For many years, we have been selecting the best doctoral dissertation. Last year, Matthias Soppert from the University of the Armed Forces in Munich (Universität der Bundeswehr) won this prestigious award. Matthias currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at his Alma Mater and combines this position with frequent extended research stays, for example, to Portugal and Canada.
TSL: What do you think is the best thing about transportation science?
Matthias: The discipline of operations research offers plenty of challenging problems, and I believe that the joy of cracking these tough nuts is one of the main drivers for researchers in this field. However, not all the problems addressed are of equal importance. Transportation science finds solutions to extremely important problems that not only affect our daily lives but also contribute to society’s biggest challenges, such as combating climate change by making transportation and logistics more efficient. This is why, in my view, the best thing about transportation science is that it is both very important for society and enjoyable for us researchers.
What would you recommend to a student considering a PhD in transportation science or a current early-stage PhD student?
Matthias: Pursuing a PhD is an exciting journey, but it can sometimes be a bit bumpy and discouraging. This is certainly also true for pursuing a PhD in transportation science. I assume that if you are considering a PhD or are already in an early stage of it, learning is most likely very rewarding for you. If you can manage to view the bumpy parts of the journey with their setbacks as events from which you learn and improve, there really isn’t much which can go wrong with your PhD. Enjoy the journey!
TSL: Now that you won the TSL Dissertation Award, which next steps can we expect from you?
Matthias: First of all, I am very grateful for being awarded the TSL Dissertation Award! Knowing the prestige of the award, the tough competition, but also the hard work that I’ve put into my dissertation, receiving this award is a great honor and is very rewarding.
I have decided to stay in academia and am currently working as a postdoc at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. This year is an exciting one, because I have intensified my international research collaborations. I have recently been on a two-month research stay at the University of Porto and at the end of this year, I’ll visit the Polytechnique Montréal, which will also give me the opportunity to exchange with some of the outstanding CIRRELT scholars. While the research project in Porto built on my work in shared mobility, the project in Montreal addresses the intersection of optimization, machine learning, and explainability. I am optimistic that these and my other ongoing research projects have the potential to result in publications with insightful findings, increasing my chances of staying in academia in the long term.
TSL: What made you apply for the TSL Dissertation award? What can you recommend to people applying this year?
Matthias: I am very fortunate that Claudius Steinhardt has supported and mentored me since the beginning of my PhD. Thanks to him, I have learned a lot, not only regarding the technical aspects of our discipline but also regarding many other aspects which are required to be successful in academia. It was also he who suggested that I apply for the TSL Dissertation Award, and I followed his advice. At the end of the PhD, it’s still not easy to assess the quality of your dissertation in comparison, but if an experienced scholar is convinced that your work contains relevant contributions to the field, I recommend you give it a try and apply for the TSL Dissertation Award. My second recommendation is to ask for feedback on the application. As for writing papers, the first version of your first paper was probably not the one submitted, and you will certainly get several ideas on how to improve the application.
Thanks, Matthias for this conversation! I can only stress the importance of learning and enjoying the journey throughout a PhD. If you have recently graduated, why not consider applying yourself?