Modelling and Solving Generic Educational Timetabling Problems.

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Universities have a large number of students enrolled on many different programs of study. They also employ lots of staff to facilitate the teaching of these courses. Ultimately, an individual event, such as a lecture or a workshop, needs to occur in a particular space at a particular time. This assignment is represented as a timetable and the aim is to produce a timetable that everyone is happy with. Two questions arise from this description: How do you quantify how good a timetable is and how do you produce a timetable that is good? The novel work within this research will be to manage how people move around campus and use physical space efficiently as well as consider "virtual" online spaces which are becoming more popular. This will be done by mathematically forming the problem and researching methods that can be used to solve it. A broader research question is to ask if this work can be used to guide strategic decision making. A strategic decision is one that changes the long-term operation of an organisation. The aim is to establish a firm relationship between the timetabling problem and the strategic decisions that universities have to make.In partnership with MIT.