Curriculum
Maddalena Nonato is Assistant Professor of Operational Research since 1997. She served first at the Department of Electronic Engineering and Information (DIEI) of Perugia University, where she was teaching introductory and advanced courses in Operations Rersearch, and since 2003 to date at the Engineering Department of the University of Ferrara, where she teaches the courses of "Operations Research", "Optimization models", and "Probability and Statistics".
Her research activity focuses on the modeling and solution of large size combinatorial optimization problems on networks, mainly arising in the field of sustainable transport. In particular, mathematical programming models and ad hoc solution algorithms have been developed to tackle the optimal management of scarce resourses, such as vehicles and crew in public transit agencies and airlines, the design and management of flexible transit lines, the location of check points for hazardous material rerouting, the routing and scheduling of nurses in Home Health Care services, and drug inventory policies at point of use in Hospitals.
Hybrid metaheuristics have also been developed for the solution of optimization problems with a combinatorial structure whose objective function can be seen as a black box, such as the result of a simulation process. This class encompasses problems such as the location and full characterization of antennas in the design of 3G wireless networks, where the EM field is the result of a time demanding computation, as well as the quantity of deadly contaminant spread in a hydraulic network which is consumed once the system devices have been operated according to a given time schedule. Hydraulic networks provides other challenging CO problems, such as the location of isolation valves which has been tackled by MILP (min mx case) and by Bilevel Programming.
Despite of the different application fields, such problems share common features that allow the application of similar solution techniques, which can be in turn extended to other fields. Maddalena Nonato has authored several Scopus-indexed scientific journal papers and proceedings, and has taken part in many research projects and technology transfer activities.
