Operational Research

The group is led by Professor Paul Harper, and is a growing and vibrant group of over 20 staff and postgraduate research students active across a range of topics. Cardiff OR has an impressive track-record of contributing to both the theoretical aspects of the subject area and to applications, including working on complex problems arising in healthcare planning, epidemiology, transportation, timetabling, manufacturing, green logistics and scheduling of sporting fixtures.

Cardiff OR is partner group within the LANCS initiative, a collaboration of four Universities with a total investment of £13m (£5.4m from EPSRC) to support the development of research capacity in OR (Professor Jeff Griffiths sits on the Executive Committee and is the Healthcare cluster coordinator), as well as the EPSRC-funded National Taught-course Centre in Operational Research, NATCOR, which provides in-depth training for PhD students in OR. Within the Wales Institute of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, WIMCS, the Cardiff OR group leads the OR and Statistics cluster, and organises pan-Wales and UK-wide events (Professor Harper is the OR & Statistics cluster co-ordinator).

There is a thriving seminar programme held in conjunction with the Statistics Group, and the OR Group helps to organise meetings of the South Wales Operational Research Discussion Society (SWORDS).
Professor Harper is Director of Health Modelling Centre Cymru (hmc2), which is fostering collaboration across different research areas of the mathematical and computational sciences, to create a more vibrant and effective interface between the mathematical research community, the medical research community, NHS Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Health industry. 

Key Research Areas

• Healthcare Modelling
• Queuing Systems
• Planning and Optimisation