About us
GERAD is an interuniversity research centre working at the heart of digital intelligence. It aims to be a reference point in the area of decision mathematics and its applications to complex systems, by bringing together university and industry researchers to carry out large-scale R&D projects. Its contributions can be seen in its scientific innovations, knowledge transfers in important economic sectors, and development of decision-support tools.
Serving industry
GERAD amalgamates AI-inspired and operational research methods. Its achievements are both methodological and applied, in areas including these:
• Powerful software. NOMAD is blackbox optimization freeware that was developed at GERAD and is now the leader in the field, with approximately 14,000 users worldwide. NOMAD is successfully used to solve a whole range of problems, including, recently, the optimization of hyperparameters of deep neural networks. For other software developed at GERAD see: https://www.gerad.ca/en/research/software
• Personnel and vehicle scheduling. GERAD develops GENCOL, which makes it possible to solve very large scheduling problems. This algorithm is used in software commercialized by AD OPT (used in aircraft and crew scheduling by over 20 airline companies worldwide); GIRO (bus and driver scheduling, used in over 300 cities on 5 continents); and Kronos (shift work scheduling, currently used to manage thousands of workers).
• Mining. GERAD develops optimization methods to solve planning problems in the mining industry. Production optimization models have also been developed to take uncertainties into account in ore block content and in pricing. These methods are used in mines in Australia, Canada, Chile, and the US.
• Energy. GERAD researchers work in collaboration with Hydro-Québec (and its research institute, IREQ) and with Rio Tinto – ALCAN on optimizing electrical production and transportation. They also work on modelling the entire energy sector in partnership with federal and provincial ministries.
Let’s work together
Our team can assist you in implementing an R&D project in a university environment. Contact us to assess your project’s feasibility and see how we can work together: [email protected].
