Margarida Aires de Abreu is currently a doctoral student in Industrial Engineering and Management at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, specialising in Operations Research. She holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from IST, where she graduated with distinction. Her master’s thesis, “Methods for Bi-Objective Routing and Districting Problems”, proposed an exact solution method for a bi-objective variant of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing and Districting Problem (CVRDP) and led to a publication in International Transactions in Operational Research. During her studies, she also completed an Erasmus exchange at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Her doctoral research builds upon her previous work on integrated bi-objective routing problems, which play a central role in the optimisation of large-scale transportation and logistics systems. The focus of her PhD is the development of advanced solution strategies for complex routing problems, including the enhancement of exact methods and the exploration of acceleration techniques as well as hybrid approaches integrating Artificial Intelligence. Her research aims to improve both computational efficiency and practical relevance, with validation in real-world logistics. Prior to her doctoral studies, Margarida worked as an Operations Software Engineer at SISCOG, where she contributed to the development of optimisation software for railway transportation systems. She was also a Teaching Assistant and Grader at Instituto Superior Técnico and Nova School of Business and Economics, where she provided teaching support for courses in Operations Management, Optimisation and Corporate Finance. Her research interests include vehicle routing and districting, multi-objective optimisation and the design of exact and hybrid algorithms for complex decision-making problems.

Keywords: Vehicle Routing | Multi-Objective Optimisation | Operations Research