Frans Schalekamp

Frans Schalekamp is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell (2007) and an M.A. in Econometrics and Operations Research from Vrije University Amsterdam (2000). His research focuses on optimization theory and practice, including approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems, bioinformatics, sensor networks, and practical algorithm design. He has taught courses in operations research, computer science, and mathematics at Cornell and William & Mary.

Key awards include the ORIE Professor of the Year (2020-21), Simon Prize for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics (2014), and VVS Scriptieprijs for his Master’s thesis on card shuffling (2001). His work bridges academia and industry, with roles at NatureSourceGenetics and CarMax. He has contributed to foundational research in the traveling salesman problem, scheduling algorithms, and combinatorial optimization.