Professor Said Salhi

Said Salhi is an Emeritus Professor in Operational Research/Management Science at Kent Business School where he was a professor for 16 years until January 2021. Said is currently a joint Editor in Chief for the Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS).  

He was Head of the Management Science Group for over 8 years (2008 - May 2017) and designed the MSc in Logistics & Supply Chain Management. Said was the Director for the Centre for Logistics and Heuristic Optimisation (CLHO), which he founded in 2008. 

Prior to his appointment at Kent in 2005, Said was at the University of Birmingham in the School of Mathematics for 15 years, where in the later years he acted as Head of Management in the Mathematics Group. He obtained his BSc in Mathematics at Algiers's University, MSc and PhD in Operational Research at Southampton (Institute of Mathematics) and Lancaster (School of Management).

Professor Salhi has authored the book 'Heuristic Search: The Emerging Science of Problem Solving' by Palgrave (2017), and edited the ‘The Palgrave Handbook of Operations Research’ to be published in 2022. Said also edited 10 special journal issues and chaired the European Working Group in Location Analysis in 1996, the International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimisation (CO2016) in September 2016 at Kent. He also co-chaired the British annual Operational Research Conference (OR61) (3rd-5th September 2019).

Said has published over 120 papers in academic journals (excluding edited proceedings and book chapters). His H-index is 36 from Scopus and 51 from Google Scholar. His number of citations is over 4800 in Scopus and in Google Scholar this number is over 9700. Said is among the top 2% Ranking of Scientists in the world. 

Heuristic Optimisation with a focus on routing and location including green aspects of logistic research.

Professor Salhi's research interests include: 

• Heuristic optimisation (design of constructive and metaheuristics including evolutionary algorithms) and their implementation in practice (logistics, management, finance, engineering, environment, medicine).
• Hybridisation search including the integration of heuristic and exact methods
• Distribution management (vehicle routing, location, transportation, their variants)
• Real-time routing and scheduling
• Green logistics including electrical and environmental routing
• Robust optimisation 

Said's recent grants as Principal Investigator is for £175k for a 30-month KTP with Priority Freight (September 2015-March 2018), and £185k as Lead Researcher for a 30 months KTP with Parker Steel (November 2016 - May 2019). 

Said has a rich and long experience in PhD supervision, and as a first supervisor, he got 25 PhD students successfully completed coming from various diverse backgrounds.  One of his recent PhD students was the winner of the 2017 UK ORS Doctorat Award.

Current Supervisees

• Jiaqi Yin: Maintenance Policies for a System with Multiple Deterioration Processes
• Rukiye Kaya: Investigation into Contingency Logistics

Past Supervisees

• Norfaieqah Ahmad (2018): The multi-objective routing with an emphasis on economic and environmental factors (Malaysian Government, 1st supervisor, Sept 2013
• Jeeu Fong Sze (2017): An Investigation into a Class of Real-time Routing Problems An Investigation into a Class of Real-time Routing Problems - The winner of the 2017 UK ORS Doctorat Award
• Becky Callaghan (2017): An Investigation into Exact Methods for the Continuous P-Centre Problem
• Naveed Wassan: Meta-Heuristics for the Multiple Trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls
• Abdalla Elshaikh (2014): P-Center Location Problem in the Continuous Space (Lybian Government, 1st supervisor, submitted)
• Ifelere Baale (2014): Portfolio Optimisation (Private, 1st supervisor)
• Chandra Ade Irawan (2014): Aggregation Technique in a Class of Location Problems (Indonesian Government, 1st supervisor)
• Nurul Huda Mohamed (2012): Hybridisation of Heuristics and Exact Methods for Split delivery Vehicle Routing Problem [Malaysian Government] (2nd supervisor: Dr Gabor Nagy)
• Abdullah Alharbi (2010): Combining Heuristic and Exact Approach for the Vertex P-Centre Problem and Other Related Location Problems (2nd supervisor: Dr Paola Scaparra)
• Shaikh Arifusalam (2010): The Maximum capture problem: Models solution Approaches
• Mutaz Hajarat (2010): Heuristics for the fleet size and mix vehicle routing  problem with backhauls (with Dr Niaz Wassan)
• Martino Luis (2008): Metaheuritics for the Capacitated Multi-source Weber Problem [Indonesian Government] with Dr Gabor Nagy
• Arif Imran (2008): An Adaptation of Meta-Heuristics for the Single and the Multiple Depots Heterogenous Fleet Routing Problems [Indonesian Government] 
• A. Shuib (2007): The Multi Level and Threshold-Based Heuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows [Malaysian Government]
• Claudia Reyles-Montrel (2005): Integrating time-tabling and room-allocation: An application to the case of Birmingham University; [Private] (M.Phil)
• Robert Smithie (09/2000-09/2004): Embedding Genetic Algorithms with Artificial Neural Network: Application to Colorectal Cancer Recurrence; [EPSRC] with Nat Queen.
• Abdelrahman Al-Kedhairi (05/2000-08/2004): Integrating exact methods and variable neighbourhood search for the p-centre problem [Saudi Government].
• Zaitul Marlizawati (09/2000-07/2004): The Capacitated Continuous Location-Allocation Problem using constructive and tabu search; [Malaysian Government].
• Samuel K Amponsah (01/2000-09/2003): The investigation of a class of capacitated arc routing: The collection of Garbage in developing countries; [Government of Ghana].
• Robert H Currie (1999-2002)
• M. M. Mwembeshi (1999-2003)
• T.Lee (1999)
• Anne C Wade (1998-2002)
• Danil Gamal (1997-2001)
• Russel Petch (1997-2001)
• Steve Welch (1994-1999)
• Charlie James (1995-1999)
• Samresh Khan (1997)
• Mark Agar (1994-1997)
• Gabor Nagy (1993-1996)
• Paul Thomas (1993-1996)
• Craig Robertson (1992)

• Editor in Chief of the British Journal of the Operational Society (JORS), since January 2020.
• Fellow of the OR Society, the IMA and CILT.
• Member of COPIOR, Informs, EWGLA and ISOLDE.
• Executive member of the NATCOR
• Associate Editor of the IMA Journal of Management Mathematics (since 2004) and sits on several other editorial boards.