Analytics for a Better World UvA Courses

On Monday, September 11th, two Analytics for a Better World courses have officially started at the University of Amsterdam, as part of the Economics and Business Bachelor and Master programs!

The courses are taught by Prof. Dick den Hertog and Prof. Joaquim Gromicho, with the support of three teaching assistants, Britt van Veggel, Justin Starreveld, and Erdinç Durak.

The class for the Bachelor’s program teaches some basic business analytics techniques such as linear optimisation, shortest path, regression, and simple machine learning techniques. It revolves around real-life cases with a high societal impact. Since the Business Analytics study starts here, the cases, and the data, are simplified. This course is a hands-on course: the students analyse, interpret, and process the data themselves. The classes revolve around the importance of analytics, and students are provided with the tools to apply analytics to real life situation, so to improve the work towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

For the Master’s program, the class is called Advanced Analytics for a Better World and takes a step forward. This course covers advanced Optimization and Machine Learning techniques illustrated by applications that contributed to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The advanced techniques cover nonlinear, conic, and robust optimization, optimization for and with Machine Learning in general, and optimization with constraint learning more specifically. Here, students will work hand-on in different projects, such as optimizing the food supply chain for the World Food Programme and optimizing healthcare facility locations in Timor-Leste and Vietnam (via the World Bank).

We are very happy and proud of all the students taking on these important challenges, with the support of amazing teachers! 🎉