معرفی
Margarida Carvalho is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal, where she holds the FRQ-IVADO Research Chair in Data Science for Combinatorial Game Theory. She is also an Associate Academic Member at Mila (Quebec AI Institute), contributing to their research in AI for Humanity. Her academic journey spans from Portugal to Canada, where she has established herself as a leading researcher at the intersection of operations research and game theory.
Carvalho earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP), followed by a PhD in Computer Science from the same institution in 2016. Her doctoral work, which focused on game theory applications for kidney exchange programs, earned her the prestigious 2018 EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award, making her the first Portuguese woman to receive this honor. After completing her PhD, she worked as an IVADO Postdoctoral Fellow at Polytechnique Montréal before joining Université de Montréal as an Assistant Professor in 2018.
Her research focuses on combinatorial optimization and algorithmic game theory, with applications spanning healthcare (kidney exchange programs, hospital operations), sustainable development (electric vehicle infrastructure, urban planning), and education (school choice systems). She develops novel mathematical programming approaches to model and solve problems involving multiple decision-makers with potentially conflicting objectives. Her work bridges theoretical advances in optimization with practical implementations that address real-world challenges in resource allocation and decision-making under uncertainty. Notably, her research on fairness in kidney exchange programs has contributed to more equitable organ allocation policies.
Her 15 most recent publications reveal a strong trend toward integrating game-theoretic concepts with practical optimization challenges, particularly in healthcare and sustainable infrastructure. She has pioneered approaches that balance utilitarian objectives with fairness considerations, developed novel formulations for bilevel and multilevel optimization problems, and created learning-based frameworks for complex decision environments. Her work consistently demonstrates how mathematical rigor can inform practical policy decisions in critical domains.
- 2018 EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award for her PhD thesis on game theory applications for kidney exchange programs
- Mathematical Programming 2024 Meritorious Service Award
- Teaching Excellence Award from Université de Montréal
- Supervised student Maria Bazotte receiving the Dupačová-Prékopa Best Student Paper Prize in Stochastic Programming
Carvalho actively advises graduate students, with Marylou Fauchard (Master's) and William St-Arnaud (PhD) among her current advisees. Her research is supported by grants from Hydro-Québec, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery grant 2017-06054 and Collaborative Research and Development Grant CRDPJ 536757–19), and FRQ-IVADO. She serves as an associate editor for INFORMS Journal on Computing, OR Spectrum, and Dynamic Games and Applications, and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Bilevel Optimization Society. She teaches courses in Mathematical Programming, Operational Research Models, and Discrete Mathematics at Université de Montréal.
Carvalho is affiliated with Mila (Quebec AI Institute), where she contributes to research initiatives focused on AI for Humanity, particularly in the areas of algorithmic fairness and sustainable development. Her FRQ-IVADO Research Chair supports her work on combinatorial game theory applications, and she collaborates with researchers across disciplines through the IVADO research community. She has been instrumental in establishing the Bilevel Optimization Society, creating a dedicated forum for researchers working on hierarchical decision-making problems.
