Maria Grazia Speranza (born 30 March 1957) is an Italian

applied mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History One ...

and

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

er. Her research involves the application of

mathematical optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

to problems including

portfolio optimization Portfolio optimization is the process of selecting an optimal portfolio (asset distribution), out of a set of considered portfolios, according to some objective. The objective typically maximizes factors such as expected return, and minimizes c ...

and the combination of

inventory management Inventory management may refer to: * Inventory management (business): the function of understanding stock mix of a company and the different demands on that stock * Inventory management (video games), when a player adjusts the items in their inve ...

with

vehicle routing The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem which asks "What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?" It generalises ...

. She is a professor of operations research in the faculty of economics and business of the

University of Brescia The University of Brescia () is an Italian public research university located in Brescia, Italy. It was founded in 1982 and is branched in 4 Faculties. The University of Brescia was officially established in 1982 with three Schools: Medicine a ...

, a former vice chancellor and dean at the university, the former president of the

Association of European Operational Research Societies The Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is a regional grouping within the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) whose aim is to promote operations research, Operational Research throughout Eur ...

and the

INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often s ...

Transportation Science and Logistics Society, and the president of the

International Federation of Operational Research Societies The International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) is an umbrella organization for national operations research societies of over 45 countries from four geographical regions: Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and South Americ ...

. In 2024, she was awarded the

EURO Gold Medal The EURO Gold medal of the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is the highest distinction within Operations Research (OR) in Europe. The prize was first awarded to Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann in 1985. The medal is awarded a ...

, the highest distinction within Operations Research in Europe.

Education and early career

Speranza graduated from the

University of Milan The University of Milan (; ), officially abbreviated as UNIMI, or colloquially referred to as La Statale ("the State niversity), is a public university, public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Eu ...

with a master's degree in applied mathematics in 1980 and a doctorate in applied mathematics in 1983. She arrived at the

in 1990 after working as an assistant professor at the University of Milan from 1983 to 1987 and an associate professor at the

University of Udine The University of Udine (Italian language, Italian ''Università degli Studi di Udine'') is a public university in the city of Udine, Italy. It was founded in 1978 as part of the reconstruction plan of Friuli after the 1976 Friuli earthquake, ear ...

from 1987 to 1990. In 1994, she was promoted to full professor at the Faculty of Economics and business at the University of Brescia.

Research area and interests

Resource allocation and project scheduling,

logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...

combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combina ...

, and

have been the key areas of her scientific endeavor.

Mixed integer programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements and objective are represented by linear relationships. Linear ...

models,

computational complexity In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations ...

worst-case analysis The worst-case analysis regulation40 CFR 1502.22 was promulgated in 1979 by the US Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The regulation is one of many implementing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and it sets out the formal procedur ...

, exact ( branch-and-cut and branch-and-price) and

heuristic algorithm A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ...

s have been her primary areas of research. She has collaborated on scientific projects with both Italian and foreign colleagues, and she has co-authored publications with some of the greatest scholars like Hans Kellerer and Ulrich Pferschy of the

University of Graz The University of Graz (, formerly: ''Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz'') is a public university, public research university located in Graz, Austria. It is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-old ...

(Austria), Zsolt Tuza of the

Hungarian Academy of Science The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

- Budapest (Hungary), Dimitri Bertsekas of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(U.S.A.), Michel Gendreau, Gilbert Laporte, and Alain Hertz of the

University of Montreal A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

(Canada), Martin Savelsbergh of the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

(U.S.A. (Canada).

Administrative and society service

Committee appointments

She is a former president of the

(EURO) from 2011 to 2012, and president of the

Transportation Science and Logistics Society (TLS) from 2013. She was the president of the

(IFORS) for 2019–2021.

University appointments

Maria has served as the President of the Research Council at the

(1998-2000) and later appointed as the

Dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean * Dean Sw ...

of the Faculty of Economics and business at the same university (2002-2008). She was appointed as the Deputy Rector of the university twice from 2000 to 2002 and again from 2017 to 2020. She has been serving as the president of the Research center on ‘Models for the economy and management of transport and logistics’ since 2006.

Positions in boards of directors

She is the member of the

Board of Directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

a2a A2A S.p.A. is an Italian company, organised as a ''società per azioni'', that generates, distributes, and markets renewable energy, electricity, gas, integrated water supply, and waste management services. The company has significant presence i ...

, a multi-utility company and the 15th largest Italian company. She is also one of the Board of Directors of Fondazione Comunita’ Bresciana and Fondazione Nocivelli.

