Teaching

Spring 2025

Optimization and Simulation

Section(s): Doctoral program in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Lecturers: Michel Bierlaire, Cloe Cortes Balcells, Lea Ricard, Pavel Ilinov

Number of students: unknown

PhD theses

Defense scheduled in 2025 or after and theses in progress

Ongoing

Alexis Gumy

Aux frontières de la mobilité. Vers la construction sociale des « bonnes manières » de se déplacer ?

Co-supervisor: Vincent Kaufmann

Marija Kukic

Modeling the activities of households

Cloe Cortes Balcells

Activity-based models and epidemics

Co-supervisor: Rico Krueger

Committee: Maya Abou Zeid (AUB), Kai Nagel (TU Berlin), Kenan Zhang (EPFL), Rico Krieger (DTU), Michel Bierlaire (EPFL), Andrew Sonta (EPFL, chair)

Exam: February 18, 2025

Tom Haering

Algorithms for large scale choice-based optimization

Nicola Ortelli

Assisted specification of choice models

Negar Rezvany

Urban energy demand

Co-supervisor: Tim Hillel

PhD committees

Masters theses

Mya Lahjouji

Section: Civil Engineering

Extracting activity schedules from MOBi mobility tracking data

Supervision:Negar Rezvany, Marija Kukic, Michel Bierlaire

Expert:

10/03/2025-11/07/2025

Arturo Cerasi

Section: Computer science

Adapting simulation algorithms for generating synthetic panel data at the household level

Supervision:Marija Kukic, Pavel Ilinov, Michel Bierlaire

Expert:

17/02/2025-20/06/2025

Anne-Valérie Preto

Section: Civil Engineering

Differentiation of Modal Preferences in Public Transportation: Analysis and Enhancement of the MOBiSim Model for Scenario Simulation in Lausanne

Supervision:Negar Rezvany, Fabian Torres, Michel Bierlaire

Expert: Antonin Danalet

09/09/2024-24/01/2025

Quoc Dang Tran

Section: Mathematics

Integrating Advanced Discrete Choice Models into the Capacitated Facility Location Problem with Decentralized Priority Queues

Supervision:Tom Haering, Lea Ricard

Expert: Virginie Lurkin

09/09/2024-10/01/2025

Semester projects

Julien Ars

A real-time heuristic for the railway timetable rescheduling problem

Section:

February 17, 2025-May 26, 2025

Supervision: Lea Ricard, Negar Rezvany, Michel Bierlaire

Riad Bitar

Demand estimation on the RER Vaud

Section:

February 17, 2025-May 26, 2025

Supervision: Lea Ricard, Evangelos Paschalidis, Michel Bierlaire

Victoria Catherine Arduini

Gibbs Sampler for Generating Synthetic Longitudinal Data: Tracking Synthetic Individuals Over Time

Section: Computer science

February 17, 2025-May 30, 2025

Supervision: Marija Kukic, Pavel Ilinov, Michel Bierlaire

Melchior Carrier

Optimization of the IR90/95 rolling stock

Section:

February 17, 2025-May 26, 2025

Supervision: Lea Ricard, Prunelle Vogler, Michel Bierlaire

Mya Jamal Lahjouji

Pre-study to extracting activity schedules from tracking mobility data

Section: Civil Engineering

January 01, 2025-February 06, 2025

Supervision: Negar Rezvany, Marija Kukic, Michel Bierlaire

Younis Bouzar

Optimization of railway maintenance planning

Section:

September 09, 2024-January 17, 2025

Supervision: Lea Ricard, Marija Kukic, Michel Bierlaire

Additional teaching

Seminars

Rina (Jingyi) Cheng

Data-Driven Demand Prediction and Optimization for On-Demand Meal Delivery Operations

Affiliation: TU Delft

March 07, 2025, 11:00, Room GR A1 402 (click here for the map)

Prof. Domokos Esztergar-Kiss

Mobility as a service in theory and practice

Affiliation:

May 20, 2025, 14:30

Organization of conferences, workshops, etc.

Action versus Inaction facing Climate Change: the Symposium

June 01, 2025-June 03, 2025

Location: Hotel Europe, Zinal

Role: Chair

Discrete Choice Analysis: Predicting Individual Behavior and Market Demand

January 26, 2025-January 30, 2025

Location: EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Role: Founder, organizer and lecturer

Winter School on Optimization and Operations Research

January 19, 2025-January 24, 2025

Location: Hotel Europe, Zinal

Role: Organizer

Publications

Papers in international journals (accepted for publication)

Papers in international journals

1. Atac, S., Obrenovic, N., and Bierlaire, M. (2025). Bike Sharing Systems: The Impact of Precise Trip Demand Forecasting on Operational Efficiency in Different City Structures , Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research 3(100058):.
2. Ahmed, S., Fountas, G., Lurkin, V., Anastasopoulos, P., Zhang, Y., Bierlaire, M., and Mannering, F. (2025). The State of Urban Air Mobility Research: An Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 26(2):1375-1394.
3. Ortelli, N., de Lapparent, M., Varotto, S. F., and Bierlaire, M. (2025). An integrated ordered logit and latent variable model for accident injury severity and risk-taking behavior, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 192(104330):.
4. Martin-Baos, J., Garcia-Rodenas, R., Rodriguez-Benitez, L., and Bierlaire, M. (2025). Scalable Kernel Logistic Regression with Nyström Approximation: Theoretical Analysis and Application to Discrete Choice Modelling, Neurocomputing 617(7):128975.

