糖心原创

Remembering our dear colleague and friend Professor Sanja Petrovic

We are deeply saddened to share the news that our colleague and friend, Professor Sanja Petrovic, passed away unexpectedly last week.

Sanja was Professor of Operational Research at Nottingham University Business School and one of the leading figures in her field. She was President of the Operational Research Society, having previously served two terms as its Vice-President. She also chaired the Committee of Professors of Operational Research in the UK, and since 2006 had co-ordinated the EURO Working Group on Automated Timetabling.

Sanja was an internationally recognised expert in models, heuristics and algorithms for real-world optimisation and scheduling problems. Her work spanned patient scheduling, radiotherapy planning, staff rostering, production scheduling and university timetabling.

Her research reflected a scholarly curiosity that saw operational research questions in almost any real-world problem. Sanja’s work is widely cited, and she was included in the Stanford University Top 2% Scientists ranking in 2023. Her collaboration with Nottingham University Hospitals on radiotherapy treatment scheduling showed how operational research can improve patient care. She led four EPSRC-funded projects and contributed to many more. Most recently she brought the question of employee well-being into personnel scheduling, drawing on evidence from occupational medicine to design rosters that protect staff well-being without sacrificing performance.

Colleagues, students and alumni across the Business School, the University and the wider operational research community will greatly miss her as a wonderful, supportive and inspiring colleague. Her legacy lives on in her scholarship, in the students she taught and supervised, and in the memory of the many researchers she worked with in Nottingham and around the world.