María Angélica Salazar-Aguilar Wins the 2010 Sofía Kovalévskaia Award

November 1, 2010

María Angélica Salazar-Aguilar, a postdoctoral intern at HEC Montréal and the CIRRELT, is one of eight winners of the 2010 Sofía Kovalévskaia Award. Since August she has been on a one-year research stay under the co-direction of professors Gilbert Laporte, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management, and André Langevin, of the École Polytechnique.

The award Angélica has just received is intended to increase the proportion of women conducting research in mathematics by supporting Mexican women who have acquired their PhDs in this field in the previous five years. She earned her doctorate in systems engineering in 2010, at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, in San Nicolás de los Garza, Mexico, with a perfect overall average (100/100). Her thesis was entitled Models, Algorithms, and Heuristics for Multiobjective Commercial Territory Design.

Under the co-direction of professors Laporte and Langevin, she is now working on solving an unfortunately too-common problem here up north: designing an optimal snow removal route to clear all streets as quickly as possible. The practical applications of her research are obvious, but the solution involves complex algorithms.

The award will be presented to Angélica on November 3, 2010 at the opening ceremonies for the 43rd national congress of the Mathematical Society of Mexico, in Chiapas, Mexico.