Key details
Dr Alan Soper
Senior Lecturer
Dr Alan Soper’s research area is combinatorial optimisation. He has published in the area of scheduling theory and most recently on the power of pre-emption on uniform and unrelated parallel machines and on scheduling under combined time-changing start-time and position-dependent effects. Another area of interest has been scheduling with transportation.
Dr Soper has presented at a number of conferences, including ECCO, EURO and INFORMS. His work has also been presented at seminars at other UK universities.
Alan Soper graduated in theoretical physics in 1978 and initially did research on constructing classical solutions to Yang Mills gauge field theory, which represent magnetically charged, elementary particles. He worked in the computer industry for the Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of HP) from 1984-88 and has since done research on algorithms allied to computation. The main applications areas have been graph partitioning and drawing, with most theoretical.
Qualifications
PhD 1982 Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge
MSc Foundations of Advanced Information Technology 1989 Imperial College London
Responsibilities within the university
Course leader 2016/17
Dynamical Systems and Chaos
Linear Algebra and Applications
Modelling and Analysis of Financial Instruments
Research / Scholarly interests
Scheduling Algorithms,
Optimisation, Financial Mathematics
Recent publications
Article
Soper, Alan and , Strusevich, Vitaly (2022), Preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling on two unrelated parallel machines. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.. In: , , , . John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Journal of Scheduling, 2022 ISSN: 1094-6136 (Print), 1099-1425 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-022-00753-7).
Soper, Alan J. and , Strusevich, Vitaly (2019), Refined conditions for V-shaped optimal sequencing on a single machine to minimize total completion time under combined effects. Springer Verlag. In: , , , . Springer Verlag, Journal of Scheduling, 23 (6) . pp. 665-680 ISSN: 1094-6136 (Print), 1099-1425 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-019-00628-4).
Soper, Alan J. and , Strusevich, Vitaly A. (2018), Parametric analysis of the quality of single preemption schedules on three uniform parallel machines. Springer US. In: , , , . Springer US, Annals of Operations Research, 298 (1-2) . pp. 469-495 ISSN: 0254-5330 (Print), 1572-9338 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-2952-6).
Soper, Alan J. and , Strusevich, Vitaly A. (2018), Schedules with a single preemption on uniform parallel machines. Elsevier Science B.V.. In: , , , . Elsevier Science B.V., Discrete Applied Mathematics ISSN: 0166-218X (Print), (doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2018.03.007).
Epstein, Leah , Levin, Asif, Soper, Alan, Strusevich, Vitaly (2017), Power of preemption for minimizing total completion time for uniform parallel machines. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In: , , , . Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 31 (1) . pp. 101-123 ISSN: 0895-4801 (Print), 1095-7146 (Online) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1137/16M1066610).