Pascal Van Hentenryck is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Van Hentenryck’s research focuses on artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research, with a focus on applications to problems in mobility, energy, resilience, and privacy.
“One of the problems I am most interested in is seeing how we can develop novel mobility solutions for urban areas,” Van Hentenryck explains. “As part of a project for the University of Michigan, we redesigned their bus system by converting some of the fixed bus routes on the periphery of campus with infrequent schedules to on-demand routes that allowed students to call a minibus on an app to pick them up and transport them to a central location.” The project led to significant decreases in wait times for students, increased the number of trips taken on the public transit system, and can be implemented without increasing the cost of providing public transportation and without raising fares.
Van Hentenryck also runs the Seth Bonder Summer Camp in Computational and Data Science for middle- and high-school students.
More information about Van Hentenryck’s research may be found here and here.