Arnoud den Boer, former PhD student of CWI, has been awarded the Gijs de Leve Prize. The prize was awarded last week at the annual congress of the LNMB, the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research. In awarding den Boer this prestigious prize, the jury recognized his doctoral thesis as the best PhD thesis in operations research defended in the last three years.
Den Boer was awarded the prize for his thesis Dynamic pricing and learning, which was the result of his research at CWI under the supervision of Rob van der Mei and Bert Zwart (Stochastics group). He defended his thesis in 2013 at the VU University of Amsterdam. In his thesis, Den Boer designed mathematical algorithms that find the most cost effective way to experiment with retail prices. It sacrifices profits on a short term in order to learn more about customer behaviour and make better pricing decisions in the long term. Den Boer’s pricing algorithm shows how often and in which range vendors should experiment with their retail prices, or in other words, what the optimal balance is between learning and profit maximization.
The jury lauded the thesis for being extremely well written, and praised the high scientific quality of the work, which is reflected in the fact that it has led to publications in the top journals in the field. Den Boer is currently employed as Assistant Professor at the University of Twente. He was awarded a Veni grant from NWO in 2014.
Source:
Nieuwsbericht CWI: Higher revenue by experimenting with retail prices
Nieuwsbericht Universiteit Twente: Arnoud den Boer awarded Gijs de Leve Prize
Image: Arnoud den Boer (left) receives the Gijs de Leve Prize from Jan Karel Lenstra (right) at the LNMB congress lnmb.nl
