Education

For a more informal introduction to our master programme, see the slides presented on an information meeting of our group

The mission of the Stochastic Operations Research group (SOR) is to conduct mathematical education and research of internationally high standards in the areas of stochastic processes and mathematics of operations research, to contribute to the development of mathematics in a multidisciplinary engineering environment, and to contribute to a better understanding and functioning of our increasingly complex society.

Stochastic Operations Research aims at the development of mathematical models and methods for the design, control and optimisation of complex systems. Within this broad field, SOR focuses on mathematical challenges in the area of stochastic processes and its engineering environment in societally relevant areas of application, such as communications, production & logistics, and health care.

SOR is responsible for mathematics courses at the BSc, MSc and PhD level both within the Applied Mathematics programme and in that of various engineering and social science disciplines at the University of Twente as well as in the national programmes of Mastermath, LNMB, and Beta. The SOR MSc and PhD programme is embedded in the Twente Graduate School programme Industrial Engineering.

In the educational programme, SOR aims at intertwining research and education. At the PhD level this is an obvious characteristic of courses. In the BSc and MSc courses, exercises are often research questions in the current research programme of staff members of SOR. MSc and BSc students are involved in SOR’s research programme. Typical examples include the yearly BSc assignments. We provide an overview of graduation projects at BSc and MSc level. A large share of these projects has been published in international journals and has been implemented in profit or non-profit organisations.

The SOR MSc programme contains a mixture of mathematics courses and application oriented courses from domains including health care, computer science, logistics, communications, civil engineering. 

After finishing their study, the University of Twente (in cooperation with Saxion) offers students via an institution called Connect, contacts with employers which have international ambitions and are interested in hiring (foreign) UT candidates because of their knowledge of, and experience in, specific cultures, languages and countries. Not only as technical staff, but also for management, logistics, sales and marketing positions. Through the institution’s extensive network of companies and organizations in different industries, candidates have excellent possibilities to find interesting positions. For more information, read this brochure.