2025 Atlanta

Sunday, October 26

RAS Student Paper Competition
Co-Chairs: Nikola Markovic, Marcella Samà, Pengling Wang

Optimal routing and scheduling in railway marshalling station yards: A novel model and a branch-and-cut Benders decomposition algorithm

Jianghai Xiang, Southwest Jiaotong University

A Line Planning Approach with Passenger Assignment Considering Cross-Line Operations and Flexible Train Composition for a Metro Network

Zhikai Wang, Beijing Jiaotong University

A comparison of macroscopic, mesoscopic and microscopic railway infrastructure modeling for  timetable robustness optimization

Inneke Van Hoeck, KU Leuven 

Monday, October 27

RAS Problem Solving Competition
Chairs: Marty Schlenker

"Data Processing and Model Benchmarking for Predictive Maintenance in Railways: A Modular Pipeline Approach"

Xristopher Aliferis, Farzan Heidari, Tangjian Wei, Western University

"A Bi-level Classifier for Wheel Failure Detection"

Daniele Giovanni Gioia (German Aerospace Center), Alberto Gennaro (University of California, Berkeley), Jacopo Bonari, German Aerospace Center, Edoardo Fadda Politecnico di Torino)

"Predictive Maintenance for Railway Wheelsets using Machine Learning"

Addula Saiprabhav Reddy, Krishan Kumar, Faiz Hamid (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur)


Optimizing Passenger and Freight Rail with Energy and Automation Perspectives 
Chair: Xuesong (Simon) Zhou 

Beyond the Horizon: Valuing Flexibility in Urban Rail Extension Decisions under Political Cycles and Present Bias

Qianwen (Vivian) Guo, Florida State University

Implementation and Analysis of Long-Haul Rail and Intermodal Operations using POLARIS Transportation Framework

Hyunseop Uhm, Argonne National Laboratory

Intermodal Freight Optimization through Integrated Railway, Waterway, and Highway Network Modeling

Xuesong Zhou, ITE ASU

Train Rescheduling with Considering the Breakdown of the Power Supply System in Metro

Shuai Su, Beijing Jiaotong University


Operations Research and Analytics at Norfolk Southern
Chair: Yudi Pranoto 

Synchronize Train Schedules for Freight Rail

Peiheng Li, Norfolk Southern

OR application at NS Operations Center

Zahed Shahmoradi, Norfolk Southern 

OR Applications in Intermodal Operations

Gita Ayu, Norfolk Southern

Operating Plan Optimization

Gunnar Feldmann, Norfolk Southern

Monday, October 27


Emerging Technologies for Railway Transportation 
Chair: Clark Cheng

Assessing the capacity of railway network control points with Monte Carlo Simulation

Jiaxi Zhao, DB E.C.O. North America

An Outer-Inner Approximation Method for the Generic Choice-based Optimization Problem

Haoye Chen, KTH Royal Institute of Technology 

OneBOM: Accelerating Railcar Quoting and Improving Supply Chain Accuracy with AI and Analytics

Garrett Mucha, Trinity Industries, Inc.

Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning and Traditional Methods in Predicting Railroad Operational Metrics

Muhannad Ramahi,  TTX Company

Dynamic Routing for Intermodal Container Transportation

Qianqian Tong, University of Texas at Austin

Round Table: Disruption Management 
Chair: Marc Meketon

Disruption Management at UPS

Robert Santilli, UPS

Disruption Management at Delta Airlines

Ruhollah Heydari, Delta Air Lines

Disruption Management at Norfolk Southern

Yannik Thomas, Norfolk Southern

Tuesday, October 28

Transportation Network Optimization 

Chair: Krishna Jha 

Train Movement Optimization

Krishna Jha, Optym 

Rail-Centric Multi-Objective Network Optimization for Sustainable Logistics of Mineral Tailings in Construction Supply Chains

Claudio Cunha, University of Sao Paulo

Optimizing Maintenance Intervals Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Masood Kang, TTX Company 

A backtracking-based heuristic for train to fuel pad assignments

Ashutosh Shukla, BNSF Railway


AI and OR Applications in Freight Railroad 

Co-Chairs: Nikola Besinovic, Daniel Haalboom

Optimizing Railroad Flat Yard Switching with Reward-Driven Integer Programming: A Sequential Decision Framework Using Branch-and-Bound and Remember Algorithm

Peiran Han, Beijing Jiaotong University

Optimize data-driven and time-varying predictive maintenance in railway networks

Yili Tang,  University of Western Ontario

Railcar Shunting Optimization via an Adaptive Railcar Grouping Dynamic Programming Heuristic

Ruonan Zhao, Texas A&M University

Strategic Planning of Classification Yard Operations under Infrastructure and Service Constraints 

Daniel Haalboom,Technical University of Dresden