Despite the confinement to which we are currently subject (April 2020), GERAD wishes to mark the birthday of our colleague Pierre Hansen, who celebrated his 80th birthday in late March 2020. Pierre Hansen has been a member of GERAD since the early 1990s, when he joined the faculty of HEC Montréal. He was also director of GERAD from 1996 to 2001. Since 2004, he holds the Data Mining Chair at HEC Montréal.

Pierre Hansen’s work focuses on several themes, in particular metaheuristics (including the so-called Variable Neighborhood Search approach), non-convex quadratic programming, mathematical chemistry and computer-assisted scientific discovery. In addition, his work can be applied to many disciplines and thus presents a remarkable multidisciplinary character. Finally, his work is widely cited: Pierre Hansen has accumulated nearly 38,300 citations in his career with an h-index of 85, according to Google Scholar.

His scientific excellence has earned him numerous recognition, including the 1986 EURO Gold Medal and the 2013 HEC Montréal Grand Prize for Research. He is also a member of the International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry and the Royal Society of Canada.

GERAD is therefore particularly proud to count such a researcher among its members.

Happy birthday, Pierre!