Other memberships activities

She has coordinated several research initiatives that have received funding from the Ministry of Higher Education, the National Research Council, and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. In specifically, she led a study in "Industrial logistics" involving 12 research units as part of the National Research Council's Finalized Transportation Program 2. From 1990 to 1996, she served on the board of the

Italian Operations Research Society The Associazione Italiana di Ricerca Operativa (AIRO) – Optimization and Decision Sciences – is the professional non-profit society for the scientific field of Operations Research in Italy. The society is recognized by the International Federa ...

. She has served on committees to evaluate PhD theses from institutions throughout the world, including

Troyes Troyes () is a Communes of France, commune and the capital of the Departments of France, department of Aube in the Grand Est region of north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about south-east of Paris. Troyes is situated within ...

(France), Trondheim (Norway),

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

(Switzerland), and

Lancaster Lancaster may refer to: Lands and titles *The County Palatine of Lancaster, a synonym for Lancashire *Duchy of Lancaster, one of only two British royal duchies *Duke of Lancaster *Earl of Lancaster *House of Lancaster, a British royal dynasty ...

(England) (UK).

Selected publications

She has over 366 articles published in journals with over 13360 citations.

Peer-reviewed articles

* ''A sequential approach for a multi-commodity two-echelon distribution problem'', (with C. Archetti, D. Cattaruzza, W. Gu, M. Ogier, F. Semet) * ''Optimization models for fair horizontal collaboration in demand-responsive transportation'' (with E. Angelelli, V. Morandi) * ''Optimization in multimodal distribution problems: a survey,'' to appear in European Journal of Operational Research (with C.Archetti, L.Peirano) * ''A Kernel Search Heuristic for a Fair Facility Location Problem,'' to appear in Computers & Operations Research (with C. Filippi, G. Guastaroba, D. L. Huerta-Munoz, M. G. Speranza) * ''A Kernel Search heuristic for the Multi-Vehicle Inventory Routing Problem,'' to appear in International Transactions of Operations Research (with C.Archetti, G. Guastaroba, D. Huerta-Mu˜noz, M.G. Speranza) * ''System optimal routing of traffic flows with user constraints using linear programming'', to appear in European Journal of Operational Research (with E. Angelelli, V. Morandi, M. Savelsbergh) * ''On single source capacitated facility location with cost and fairness objectives'', European Journal of Operational Research 289, 959–974, 2021 (con C.Filippi, G.Guastaroba) * ''A branch-and-cut algorithm for the inventory routing problem with pickups and deliveries'', European Journal of Operational Research 282, 886–895, 2020 (with C. Archetti, M. Boccia, A. Sforza, M.G. Speranza, C. Sterle) * ''Dynamic traveling salesman problem with stochastic release dates'', European Journal of Operational Research 280, 832–844, 2020 (with C. Archetti, D. Feillet, A. Mor) * ''Flexible two-echelon location routing'', European Journal of Operational Research 277, 1124–1136, 2019 (with C. Archetti, L. C. Coelho, M. Darvish)

Books

Speranza is the co-author, with Renata Mansini and Włodzimierz Ogryczak, of the book
Linear and Mixed Integer Programming for Portfolio Optimization
' (

EURO Advanced Tutorials in Operational Research The ''EURO Advanced Tutorials in Operational Research'' are a series of short books devoted to advanced topics in Operational Research that are not available in textbooks. The scope of a Tutorial is to provide more detail about advanced topics in ...

, Springer, 2015). Some of her other books are: *
Quantitative approaches to distribution logistics and supply chain management
', Springer Science & Business Media, vol. 519, 2012 (with A. Klose, L.N. Van Wassenhove, eds) *
New trends in distribution logistics
', Springer Science & Business Media, vol. 480, 2012 (with P. St¨ahly, eds) *
Advances in distribution logistics, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems
', Springer-Verlag, vol.460, 2012 (with B. Fleischmann, J. van Nunen, P. St¨ahly, eds) *
Methodology, implementation and applications of Decision Support Systems
', CISM Courses and Lectures 320, Springer Verlag, 1991 (with A.Lewandowski, P.Serafini, eds)

References

External links

Home page
*
Presentation to Operational Research Society Women in OR and Analytics Network
{{DEFAULTSORT:Speranza, M. Grazia Living people Operations researchers University of Milan alumni Academic staff of the University of Milan University of Brescia 1957 births Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences