Conference Program
Final Program
The TRISTAN XII program is available here:
TRISTAN2025_final_program.pdf (0.2MB)
Keynote Speakers
“Transportation Research for Social Impact in a Changing World” by Dr. Karen Smilowitz
Professor at Northwestern University, USA
Humanitarian logistics presents a series of unique and urgent challenges. For example, at the core of disaster response lies the effective and equitable distribution of life-saving supplies to those in need. In such high-stakes environments, operations research holds significant potential to support decision-making—helping relief organizations save lives and resources while upholding principles of fairness, humanitarianism, and transparency. In this keynote, we focus on humanitarian operations in a range of settings. This talk will present opportunities and challenges related to transportation research that strives for positive social impact in a constantly changing world. In such settings, the objectives are often more difficult to quantify since issues such as equity and sustainability must be considered, yet efficient operations are still crucial. The talk will be both a look back over several decades of influential research and a look forward at the challenges ahead, focusing on key papers that span a range of related topics. We will explore how new platform technology is changing both the practice and study of humanitarian logistics. The talk will include open challenges for junior researchers to consider in their own work.
The talk will also include a discussion of what journals are doing to promote such impactful work, with a particular focus on innovations at Transportation Science. In doing so, I will highlight the important changes to Transportation Science during my time as Editor-in-Chief. This will include both an overview of editorial structure as well as thoughts regarding the future of the journal.
“Participatory Traffic Control: Leveraging Connected and Automated Vehicles for Enhanced Network Efficiency” by Dr. Yafeng Yin
Professor at University of Michigan, USA
Participatory traffic control is an emerging paradigm that envisions vehicles within the traffic stream serving as active control actuators to enhance the performance of traffic networks. With rapid advances in vehicle connectivity and automation, travelers are increasingly likely to relinquish personal control over certain travel decisions. This shift enables the development of a participatory traffic control framework, where a subset of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) function as “traffic demand distributors.” By coordinating their departure times and route choices, these CAVs can influence the travel behavior of others, thereby improving overall system efficiency. This talk presents methods for enabling CAVs to stabilize day-to-day traffic dynamics and reduce congestion. It also explores the design of incentive mechanisms to encourage CAVs to participate as control agents within the broader traffic system.
“Combinatorial choices” by Dr. Michel Bierlaire
Professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Joint work with Frédéric Meunier, Léa Ricard and Prunelle Vogler
Traditional discrete choice models are grounded in the assumption that decision-makers solve a continuous optimization problem, with econometric formulations derived from its first-order optimality conditions. However, many real-world decisions involve selecting combinations of alternatives—such as planning a sequence of activities—rendering the choice inherently combinatorial. In such settings, the underlying decision problem becomes a combinatorial optimization task, for which standard optimality conditions do not apply. This lecture introduces the framework of combinatorial choice, with a focus on its relevance for modeling the activity schedules of travelers in the context of travel demand forecasting.