Reducing ambulance response times
Sandjai Bhulai and Rob van der Mei have been working together for more than twenty years to devise mathematical solutions to a wide array of societal challenges.
Predicting optimal routes in unpredictable networks
How does your navigation system find the fastest route in a road network, if it does not know where traffic jams occur and how long they last?
How does wireless communication work?
We might not be fully aware of it, but we all use wireless communication everyday in many familiar situations, such as when we connect our laptop to the local Wi-Fi network, when we use navigation apps to orientate ourselves while driving, or when we send a message to a friend using our smartphones. It has become so natural for the world we live in, that we often take it for granted and have no idea of how it works.
A multi-objective fight against prostate cancer
Evolutionary algorithms help physicians in the Amsterdam UMC to make treatment plans for prostate cancer patients. A commonly applied treatment against cancer is radiation therapy. In radiation therapy, or radiotherapy, ionizing radiation dose is delivered to the cancer cells. One form of radiotherapy that is applied in the treatment of prostate cancer is brachytherapy.
The golden rule of staffing in contact centers
We can all agree, a no. 1 source of frustration is the endless waiting on hold for a call center agent to pick up the phone. Interestingly, over the last 111 years mathematicians have been working on a vast theory to solve this call center inefficiency.
Interview with Onno Boxma
On Friday 11 October I went to Eindhoven for an interview with Onno Boxma. Onno became a professor of stochastic operations research in 1998 in Eindhoven Technical University, since 2018 he is an emeritus professor.
How uncertainty can make traffic run smoother
In 2014, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, the average person spend approximately 40 hours in a traffic jam - that is 5 work days! In this article, I will explain how mathematical models with uncertainty help traffic engineers to make decisions that improve traffic.
Consult a mathematician before you visit Disneyland
You don’t want to wait in a theme park? We hired a mathematician to tell you the tips and tricks!
The quest for a better Internet
The internet is growing quickly. How can it remain as fast as it is now? We’ll find the answer in the supermarket!
Bitcoins and queues
Everybody is talking about Bitcoin. But how does it actually work?