STOR-i PhD student, Danielle Notice, recently returned from an 8 week research visit to work with Dr Mario Andrés Muñoz, one of the pioneering researchers in instance space analysis, based in Australia.

Supported by the STOR-i Research Fund, Danielle was hosted by the University of Melbourne's ARC Training Centre in Optimisation Technologies, Integrated Methodologies, and Applications (OPTIMA). The Centre focusses on connecting industry with world-leading researchers and students, aiming to develop an industry-ready optimisation toolkit while cultivating a workforce of skilled change agents for industrial transformation. Whilst at OPTIMA, Danielle worked with supervised dimensionality reduction methods for instance space analysis, and further considered applying this to vehicle routing problems.

Reflecting on the rewarding and productive experience, Danielle shared: “I am very grateful for the unusual but exciting opportunity to visit Australia and work in such a different environment. It was definitely a valuable experience, both personally and for my PhD.”