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Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, Booth St West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK

Room: 3.111 AMBS
Email: ahmed.kheiri [at] manchester.ac.uk
Teaching

I taught a variety of modules which involved classes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels:


International Lecturing Project Supervision

Title: Hyper/Meta-heuristics for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems

Description: The project has two main parts. The first part is to model an optimisation problem. The difficulty level can be adjusted depending on your background. The problem under consideration can include (but are not limited to) routing, cutting, packing, placement, graph theoretical, timetabling and scheduling problems. The second part would be to investigate and experiment with ways in which the problem could be solved. Meta-heuristics, such as genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and tabu search, are now an established tool for solving hard optimisation problems. A more recent concept is that of "hyper-heuristics", which are algorithms that seek to automate the process of selecting and/or generating (meta-)heuristics. Whereas meta-heuristics draw on Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence, hyper-heuristics draw on Machine Learning and Data Science. A thorough experimentation over a set of problem instances and analysis of results are expected.

Applicants for this topic should have reasonable mathematical ability, a general interest in optimisation, and strong programming skills. Therefore, the project would suit students who have felt comfortable with the more quantitative/programming courses of our undergraduate/MSc programmes, and would require developing meta- and/or hyper-heuristics for combinatorial optimisation problems. You will spend some time searching, reading and summarising an up-to-date literature on the topic. The projects would require some computer programming, which can be done in the language of your choice but preferably a language appropriate for scientific computing such as Python. Experience with LaTeX/git is also desirable, but is not essential as training can be given.

I have supervised several undergraduate and postgraduate projects in a variety of topics, all of which have had good outcomes. Some of the projects I have supervised have won the department prize for the most outstanding project of the year, some have led to publications and some are client-based projects. You can view previous projects that I have offered in the past for inspiration here.

For PhD applicants, if you are a self-funded student, I have a couple of supervision slots available. Please refer to my personal website to find information about my research interests.