Alain Hertz

Alain Hertz is a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal. He is affiliated with two major research centers: Institut de valorisation des données (IVADO) and Groupe d'études et de recherche en analyse des décisions (GERAD). His expertise spans operations research, management science, and algorithm development with applications across multiple industries.

Professor Hertz specializes in combinatorial optimization, graph theory, algorithms, heuristics and metaheuristics. His research bridges theoretical mathematics with practical applications in scheduling, vehicle routing, and decision support systems. Recent work explores graph-based approaches for recommender systems and chemical graph theory, demonstrating the versatility of his mathematical frameworks.

His publication record shows consistent output across top journals in operations research and graph theory. Recent articles (2021-2025) focus on extremal graph theory, chemical graphs, graph coloring variants, and applications of graph theory to recommender systems. This demonstrates both theoretical depth and practical relevance in his research trajectory.

• Prix de la ministre de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport - Gouvernement du Québec (2011)

Professor Hertz has supervised 13 doctoral students and 18 master's students, with thesis topics ranging from optimization methods for semi-supervised clustering to wind farm network design. His supervision approach emphasizes both theoretical foundations and practical applications, preparing students for careers in both academia and industry. His research has been supported by various grants enabling collaborative work with international partners.

Through his affiliations with IVADO and GERAD, Professor Hertz contributes to interdisciplinary research initiatives that connect mathematical theory with real-world problems in data science, artificial intelligence, and industrial engineering.