Program Overview

Doctoral Study in Operations Research

Introduction

The University of Auckland offers a doctoral program in Operations Research, providing students with the opportunity to pursue high-calibre research in a supportive and expert environment.

Why Study with Us?

• The highest-ranked engineering faculty in New Zealand and 107th in the world (QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2025)
• Opportunities to be supervised by experts in the field, including those affiliated with the Operations Research and Computational Analytics (ORCA) research group and the Electric Power Optimization Centre
• Connections to industry and other research organisations, such as the Operations Research Society of New Zealand
• Access to Postgraduate Research Student Support (PReSS) funding for research expenses

Research Opportunities

Pursuing a PhD at the University gives students access to a high-calibre research community, with opportunities to publish papers, attend international conferences, and develop their network in academia and industry. Operations Research (OR) is the science of utilising advanced mathematical theory and computational methods to help make better decisions, and is one of the foundations of artificial intelligence.

Application Areas

• Electricity pricing
• Healthcare Delivery
• Transport

Research Areas

• Multi-objective Optimisation
• Integer Programming
• Stochastic Programming
• Machine Learning
• Data Science
• Time Series Analysis

Our People

The Operations Research and Computational Analytics (ORCA) group includes active researchers such as Dr Mike OSullivan and Associate Professor Cameron Walker, along with other global experts in areas including electricity pricing, healthcare delivery, rostering/scheduling, and machine learning.

Past Research Topics

• Integrated Modelling of Patient Pathways and Staff Workflows
• Conceptual Modelling Framework for Simulation of Construction Systems
• Advanced Optimisation for General Medicine Rostering
• Predicting Cloud Infrastructure Utilisation Rostering
• Decision Modelling in Systems with State-Dependent Feature Space Dimensionality
• Automated Time Series Feature Extraction for Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Scholarships and Awards

There are several scholarships available for PhD students in Operations Research, including the University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships.

Doctoral Programmes

• Doctor of Philosophy

Related Information

For more details about the program, including how to apply and eligibility criteria, please refer to the university's official resources.