Fabian Akkerman Wins Prestigious INFORMS TSL Dissertation Award

Atlanta, GA – October 27, 2025. Fabian Akkerman has been selected as the Winner of the 2025 INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics (TSL) Dissertation Award, the most prestigious global recognition for doctoral research in transportation and logistics. The award honors his dissertation, Machine Learning for Sequential Decisions in Logistics, which he defended on April 4th, 2025, earning the distinction of cum laude.

Fabian’s dissertation offers a timely and methodologically rigorous response to one of the most pressing challenges in modern logistics: how to design decision support systems that can adapt to increasing levels of dynamism, uncertainty, and complexity. His research bridges the gap between machine learning and operations research, advancing the way data-driven models can inform real-time decision-making in logistics networks.

At its core, the work explores how reinforcement learning, a branch of AI focused on learning through interaction, can move beyond prediction to serve as a decision-making engine when combined with traditional optimization techniques. The dissertation goes far beyond the use of off-the-shelf algorithms: it introduces a structured, domain-aware framework for embedding machine learning into sequential decision processes. The research spans key applications such as inventory control, dynamic vehicle routing, and delivery slot pricing; areas with direct and significant impact on industry practice.

The dissertation addresses various methodological challenges familiar to the TSL community: the curse of dimensionality, model fragility under distribution shift, and the trade-off between interpretability and complexity. Fabian’s work introduces new approaches, hybrid ML-OR models, reinforcement learning under real-world constraints, and decision-focused learning for pricing problems, and validates them through extensive collaboration with industry partners. The resulting models demonstrated clear improvements over current state-of-the-art methods in real-world settings.

The INFORMS TSL Dissertation Award recognizes work that makes fundamental contributions, demonstrates methodological innovation, and shows clear practical relevance. Fabian’s dissertation stood out across these dimensions. He formally received the award during the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, USA, where he also presented his research in the dedicated TSL Dissertation Award session.

Congratulations to Fabian for this exceptional achievement, which underscores the growing importance of AI-driven decision-making in the logistics and transportation sciences.