About Us

OR Mission Statement:

Operations research deals with the conceptual design, development and implementation of Methods and Models for Supporting Decisions arising in Design, Planning, Coordination and/or Control of (Processes) in Complex (socio-technical) Systems.

Hence, the central focus are:
How to model and design those systems? Can it be simplified?
Is there any way to optimize and to organize for it?
Those strongly interrelated questions are the main concern of our research where our intellectual challenge is embedded in dealing with system complexity.

Organizational Structure of the Institute

The institute is organized along two main areas:

• The technical, mathematical OR group focuses on design of efficient algorithms and the study of structural properties in the area of mathematical optimization, in particular, discrete optimization and equilibrium programming.
• The operational analysis group is concerned with solving real world problems by making innovative use and enhancements of modeling techniques. The main focus of this group is to increase the competence in supporting the problem solving process from the conceptualization phase to the model-building and the implementation phase.

IFOR within ETH:
The Institute is part of the Departement of Mathematics. As a truly interdisciplinary institute within ETHZ it maintains close relationships with the Departement of Computer Sciences and the Departement of Production and Industrial Engineering .