Monash and CTI Research Partnership
Melbourne, Australia Oct 10th 2007 - Constraint Technologies (CTI) and Monash University announced an agreement to form a new research partnership, the CTI-Monash Centre for Transport, Travel and Logistics (TTL) Optimisation. The Centre will concentrate basic and applied research into techniques and technologies in support of CTI's Research Charter in areas such as scheduling & timetabling, asset utilisation, staff rostering, operations optimisation and disruption recovery.
Monash and CTI have already undertaken projects on staff rostering and scheduling, and have two ARC Linkage Projects underway. Further collaboration is planned for research into optimisation for TTL problems.
The Centre is planned to be fully operational by the end of 2007. Existing research staff will be transferred and new positions will be created as further projects are approved. An establishment of over 20 researchers is anticipated within the first year.
"The partnership with CTI has driven our research in directions that are both theoretically challenging and practically useful", said Professor Mark Wallace, Director Designate, "CTI has both complex problems to solve, and a highly qualified and experienced team who understand how to describe these problems to academics and exploit the solutions that come back."
Dr. Paul Hyland, Chairman of CTI said, "We are a technology company and research is vitally important to maintain our leading edge. Establishment of the Centre will enable us to further leverage our considerable investment in R&D".
About Monash
Monash University seeks to improve the human condition by advancing knowledge and fostering creativity. It does so through research and education and a commitment to social justice, human rights and a sustainable environment. Monash has the largest IT Faculty in Australia and one of the leading and most respected and extensively collaborative IT institutions in the world. Its Centre for Research in Intelligent Systems comprises 26 academic staff associated with more than $6 million per annum in National Competitive grant income. The theory of constraint programming was originally established here, and the Optimisation and Constraint Solving Research Group exploits this technology is to solve difficult optimisation and constraint solving problems such as those occurring in scheduling, timetabling and document layout.
CTI Research Charter
The objectives of research at CTI are:
- to ensure that CTIs optimisation products remain competitive within the marketplace
- to provide technical publications and presentations at appropriate forums to ensure that the quality of CTIs optimisation products is well understood
- to develop algorithms for new optimisation products or extensions to existing products to target opportunities in CTIs business areas
- to provide support for the academic optimisation community in Australia so as to encourage new ideas