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Dr Ahmed Kheiri, B.Sc. (Hons), M.Sc., PhD., FHEA, PGCert, MIEEE, MACM

• Please contact me by email if you are interested in doing a PhD in heuristics and optimisation. A number of Studentships may be available here, here and here. These studentships are allocated on a competitive basis.

• Fully funded PhD position on Adaptive Multi-Objective Search in Expensive High-Dimensional Socio-Technical Systems in collaboration with Honda Research Institute Europe, supervised by Prof Richard Allmendinger, myself, and Dr Mauricio Alvarez at the University of Manchester. Details here - apply by 10th April 2026. [This post has now closed to applications]
• methods@manchester is pleased to announce a new Summer School course in AI-Driven Analytics. This in-person course is brought to you in collaboration with the University of Manchester's Decision and Cognitive Science Research Centre and features experts in this rapidly developing field. During this course, you will have the opportunity to explore various analytics methods ranging from descriptive and predictive to prescriptive analytics, under excellent tutelage. Find out more about our course, including how to purchase your place here. [This course is now closed and no longer accepting applications]
• The Centre for Global Eco-Innovation is offering exciting, fully funded research opportunities. Apply here now for a funded PhD or Masters by Research. Please check our project here. [This post has now closed to applications]
• Following substantial recent investment in Mathematical Sciences at Lancaster University, we invite applications for up to 14 fully funded PhD studentships in Pure Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research, for entry October 2020 (Given the ongoing challenges created by COVID-19, supervision may be provided remotely for an initial period where necessary, with IT support from Lancaster University) apply here. [This post has now closed to applications]
• SPECIES offers a number of scholarships in its areas of interest: details here. A list of hosts, including Lancaster University, can be found here - apply by 15th March. [This post has now closed to applications]
• Two positions to develop a decision support system to enhance the decision-making capabilities of disaster preparedness and response organisations in Sudan and Indonesia: details here - apply by 19th November. [This post has now closed to applications]
• Exciting 2 year position in meta/hyper-heuristics for vehicle routing @Optrak to work on a KTP project with Dr Ender Ozcan from the University of Nottingham and myself: details here - apply by 6th August. [This post has now closed to applications]

Dr Ahmed Kheiri is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor equivalent) in Management Science at Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester. His research lies at the intersection of Operational Research, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Science, where he develops intelligent optimisation methods for solving complex real-world decision problems. He is internationally recognised for his contributions to hyper-heuristics and adaptive optimisation, with research spanning scheduling, transportation, logistics, healthcare, and other computationally challenging optimisation problems.

Before joining The University of Manchester, Ahmed spent seven years at Lancaster University Management School, where he was a member of the Optimisation Research Group and the Health Systems Research Group. He was also actively involved in several interdisciplinary research centres, including the Data Science Institute, the Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL), Lancaster Intelligent, Robotic and Autonomous Systems Centre (LIRA), the Centre for Health Futures, Security Lancaster, and STOR-i, the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistics and Operational Research. In 2022, he was appointed Fundamentals Theme Co-Lead within LIRA.

Ahmed received a First Class B.Sc. (Hons) degree from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, before completing an M.Sc. with Distinction and a PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK. His doctoral thesis was described by the external examiner, Professor Greet Vanden Berghe, as "outstanding and should be distinguished." Following his PhD, he held research positions at the University of Exeter and Cardiff University, where he contributed to several major research projects before joining Lancaster University.

Ahmed is a Member of the IEEE (MIEEE), a Member of the ACM (MACM), a member of the OR Society and a Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College.

His research focuses on developing flexible optimisation methodologies capable of solving diverse classes of NP-hard optimisation problems without requiring extensive problem-specific expertise. In particular, his work on hyper-heuristics has advanced the design of intelligent search methods that automatically adapt to different optimisation domains. Dr Kheiri's research is inherently impactful, as he prefers to work on real problems, presented by clients outside academia.

Ahmed has secured competitive research funding from organisations including EPSRC, Innovate UK, and industrial partners. To date he has been involved in more than 5 grants amounting to more than eight hundred thousand pounds.

He has published more than 60 refereed papers in leading international journals and conferences, including invited review articles in the European Journal of Operational Research on hyper-heuristics and metaheuristics. His work is widely cited and has significantly influenced research on adaptive optimisation methods. His survey paper, "Recent Advances in Selection Hyper-heuristics," is among the most influential publications in the field and ranks within the top 1% of highly cited papers in Web of Science for its subject area.

Ahmed serves the international research community through numerous editorial, reviewing, and conference leadership roles. He has been a member of the organising committee of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) since 2020 and co-founded the Hybrid Scheduling track in 2022, which he continues to chair. He has organised international workshops, edited books, delivered invited talks and keynote lectures, served on programme committees for major conferences, and acted as Keynote Editor for the Operational Research Society Annual Conference (OR60). He is recognised internationally as one of the leading researchers in hyper-heuristics.

Teaching and research supervision form an important part of Ahmed's academic career. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has successfully supervised multiple PhD students to completion, with his graduates progressing to academic, research, and industrial careers. He currently leads an active research group comprising doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers working on cutting-edge optimisation and artificial intelligence research.

Beyond academia, Ahmed works closely with industry and policymakers to translate optimisation research into practical decision-support tools. He has delivered executive education, professional training, and workshops for organisations including Amazon, EDF Energy, Schlumberger, and the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL). He has also contributed to webinars organised by organisations such as Tesco, ORTEC, and the IEEE Task Force on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, helping to bridge the gap between academic research and industrial practice. His research on the inventory routing problem was featured in Impact Magazine by the Operational Research Society.

Ahmed is committed to open science and the development of research software. He has developed widely used open-source optimisation tools, including software supporting the scheduling of major international conferences, and actively shares research code through GitHub to encourage reproducibility and collaboration. His broader goal is to develop intelligent optimisation technologies that are both scientifically rigorous and practically deployable, enabling better decision-making across a wide range of complex real-world applications. Additionally, he created a software system for generating certificates at the University of Khartoum, streamlining the process and reducing errors.

Outside academia, Ahmed enjoys playing and watching football.