Prof. dr Arne K. Strauss
Professor for Demand Management & Sustainable Transport
WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany
"Interface of demand management and transport operations"
Dr. Arne K. Strauss is a Professor of Demand Management and Sustainable Transport at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany), where he also serves as Academic Director of the MSc Business Analytics programme. Previously, he held the position of Associate Professor of Operational Research at Warwick Business School and was a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute in London. He served as Academic Director of the MSc Business Analytics programme at Warwick Business School and as an external examiner for master’s programmes at Imperial College London, the University of Southampton, and Manchester Metropolitan University. Since 2026, he has been serving as a coordinator on the board of the “Pricing & Revenue Management” working group within the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO). He has also been a member of several international advisory bodies in the field of mathematical sciences.
Prof. dr Sofiane Oussedik
Technical Leader, Data Science and AI Tools & Assistants – EMEA
IBM, France
"Generative AI and Operational Research"
Dr. Sofiane Oussedik obtained his PhD in Operational Research from École Polytechnique in Paris, France. He began his career at ILOG, an international software company later acquired by IBM. He currently holds the position of Technical Leader for Data Science and AI Tools & Assistants at IBM in Toulouse, France, where he leads a sales team delivering optimization solutions to clients across Europe—working with them from early stages through to the implementation of decision-support systems. He has been actively involved for many years in the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO), first as a member and subsequently as Chair (current position) of the EURO Practitioners Working Group, later renamed the EURO Practitioners Forum. From 2014 to 2020, he was responsible for developing the Big Data and Analytics course at the engineering school CentraleSupélec – Université Paris-Saclay, France.