Sometimes referred to as “the science of better”, Operations Research is a method of solving decision-making problems that involve the use of scarce or valuable resources. Its core focus is the optimisation of resources and process flows, applicable to real-world challenges such as profit maximisation, performance or yield, minimising costs, and risk management, making it an increasingly valuable field to most organisations today.

Our Department of Engineering Science boasts several experts in data-driven decision-making who actively pursue collaborative relationships with research, public and private industries worldwide. As part of the Operations Research and Computational Analytics (ORCA) group, they experiment with theory, algorithms and computational methods to develop efficient systems that are currently used in our everyday lives.

Operations Research is covered at an undergraduate level in our Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in Engineering Science, with options to explore this specialisation’s many applications in our postgraduate programmes. Its approach is often interdisciplinary – employing techniques that include data analysis, statistics, mathematical modelling, optimisation and computing – and can therefore be potentially pursued by students with backgrounds in engineering, science, commerce and arts.

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