GOR Bachelor Award Goes to Linus Schöb
Last year, the annual prize awarded by the German Operations Research Society (Gesellschaft für Operations Research e. V., GOR) for outstanding academic achievements went to Lukas Schöb at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The award was presented to him on December 15, 2025, by FZI Executive Director Prof. Dr. Stefan Nickel and FZI team members and supervisors Anna Hess and Dominik Stampa.
Linus Schöb was a research assistant at the FZI and now works as a Junior Data Scientist at Nesto Software GmbH. In his bachelor’s thesis, supervised at the FZI, he addressed a practical issue from everyday hospital life: How can empty transport containers used for shipping medical goods be brought to the right place at the right time with the help of autonomous transport robots?
Several factors must be taken into account simultaneously at various transfer points, such as limited space, future container requirements, and planned deliveries. Similar issues are already familiar from maritime shipping, for example, when planning empty containers between ports. However, conditions in hospitals are completely different: Decisions must be made more quickly and time frames are shorter.
To this end, Linus Schöb developed a flow-based POST algorithm (Priority-Oriented Space-Time Solver) that meets the requirements of an online planning problem. He also used a CIP (Constraint Integer Programming) model that he had further developed. He tested his approach with real transport data from the University Medical Center Freiburg and achieved convincing results in terms of runtime and solution quality.
About the GOR Bachelor Award
With the GOR Bachelor Award, the German Operations Research Society annually honors outstanding bachelor’s degree graduates whose work has a special connection to operations research. The award aims to highlight excellent academic achievements, promote young scientists, and further strengthen the field at universities.