Awards and Honours

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2024 Highly Cited Paper (ISI Web of Science)

Our paper "Recent advances in selection hyper-heuristics", published in the European Journal of Operational Research, received enough citations to be recognised as one of the top 1% most cited papers in the academic field of Engineering as of January/February 2024. This recognition is based on a highly cited threshold for the field and publication year. [pic]

2022 Top Downloaded Article (Networks: An International Journal)

Our paper (Exact and hyper-heuristic solutions for the distribution-installation problem from the VeRoLog 2019 challenge) was among the top 10 most downloaded papers during its first 12 months of publication in: Networks: An International Journal. [certificate]

2020 Dean's Award (Lancaster University)

Received the Lancaster University Management School Dean's Award. [pic] [certificate] [v]

2019 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (United Kingdom)

In July 2019 I have achieved the status of Fellow of The Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in recognition of attainment against the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education. [certificate]

2017 VeRoLog Solver Challenge (VeRoLog, The Netherlands)

Won the runner-up prize in the VeRoLog solver challenge. [v] [news] [certificate]

2016 ROADEF/EURO Challenge on Inventory Routing Problem (EURO, Poland)

Having been initially winning against the other 41 teams across 16 different countries, my developed method won the final phase of ROADEF/EURO 2016 Challenge on inventory routing problem against 12 finalists teams, producing the best solutions across all of the released problem instances - a first in the history of the challenge. The results were presented at the EURO conference, attended by more than 2,500 delegates. Ruth Kaufman, President of The OR Society, said: "On behalf of all of us at the OR Society, and personally, I would like to congratulate you on winning this prestigious award - and doing it so comprehensively! It is a great achievement". Head of the OR group at Cardiff University, Prof. Paul Harper, said: "This is a stunning achievement for Ahmed. The ROADEF/EURO challenge is largest of its kind globally in our field." [pic] [v] [certificate1] [certificate2]

2015 2nd International Nurse Rostering Competition (MISTA, Czech Republic)

With minimal tuning and problem specific expertise, my solver won the second runner-up prize (out of 15) in the 2nd International Nurse Rostering Competition (INRC-II). [certificate]

2015 Best Paper Award (GECCO, Spain)

Our paper "Ahmed Kheiri and Ed Keedwell, A Sequence-based Selection Hyper-heuristic Utilising a Hidden Markov Model" was nominated for best paper award at the Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (Evolutionary Combinatorial Optimization and Metaheuristics track). The proposed method ranked 3rd in the Wind Farm Layout Optimisation Challenge at GECCO. [certificate]

2015 EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award (EURO, Scotland)

My PhD dissertation has been nominated for the EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award (EDDA) with the support of Professor Greet Vanden Berghe (external examiner) and Professor Robert John. Prof. Berghe said: "Overall, I enjoyed reading his dissertation and the study makes a significant contribution to the field".

2013 MISTA Challenge on Multi-project Scheduling (MISTA, Belgium)

Scheduling software from an ASAP team consisting of Shahriar Asta, Daniel Karapetyan, myself, Ender Ozcan and Andrew Parkes wins first place in the MISTA 2013 Challenge on "Multi-mode resource-constrained multi-project scheduling". The performance of the proposed approach is significantly better than the other competing approaches, producing the best solution for 17 out of the 20 test instances and performing the best around 90% of the trials across all instances. The challenge was part of the 6th MISTA international conference on "Multidisciplinary International Scheduling Conference: Theory and Applications". The ASAP team won against an initial registration of 21 teams, with 11 teams from around the world going on to submit full entries. The winning approach combined Monte-Carlo tree search and hyper-heuristic methods with the ability to exploit the computing power of multicore machines. [pic] [certificate]

2012 3rd International Timetabling Competition (PATAT, Norway)

The HySST (Hyper-heuristic Search Strategies and Timetabling) team consisting of myself, Ender Ozcan and Andrew Parkes joined the three rounds of the 3rd International Timetabling Competition. Despite this being our first attempt in high school timetabling, HySST generated the best new solutions for three given instances in Round 1 and gained the second place in Rounds 2 and 3 with a fairly standard stochastic search method but significantly enhanced by an easy-to-implement hyper-heuristic. [pic] [certificate]

2010 PhD. Studentship (England)

Awarded a School Studentship for my PhD studies at the University of Nottingham.

2010 Mark Treglown Prize (England)

Awarded the Mark Treglown prize for the most outstanding Information Technology and Management of Information Technology Masters dissertation, University of Nottingham. [v] [certificate]

The dissertation has been presented in a discussion session on web-based IQ testing at EI2011 in San Francisco, CA, USA.

2010 M.Sc. of Information Technology (England)

Obtained highest overall average in the School of Computer Science in the year 2009-2010, University of Nottingham.

2009 Developing Solutions Scholarship (England)

Awarded the Developing Solutions Scholarship to study the M.Sc. at the University of Nottingham. [pic] [certificate]

2007 B.Sc. of Electronic Systems Software Engineering Discipline (Sudan)

Obtained highest overall average for students on the B.Sc. in Electronic Systems Software Engineering Discipline, University of Khartoum.

2007 Association Promotion of Scientific Innovation Prize (Sudan)

Awarded the prize of the Association Promotion of Scientific Innovation. [certificate]