Dr. Roger Z. Ríos

Roger Z. Ríos is a Professor in the Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering at the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (FIME), Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) in San Nicolás de los Garza (in Monterrey metro area), México. Previous to this appointment he was a Professor in the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering in the same department from 1999 to 2023.

Dr. Ríos earned his PhD (1997) in Operations Research from the University of Texas at Austin. He also earned a MSE (1992) from UT-Austin and a Licenciatura (BSc) in Mathematics (1988) from UANL. He has held postdoctoral and visiting positions at University of Texas at Austin (Graduate Program in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar, 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Department of Statistics and Operations Research, 2005-06 MEC Scholar), University of Colorado at Boulder (Leeds School of Business, 2004), University of Houston (High Performance Computing Center and Department of Mathematics, 1997-99), and Texas A&M University (Department of Industrial Engineering, 1997-99). He also has had short research stays at the University of Texas at Austin (Graduate Program in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, 2013 and 2014), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Department of Statistics and Operations Research, 2007, 2013, 2015, and 2024), Northwestern University (Center for Sustainable Energy and Analytics, 2013), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems, 2013).

Dr. Ríos' research has primarily focused on methods for solving difficult discrete optimization problems arising in manufacturing environments, the gas industry, territory design, location science, forestry management, routing and transportation, and health-care management. In particular, he currently holds grants for research on forestry management, health care management, and kidney exchange problems. Previously, he has conducted funded research on optimization of arc routing districting services, optimization of environment-oriented territory design systems, optimization of commercial territory design on bottled beverage distribution, piece-mold-machine manufacturing processes, optimization of multi-product batch plant, multiobjective facility location with lead-time choices, optimization of scheduling systems in assembly lines, customer districting optimization in distribution networks, optimal design of gating systems, efficient operations of natural gas pipelines, and bilevel programming models in natural gas markets. His postdoctoral research (led by Dr. Andy Boyd) dealt with the optimization of compressor driven gas pipeline networks. His graduate research (under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan F. Bard) addressed the optimization of flow line machine scheduling problems, deriving effective approximation algorithms and exact optimization schemes based on branch-and-bound and branch-and-cut techniques in combination with state-of-the-art optimization libraries CPLEX, OSL, and MINTO. He was also involved in a research project to develop efficient interior point algorithms for linear programming and concave quadratic programming. Before graduate school, Dr. Ríos spent four years working at Vitro Tec (1986-1990), a research and development firm belonging to Vitro, México's leading enterprise in the glass industry, where he conducted independent research on mathematical models and algorithms for simulating glass-forming processes. During that time span he wrote several technical papers, one of which being the draft of his Bachelor degree thesis.

Dr. Ríos is currently an Editor for Computers & Operations Research (2019-), an Editorial Board member for Operations Research Perspectives (2014-), and a Technical Committee Member for Ingenierías (2005-). He served as an Editorial Advisory Board member for Computers & Operations Research (2016-2018), and as an Associate Editor for Advances in Decision Sciences (2003-2017). He has published, as an editor or co-editor, the books: Optimal Districting and Territory Design (Springer, 2020), Just-in-Time Systems (Springer, 2012), and "Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization" (Springer-Verlag, 1998). He has also published, as a editor or co-editor these volumes has special issues of peer-reviewed journals: "Operations Research and Systems: XVIII Latin-Iberian-American Conference on Operations Research, CLAIO 2016" (Springer, 2020), "Operations Research at CLAIO XVII (ALIO/SMIO Joint International Meeting)" (Springer, 2017), "Operations Research and Systems (ALIO/INFORMS Joint International Meeting)" (Springer, 2012), Heuristic Research: Advances and Applications (Springer, 2009), "Operations Research and Systems (CLAIO XII)" (Springer, 2008), "JAMDS 10th Anniversary Special Issue" (Hindawi, 2006), "Latin-Ibero-American Conference on Operations Research (CLAIO XI): An International Conference of Theory and Practice" (Springer, 2005), "Operations Research and Systems. Part I: Probability and Mathematical Programming" (Kluwer, 2002), and "Operations Research and Systems. Part II: Algorithms, Heuristics and Energy Markets" (Kluwer, 2002). He has written chapters for the books: Handbook of Heuristics, 2nd edition (Springer, Forthcoming), Optimal Districting and Territory Design (Springer, 2020), Location Science (Springer, 2019), Handbook of Heuristics (Springer, 2018), Hybrid Metaheuristics (Springer, 2005), Handbook of Applied Optimization (Oxford University Press, 2002), and "Computing Tools for Modeling, Optimization and Simulation Interfaces in Computer Science and Operations Research" (Kluwer, 2000). His research work has been published in scientific journals such as Annals of Operations Research, Applied Energy, Clinical Transplantation, Computational Materials Science, Computers & Chemical Engineering, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Computers & Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Expert Systems with Applications, Forests, IIE Transactions, Interfaces, International Transactions in Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems, Journal of Heuristics, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Mathematical and Computer Modelling, Networks & Spatial Economics, Omega, Optimization and Engineering, Public Transport, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, TOP, Transportation Research Part C, Transportation Research Part D, and Transportmetrica A. He has also published articles in magazines such as Acta Universitaria, Ciencia UANL, Computación y Sistemas, Ingenierías, Nova Scientia, and Revista Ingeniería de Sistemas. He has been an invited speaker at several institutions and professional meetings.

