MATHEMATICAL MODELS – Volume I

Jerzy A. Filar, is a broadly trained applied mathematician with research interests spanning both theoretical and applied topics in operations research, optimization, game theory, applied probability, and environmental modeling. After sixteen years of academic career in the United States, which included appointments at the University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, he returned to Australia in 1992 where he holds the Foundation Chair of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of South Australia. He has co-authored (with K. Vrieze) a research level text book Competitive Markov Decision Processes (Springer, 1996). He also authored or co-authored approximately 70 refereed research papers which appeared in a wide spectrum of international journals ranging from theoretical mathematics journals such as Proceedings of the American Mathematics Society, through most of the mainstream optimization/OR journals, to very applied journals such as Applied Mathematical Modelling, Socio-Economic Planning, and Energy Economics.He has worked on applications of mathematical modeling in a number of different contexts. These included the issues of error propagation in integrated models of enhanced  greenhouse effect, the issues of efficient scheduling of inspections, optimization of recovery from disruptions at airports, the use of data in litigation, and the problems associated with aggregation of various measures of performance. Some of these research projects were sponsored by government agencies and research institutes such as the US EPA, the World Resources Institute, and the Sir Keith and Sir Ross Smith Foundation in South Australia. He is editor-in-chief of Environmental Modeling and Assessment and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Mathematical Methods of Operations Research (Zeitschrift fur OR) and International Game Theory Reviews. He has held short-term posts as Visiting Professor at the Universities of Maastricht, Toulouse, Ulm, the Technical University of Vienna and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1994 he founded CIAM (the Center for Industrial and Applicable Mathematics) at the University of South Australia. During his tenure as the director (which ended in 1998) this center has grown into one of the leading centers of its type in Australia and has also established an international profile.

Jacek B Krawczyk was born in Poland, and lives in Johnsonville, Wellington, New Zealand. He got his Ph.D. in applied science awarded by the Warsaw University of Technology (WUT); and M.Sc.in control theory and computer science (ibid.).