PhD Oral Exam - Armaghan Alibeyg, Industrial Engineering

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

In this thesis we study a new class of hub location problems denoted as hub network design problems with profits which share the same feature: a profit oriented objective. We start from a basic model in which only routing and location decisions are involved. We then investigate more realistic models by incorporating new elements such as different types of network design decisions, service commitments constraints, multiple demand levels, multiple capacity levels and pricing decisions. We present mixed-integer programming formulations for each variant and extension and provide insightful computational analyses regarding to their complexity, network topologies and their added value compared to related hub location problems in the literature. Furthermore, we present an exact algorithmic framework to solve two variants of this class of problems. We continue this study by introducing joint hub location and pricing problems in which pricing decisions are incorporated into the decision- making process. We formulate this problem as a mixed-integer bilevel problem and provide feasible solutions using two math-heuristics. The dissertation ends with some conclusions and comments on avenues of future research.