Honors and Awards

Dr. Ríos is a SNI Fellow (level 3) top highest country-wide distinction granted by the Mexican System of Research Scientists, where he has been a member since 2000 (level 1, 2000-2005; level 2, 2006-2009, 2010-2014, 2015-2019; level 3, 2020-2024, 2025-2029). He is also a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences (since 2005) and the Mexican Academy on Computing (since 2015). He is also Senior Member of INFORMS (since 2025). He was a plenary speaker for the Latin-Iberian-American Conference on Operations Research (CLAIO), Guadalajara, Mexico, 2024, and the EURO Conference, Valencia, Spain, 2018. He was a Fulbright Scholar (2012-13 and 2024-25), award granted by the Fulbright Scholar Program, the US government's flagship international exchange program, spending his sabbatical leave at the University of Texas at Austin in both ocassions. He received a Visiting Scholar Award (2005-06) by the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science for visiting scholars on sabbatical leave at Spanish institutions. He was the recipient of the Nuevo Leon State Science Award (2023) for his scientific contributions in the exacty sciences category. He was one of the six nation-wide recipients of an AMC-FUMEC Young Investigator Award (2004) for pursuing Summer research at an USA institution. He was also the recipient of the UANL Research Award (1999, 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2025), the most prestigious university-wide award for his research work, and a Young Investigator Award, granted by CONACYT to fund his research during 2000-2003. He was the supervising professor of the PhD thesis (by Citlali Olvera) that won both the 2024 Best Doctoral Thesis Award in Mexico (granted by the Mexican Society for Operatios Research) and the 2023 Albertis Award on Sustainable Mobility Research. He also supervised the BSc thesis (by Eduardo Ortiz) and the BSc thesis (by Eduardo Salalazar), winners of the 2023 and 2025 Best Undergraduate Thesis Award in Mexico, respectively (granted by the Mexican Society for Operatios Research), the MSc thesis that won the 2008 Best Thesis Award (by Saul Caballero), the MSc thesis that won the 2009 Best Thesis Award (by Juan Salazar), both at UANL, and the MSc thesis (by Humberto Flores) that won the 2005 Tecnos Award to the Best Master Thesis given by the state of Nuevo Leon Government. He has been a SEP-UANL Fellow since 1999, a university-wide distinction for excellence in teaching and research, and a PRODEP Fellow (2005-08, 2008-11, 2011-14, 2014-17, 2017-20, 2020-23, 2023-29), a distinction granted by the Secretary for Public Education under its Faculty Improvement Program. His current research is being funded by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) and by UANL's Scientific and Technological Research Support Program. His postdoctoral research was funded by the NSF and by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board under its Advance Research Program.

As a graduate student in UT-Austin, Dr. Ríos received several awards such as the University Continuing Fellowship Award (1993), the E.D. Farmer Fellowship Award (1994, 1995, and 1996), and the David Bruton Fellowship Award (1996). In addition, he was one of 20 recipients, chosen nation-wide among doctoral candidates in USA institutions, of a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U. of Arizona to attend the Tutorial and Workshop in Stochastic Programming, held in Tucson (1996). His graduate work won twice (1995, 1996) the Best Research Paper Award in the annual Student Research Conference that brings together the top students among all engineering schools at UT-Austin. His graduate studies were funded by CONACYT (1991-96), and by the U. of Texas (1996-97).

