News > 2008 > Alysson M. Costa Receives the Award for the Best Canadian Doctoral Dissertation in Applied Mathematics

Alysson M. Costa Receives the Award for the Best Canadian Doctoral Dissertation in Applied Mathematics

June 3, 2008

Alysson Machado osta (PhD 2007) has won the 2008 Cecil Graham Award for the best doctoral dissertation in applied mathematics defended at a Canadian university in 2007. The award, created by the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS), will be presented at a banquet held during the Society’s 2008 Congress, this week in Montreal. This is actually the second Canada-France congress organized by the CAIMS in partnership with a number of organizations in Quebec, elsewhere in Canada and in France.

The Cecil Graham Award consists of a plaque, a $1,000 prize and a one-year CAIMS membership. The winner has also been invited to give a lecture at the Annual Meeting, on June 2.

Alysson M. Costa’s doctoral dissertation is entitled Models and Algorithms for Two Network Design Problems. His two-part thesis proposes new models and algorithms for two network design problems: the multicommodity capacitated fixed-charge network design problem and the Steiner tree problem with profits. These types of problems have applications in such areas as electrical engineering, transportation planning, telecommunications and computer science.

His thesis was co-directed by professors Jean-François Cordeau and Gilbert Laporte, holders of the Canada Research Chair in Logistics and Transportation and of the Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management, respectively.

After completing his studies at HEC Montréal, where his thesis was one of the finalists for the Mercure award for the best doctoral dissertation in 2007, Mr. Costa returned to his native country, Brazil. There he did postdoctoral studies at the Instituto de Informática of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, and is now an Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação of the Universidade de São Paulo.