In 2018, the SUnORE group consists of a total of 35 members. Of these, 14 are skripsie students, 13 are masters students, 4 are doctoral students and 4 are lecturers, as described below.
Skripsie Students
Pierre Cilliers
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to the topic of destination dispatch – a new paradigm in elevator control in high-rise buildings (Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Iris de Villiers
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to decision support towards wine co-operations in maximising the return on investment for grape farmers
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
R Dykman
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to decision support for effective team selection in Fantasy Premier League
(Supervisor: T Schmidt-Dumont).
Victoria Harper
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to investigating the tendency of a residential population to conserve water using an agent-based simulation model
(Supervisor: C de Kock).
Megan Higgo
Final year BEng student with a project related to a decision support system reflecting the impact of public health policies on noncommunicable diseases (Supervisor: C de Kock).
Günther Hüssellmann
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to the design of bus routes in a public transit system (Supervisor: JH van Vuuren,
Co-supervisor: SJ Anderson).
J’marie Kloppers
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to a comparison of reinforcement learning algorithms for solving classical control theory problems (Supervisor: T Schmidt-Dumont).
Tyron Landman
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to a decision support system for cost-effective warehouse location and closure
(Supervisor: JH van Vuuren,
Co-supervisor: DP Lötter).
Daniel Lombard
Final-year BEng student with a project topic related to decision support for cost-effective warehouse location and closure
(Supervisor: JH van Vuuren).
Tinus Loots
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to a weapon assignment solution selection component for a weapon assignment subsystem
(Supervisor: DP Lötter).
Ben Heylahn
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to insurgency: An agent-based simulation model (Supervisor: C de Kock).
Kit Searle
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to farming upwards: The future of farming? (Supervisor: JH van Vuuren).
Gemma Sutherland
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to modelling the spread of a potential influenza pandemic in refugee camps
(Supervisor: C de Kock).
Johann van Niekerk
Final year BEng student with a project topic related to decision support for the design of a multi-head weighing machine
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren,
Co-supervisor: BG Lindner).
Masters students
Marno du Plessis
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to information sharing in pharmaceutical inventory management strategies
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Matthew Higgo
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the design of an information system for pharmaceutical inventory management in hospitals (Supervisors: J van Eeden).
Jacqueline Kazmaier
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to decision support for evaluating unstructured customer feedback on products and services.
(Supervisors: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Monica Rolo
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to a clustering approach towards the identification of suitable waiting areas for drivers of transportation network companies.
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren)
Christian Nolting
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the discernment of spatio-temporal stock-out patterns in pharmaceutical supply chains
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Tashmah Rambali
First year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the identification of bottlenecks and points of infrastructure expansion in urban storm water drainage networks
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Janco Barnard
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the investigation of the application of strategic planning combined with mathematical modelling and simulation to ensure farmers plan effectively for future survival. For his Masters thesis, Janco is looking at simulating the impact of natural occurrences on reservoir water levels and effectively allocating water among crops and livestock to minimise the total loss of profit from a water deficit.
Mattie Landman
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the emergence of cooperation in spatial evolutionary games played on graphs (Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Stephan Nel
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the design and development of hyperheuristics for training and ensembling of artificial neural networks
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Nita Oosthuizen
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to vehicle routing decision support for vehicles that replenish cash stockpiles at bank ATMs (Supervisors: Mr DP Lötter & Dr BJ van Vuuren).
Ryan Reed
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic in behavioural OR aimed at the facilitation of unstructured group decisions which are subject to a large degree of uncertainty
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Shane van Heerden
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to machine learning in support of the vehicle accident insurance claim resolution disputes (Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Ghiete van Zyl
Second year MEng student with a thesis topic related to the application of semi-supervised disease gene classification machine learning (Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Doctoral Students
Johan Kellermann
First year PhD student with a dissertation topic related to model-based decision support for subjective preference selection
(Promoter: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Angelo de Silva Mendes
Second year PhD student with a dissertation topic related to decision support for the maintenance and design of gas pipeline networks
(Promoter: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Georgina Rakotonirainy
Third year PhD student with a dissertation topic related to the evaluation and design of metaheuristics tailored for the strip packing problem (Promoter: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Robert Bennetto
Third year PhD student with a dissertation topic related to the discovery of effective branching schemes for constraint programming searches
(Supervisor: Prof JH van Vuuren).
Lecturers
Christa de Kock
Lecturer in Operations Research. agent-based modelling, simulation and project management.
Thorsten Schmidt-Dumont
Lecturer in Industrial Programming currently enrolled for a PhD with research interests in reinforcement learning for the control of traffic flow on highways.
Danie Lotter
Lecturer in Operations Research with research interests in (multi-objective) optimisation, resource assignment problems and decision support systems.
Jan van Vuuren
Professor of Operations Research with research interests in graph theory, (multi-objective) combinatorial optimisation and decision support systems.