Marjan van den Akker obtained her PhD in Mathematics from Eindhoven 木瓜福利影视 of Technology, specializing in scheduling鈥攖he allocation of tasks to limited resources over time. Following her PhD, she worked at the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) on modeling, optimization, and simulation in Air Traffic Management and Road Pricing.
She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 and holds a joint senior position with KLM as part of the KickstartAI program. Her research lies at the intersection of Operations Research and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on advanced planning algorithms, robust planning, and simulation. Application domains include public transportation and energy networks, with a strong emphasis on real-world relevance and industry collaboration.
Marjan has extensive experience working with industry partners such as KLM, NS, ProRail, Qbuzz, TenneT, and Jumbo. Conducting Operations Research within a Computer Science department鈥攁n uncommon setup in the Netherlands鈥攇ives her a unique advantage for pursuing applied, experimental research and for leveraging expertise in data and efficient computation. She supervises several PhD and Master's students, and her work is published in leading international journals and conferences in both Computer Science and Operations Research. She is Program Leader of the Computing Science master program and also teaches the Master's course Optimization for Sustainability within this program..
She serves as the Scientific Director of both the Utrecht AI & Mobility Lab and the Robust Rail Lab.
At the national level, Marjan plays an active role in shaping the field. She is President of the Dutch Operations Research Society (NGB), which represents the Netherlands in the European (EURO) and international (IFORS) societies. Additionally, she is a member of the executive board of the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research (Landelijk Netwerk Mathematische Besliskunde, LNMB).