21 members, six continents, one consortium.
NEDMIL brings together experts from every continent — South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania — representing leading universities and institutes from France, Brazil, Algeria, China, Iran, and Australia.
Meet the consortium.
Leadership & Coordination03
Nelson Maculan
Emeritus Professor at the Department of Systems Engineering and Computer Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. A founding intellectual force behind NEDMIL, he has shaped the field of combinatorial optimisation and integer programming over several decades. He served as President of IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies) and continues to inspire the consortium's scientific agenda.
Rahimeh Neamatian Monemi
PhD in Computer Science (Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, 2014), Adjunct Professor in Analytics and Operations Research, and Founder & Director of Predictim Globe (Lille, France). She is the principal architect of the NEDMIL consortium, leading its scientific and industrial partnerships across six continents. Her research spans combinatorial optimisation, machine learning, logistics, and maritime systems — with an increasing focus on hybrid AI-optimisation methods.
Yves Van Seters
Accomplished professional with a diverse background across leadership roles in communication, external relations, and ecosystem development. Affiliated with Antwerp Maritime Academy (Belgium), he brings extensive experience in maritime education, international partnership brokering, and stakeholder engagement. Within NEDMIL, he is the key connector between the research community and maritime industry actors, policy makers, and educational institutions.
Area Leads12
Karim Bouamrane
Professor at the LIO research laboratory and the Department of Computer Science, University of Oran 1 Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria. Specialised in Decision Support Systems (DSS), multi-agent systems, and multimodal transport logistics. He coordinates NEDMIL activities across North Africa and has supervised numerous doctoral students working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and operational research.
Lubin Cui
Professor at the College of Mathematics and Information Science, Henan Normal University, China. His research interests span mathematical programming, network optimisation, and computational mathematics. He coordinates the Chinese academic cluster within NEDMIL and has established active research bridges between Chinese institutions and the consortium's global partners.
Shahin Gelareh
Senior academic and researcher specialising in the optimisation of mobility systems, logistics network design, and artificial intelligence. With a career spanning European academic institutions, he has developed advanced models for hub-and-spoke networks, intermodal logistics, and maritime port planning. He serves as NEDMIL's regional coordinator for Europe and contributes expertise at the interface of theoretical optimisation and industrial applications.
Pedro Gonzalez
Faculty member at the Department of Systems Engineering and Computer Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. His research focuses on combinatorial optimisation, graph algorithms, and computational complexity. He is an active participant in the Brazilian node of NEDMIL and contributes to the supervision of doctoral students in operations research.
Rodney Beard
Lead researcher at the Pingla Institute, with activities spanning Australia, Fiji, and Canada. His research focuses on the economics and management of natural resources, with particular interest in Pacific island resource governance, sustainability modelling, and operations research applied to environmental policy. He serves as NEDMIL's regional coordinator for Oceania and the Pacific.
Yong Xia
Full Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Beihang University (BUAA), Beijing, China. He is a prominent researcher in global optimisation, integer programming, and machine learning theory. His work spans semidefinite relaxations, nonconvex quadratic programming, and data-driven optimisation. He coordinates one of the most active research clusters within NEDMIL.
Hossein Karimi
Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Bojnord, Iran. His research centres on hub location problems, supply chain network design, and logistics optimisation. He serves as NEDMIL's regional coordinator for Iran and has contributed key modelling results to the consortium's hub network research agenda.
Yuan Jinyun
Academician of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and Professor at Dongguan University of Technology, China. Internationally renowned for his contributions to numerical computation, matrix analysis, and operations research, his academic career naturally bridges two of NEDMIL's most active research nodes — Brazil and China. He is one of the most decorated mathematicians associated with the consortium.
Djamila Hamdadou
Director of the LIO (Laboratoire d'Informatique d'Oran) and Professor at the University of Oran 1 Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence, Decision Support Systems, and multi-criteria analysis applied to complex socio-economic and logistical problems. She plays a central leadership role in the North African cluster of NEDMIL.
Xinguang Yang
Professor focused on theoretical modelling and nonlinear control of complex dynamical systems, with applications to fluid-structure interaction problems in engineering contexts such as aero-engines and hydraulic dams. His mathematical work bridges pure functional analysis and applied engineering, contributing to NEDMIL's cross-disciplinary research reach.
Khadidja Yachba
Full Professor in Computer Science at the Oran Higher School of Economics and researcher at the LIO, University of Oran 1 Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria. She specialises in decision support systems and multimodal logistics, with applied research oriented towards intelligent transport systems for developing economies.
Kaouter Labed
Professor in Computer Science at the Oran Higher School of Economics and researcher at the LIO, University of Oran 1 Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria. Her work is oriented towards applied computational models for transport planning and logistics systems.
Researchers & Students06
Minghui Li
Faculty member at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Henan University of Science and Technology, China. He specialises in tensor computation and optimisation methods for high-dimensional data, bridging abstract algebraic structures with data-intensive computational problems.
Nannan Chen
PhD candidate in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Henan Normal University, China. Her doctoral research focuses on computational mathematics with applications to traffic optimisation problems, under the supervision of Prof. Lubin Cui.
Xinru Wang
Researcher at the School of Mathematics and Statistics of Henan Normal University, China. She is developing expertise in Deep Learning and Graph Machine Learning, with an interest in applying these methods to structured data arising in optimisation and combinatorial problems.
Bingge Luo
Researcher at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Henan Normal University, China. She specialises in single-cell multi-omics clustering tasks, bringing a computational biology perspective to the consortium and demonstrating NEDMIL's breadth into biomedical data science.
Shujing Yang
Doctoral student at the School of Mathematics and Statistics of Henan Normal University, China. Her doctoral research specialises in numerical solutions of differential equations, contributing to the theoretical mathematical foundations of NEDMIL's Chinese cluster.
Muyan Li
Researcher at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Henan Normal University, China. His work focuses on partial differential equations and functional analysis, supporting the mathematical underpinnings of the consortium's computational and modelling activities.