Speaker in external seminars

1. Kukic, M., and Bierlaire, M., Gibbs Sampler for Generating Longitudinal Synthetic Populations. 3rd EPFL Symposium on Transportation Research, EPFL, February 13, 2025, Barcelona, Spain
2. Vogler, P., Bierlaire, M., and Meunier, F., Event-based modeling approach for the multi-agents daily scheduling problem. 3rd EPFL Symposium on Transportation Research, EPFL, February 13, 2025, Barcelona, Spain
3. Haering, T., and Bierlaire, M., BHAMSLE: A Breakpoint Heuristic Algorithm for Maximum Simulated Likelihood Estimation of Advanced Discrete Choice Models. 3rd EPFL Symposium on Transportation Research, EPFL, February 13, 2025, Barcelona, Spain
4. Rezvany, N., Hillel, T., and Bierlaire, M., A strategic dynamic model for integrating housing and transport interactions. 3rd EPFL Symposium on Transportation Research, EPFL, February 13, 2025, Barcelona, Spain

Awards and distinctions

Research projects (3)

Multi-objective disruption management for robust railway operations

Sponsor: Swiss Federal Railways (SBB)

Team: Michel Bierlaire (PI), Lea Ricard (PM)

Period: April 01, 2024-October 31, 2025

In passenger railway services, a timetable defines the scheduled arrival and departure times of trains at designated stations. When a disruption occurs, the railway operator must establish a disposition timetable, a complex task due to the intricacies of rail operations and the interactions in the network. This research aims to develop a decision-support tool that optimizes disruption management using a multi-objective optimization approach. The tool will account for system constraints while minimizing passenger inconvenience, operational costs, and deviations from the original timetable. Designed with practitioners' needs in mind, it will be integrated into the industrial software Viriato, enabling the use of real production data for algorithm evaluation and refinement.

E-Bike City

Sponsor: Swiss Federal Office of Energy

Team: Michel Bierlaire (PI), Janody Pougala (PM)

Period: September 01, 2022-December 31, 2025

This project has the following content: Transport policy is currently not finding a way out of its dilemma; the imminent need to decarbonize a sector fast which has barely moved in the recent past and the social requirement to maintain and increase accessibility across all modes, but not to encourage sprawl while still allowing further decreases in the generalised cost of travel by new technologies and business models. We propose to use a radical departure from previous proposed ideas to enable the policy and transport industry to begin thinking from a different starting point. The design idea is to reallocate 50% of the existing urban road space to e-bikes, bicycles, and other micromobility modes and to assess what this change could achieve in terms of accessibility, generalised costs of travel, changes in daily life and reductions in emissions and CO2. The project will integrate careful involvement of the various stakeholders from citizens, cities, firms to interest groups, but will also provide the materials needed to communicate the ideas and their equity impacts visually and verbally at the required levels of complexity.

Migration and Discrete Choice Models (MIGDCM)

Sponsor: Swiss National Science Foundation

Team: Michel Bierlaire (PI), Silvia Varotto (PM), Evangelos Paschalidis (PM)

Period: March 01, 2022-March 31, 2025

International migration is at the forefront of policy debates in most countries around the world. In industrialized nations, the proportion of foreigners in total population increased from 4.5 to 12 percent between 1960 and 2019, stirring up fears about economic costs for natives, loss of national identity, and integration issues. In poor countries, international migration raises concerns about the brain drain of highly-skilled workers, as college and university graduates have a much greater propensity to emigrate internationally than the less educated. Hence, the questions of how many people migrate (i.e., migration intensity}, which people migrate first or are more likely to migrate (i.e., migrants' selection), and where migrants choose to settle (i.e., migrants' sorting) have been analyzed from all possible angles in recent literature. Specifically, understanding how people revise their decisions about whether to emigrate, and where to, when facing changes in the global environment is of crucial importance for decision-makers.

Miscellaneous responsibilities

Ongoing

Bierlaire

1. Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Transportation Research Part C (since January 01, 2006)
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2. Director of the Transport and Mobility Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland (since July 01, 2006)
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3. Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research (since November 08, 2011)
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4. Associate Editor, Operations Research (since January 01, 2012)
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5. Member of the International Advisory Committee, International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (since July 17, 2013)
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6. Member of the research council, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), Bern, Switzerland (since January 01, 2015)
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7. Founder, member of the steering committee, European Association for Research in Transportation (since September 09, 2015)
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8. Associate Editor, Transport Findings (since October 01, 2018)
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9. Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board , Transportation Research Center, Kumasi, Kumasi, Ghana (since November 01, 2018)
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10. Member of the Editorial Board, Transportation Research Part B (since December 01, 2018)
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11. Member of the Social Commission, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (since April 01, 2023)
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12. Member of the Scientific Committee, Fondation Modus, Geneva, Switzerland (since October 14, 2024)
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Krueger

1. Member of the Editorial Board, Transportation Letters (since February 15, 2021)
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Varotto

1. Member of the Committee Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics (ACP50) , Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C. (since April 15, 2022)
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