As a high-school student, Dr. Ríos won the 1983 Nuevo León state-wide Mathematics Contest (organized by the UANL and the Mexican Mathematical Society) that brings together the top high-school students in the state, a travel grant to attend the 1983 National Mathematics Conference, and a full scholarship to attend college. He graduated with a B.Sc. (1988) with honors and as the top ranked student with a Mathematics major at UANL.

Professional Service

Since 2002, Dr. Ríos has supervised 6 postdocs, 33 students (7 PhD, 22 MSc, 4 BSc) and is currently supervising 2 postdocs and 6 students (1 PhD, 1 MSc, 4 BSc) towards their thesis. He has supervised 1 foreign student and a number of undergraduate students on research projects within the (nation-wide) Mexican Academy of Sciences and UANL' Summer research programs. He was the co-founder of the Masters Program in Systems Engineering at UANL (1999), and served as the Academic Coordinator of the Masters Program in Systems Engineering (2002-2005), the Systems Engineering Systems Lab Administrator (2005-2008), the Systems Engineering Research Coordinator (2008-2011), and the Academic Coordinator of the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering (2011-2012). He was the President of Mexican Society of Operations Research (2013-16). In the past, he served as the Vice-President (2002-2004) of the Latin-Ibero-American Association on Operations Research (ALIO). Professor Ríos was the Chair of the the Joint ALIO/SMIO Conference on Operations Research (CLAIO Monterrey 2014). He served as the PC Co-Chair of the ALIO-INFORMS Joint International Meeting (ALIO-INFORMS Cancun 2019). He served as the PC Chair of the 1st Conference of the Mexican Operations Research Society, and was also the organizer or co-organizer of the 6th International Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO Houston 1998), and the 1st FIME Simposium on Operations Research and Systems (IO-FIME 2003). He has served as a member of the Program/Advisory Committee in the Spanish Meeting on Evolutionary Algorithms and Metaheuristics (JAEM Zaragoza 2007, JAEM Albacete 2015), the Spanish Conference on Metaheuristics, Evolutionary and Bioinspired Algorithms (MAEB Tenerife 2007, MAEB Malaga 2009, MAEB Valencia 2010, MAEB Albacete 2012, MAEB Madrid 2013, MAEB MBérida 2015, MAEB Salamanca 2016, MAEB Barcelona 2017, MAEB Granada 2018, MAEB Malaga 2020, MAEB Donostia 2025), the 7th INFORMS Computing Society Conference (ICS Cancún 2000), the Latin-Iberian-American Conferences on Operations Research and Systems (CLAIO México City 2000, CLAIO Concepción 2002, CLAIO Havana 2004, CLAIO Montevideo 2006, CLAIO Buenos Aires 2010, CLAIO Rio do Janeiro 2012, CLAIO Santiago 2016 CLAIO Lima 2018), the Latin-American Summer School on Operations Research (ELAVIO Montevideo 2004, ELAVIO Rio de Janeiro 2007, ELAVIO Lima 2008, ELAVIO El Fuerte 2009, ELAVIO Areia 2014, ELAVIO Quito 2015, ELAVIO Colombia 2016), the Mexican International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (MICAI Mexico 2002, MICAI Mexico 2004, MICAI Monterrey 2005, MICAI Ensenada 2017), the Annual Conference of the Mexican Operations Research Society (CSMIO Zapopan 2012, CSMIO Saltillo 2018), the Mexican International Conference on Computer Science (ENC Colima 2004, ENC Puebla 2005), the International Conference on Computational Logistics (ICCL Copenhagen 2013, ICCL 2014), the Mexican International Conference on Systems Engineering (SIIS Cozumel 2006), the VI International Conference on Operational Research for Development (ICORD Fortaleza 2007), the Meeting of the Iberian-American Network on Multicriteria Decision and Evaluation (REDM Culiacán 2007, REDM Zapopan 2009), the Workshop on Intelligent Metaheuristics for Logistics Planning (CAEPIA Sevilla 2009), the III Latin-Ibero-American Workshop on Operations Research (TLAIO Acapulco 2009), the Iberian-American Meeting on Operations Research and Management Science (IOCA Monterrey 2010, IOCA Santa Cruz 2013), International Workshop on Hybrid Algorithms for solving Realistic Routing, Scheduling and Reliability/Availability Problems (HAROSA Barcelona 2012), the 15th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications, and Practice (IJIE Mexico City 2010). the Panamerican Conference on Transit Engineering, Transportation, and Logistics (PANAM Mexico City 2016, PANAM Lima 2020), the 1st Inter-American Conference on Industrial Engineering (CIII Monterrey 2016), the International Federation of Operational Research Societies' Conference (IFORS Quebec City 2017, IFORS Seoul 2020, IFORS Santiago 2023), the OPTIMA Conference (OPTIMA Coquimbo 2025, OPTIMA Viña del Mar 2017, OPTIMA Santa Cruz 2019), the Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC Cartagena de Indias 2019, MIC Ortigia-Syracuse 2022, MIC Lorient 2024, MIC Naples 2026), the Colombian Conference on Operationasl Research Bucaramanga 2019, the International Conference on Production Research (ICRP Bahía Blanca 2020), the Joint ALIO/EURO International Conference on Applied Combinatorial Optimization (ICACO Viña del Mar 2021), the International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES Rome 2024), the International Workshop on Big Optimization (WBO Catania 2025), the Conference of the Spanish Association of Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA Jaén 2026) and the International Conference on Computation and Telecommunications (I COMTEL Lima 2009,. II COMTEL Lima 2010, III COMTEL Lima 2011). He has served as a cluster and session chair in several society meeting, as well. Dr. Ríos has also refereed papers for Annals of Operations Research, Applied Energy, Applied Soft Computing, Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering Computers & Operations Research, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Discrete Optimization, Energy, EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, European Journal of Operational Research, Healthcare Analytics, IIE Transactions, INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS Transactions on Education, Interfaces, International Journal of Operations and Quantitative Management, International Journal of Production Research, International Transactions in Operational Research, Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Science, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Journal of Heuristics, Journal of Scheduling, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Mathematical Programming Computation, Memetic Computing, Naval Research Logistics, Networks, Omega, Optimization and Engineering, Service Science, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, and The Journal of Supercomputing, and has reviewed chapters for many books and papers for several professional meetings. He is a member of CONACYT Registry of Certified Reviewers (2002- ), which is a nation-wide certification granted by the Mexican National System for Scientific and Technological Evaluation to evaluate research project proposals, certification of graduate programs, and fellowshiop applications for postdocs, sabbaticals, among others. He has served as a project evaluation commitee member for the UANL-PAICyT (2002-03, 2004-05, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2015-16) and PRODEP Profile (2020, 2022, 2025). He has also acted as a reviewer for several contests such as the INFORMS ENRE Student Paper Award (2023), the Student Tecnos Award for best BSc thesis (1999) and the UANL Research Award (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). He has also reviewed research projects for the Chilean CONICYT-FONDECYT program (2017).

