biofuel supply chain GeoSpatial and Temporal Optimizer), a framework that streamlined data collection and applied optimization models to simulate the financial viability of biofuel supply chains. This work was published in Energy and demonstrated how geospatial modeling combined with mathematical optimization could inform real infrastructure investment decisions.

Vehicle Routing

At Lean Systems, I designed and implemented vehicle-routing algorithms for a ground transportation client. This is one of the classic OR problems: given a set of locations, vehicle capacities, and time windows, find the routes that minimize cost while meeting all constraints. The challenge is always the same: the theoretically optimal solution has to work in the real world, with real drivers and real traffic.

Scheduling Optimization

I built maintenance scheduling models for business aviation clients, optimizing when and where to service aircraft to maximize fleet availability. Maintenance scheduling is a constraint satisfaction problem with high stakes: get it wrong and you ground an aircraft, get it right and you extend fleet uptime without compromising safety.

Visualization as a Delivery Mechanism

One thing I learned early: an optimization model is only as good as the interface that presents its results. At Lean Systems, I built interactive Python/JS web applications that let fleet managers visualize routing solutions and scheduling recommendations. These tools were as important as the algorithms themselves.