Award Winning Paper: Optimizing the Path Towards Plastic-Free Oceans

Last week, Ph.D. student Baizhi Song has won the second place in the 2023 INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Student Paper Competition with the paper “Optimizing the Path Towards Plastic-Free Oceans”!

Increasing ocean plastic pollution is having a devastating impact on ecosystems and human economic activities. Collaborating with esteemed professionals, including Jean Pauphilet, Assistant Professor at the London Business School, Prof. Dick den Hertog from the University of Amsterdam, Bruno Sainte-Rose, Lead Computation Modeler at The Ocean Cleanup, and Yannick Pham, Steering Strategy Manager at The Ocean Cleanup, Baizhi’s research focuses on optimizing the route of The Ocean Cleanup’s plastic collection system in the ocean to maximize the quantity of plastic collected over time.

To achieve this goal, the scholars search-and-bound algorithm, utilizing the prediction data on ocean weather and plastic movements. This method efficiently yields high-quality solutions with near-optimal certification.

The complete paper is available for reading here: Optimizing-the-Path-Towards-Plastic-Free-Oceans