Dr. Ríos is a founding member of the Mexican Operations Research Society (SMIO), where he served serving as President (2014-16). He is currently a member of SMIO, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO), EURO Chapter on Combinatorial Optimization (ECCO), EURO Chapter on Metaheuristics (EU/ME), EURO Working Group on Locational Analysis (EWGLA), EURO Working Group on OR in Agriculture and Forest Management (ORAFM), EURO Working Group on Stochastic Programming (EWGSP), EURO Working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization (VeRoLog), Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), INFORMS Computing Society, INFORMS Energy, Natural Resources and Environment Section, INFORMS Optimization Society, INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Section, INFORMS Location Analysis Section, Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Mathematical Programming Society, Omega Rho International Honor Society, Pipeline Simulation Interest Group, The Regional Science Association International (RSAI), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), SIAM Activity Group on Optimization, Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA), and Spanish Operations Research Society (SEIO). He is a former member of the American Mathematical Society, Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, International Society for Computational Engineering and Sciences, the Mathematical Association of America, the Mexican Institute for Operations Research and Systems, and Sociedad Matemática Mexicana.

Professor Ríos is the founder and owner (2003-present) of iomex-l, a mailing list discussing research, development, and technology transfer issues on operations research in Mexico; He was the owner (2003-2022) of sched-l, the world-wide mailing list on machine scheduling research. He was the founder and owner (2000-2023) of pisis-l, the mailing list for faculty students of the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering at UANL. He also served as the UT-Austin Chapter President of the Omega Rho Honor Society of INFORMS.

Personal

On a more personal note, Dr. Ríos has been very happily married to Ofelia Rodríguez since August 1992, and made his debut as a dad on March 1996 when the Austinite-disguised-as-a-Mexican boy Vandari Pavel was born. A beautiful Houstonian girl, Aleida Shaní, born in February 1999, and a Catalonian-made little baby boy, Biali Joan, born in January 2007, complete his family for now. Those romantic sunsets in the Mediterranean took their toll.