Gilbert Laporte awarded prestigious Killam Prize

Professor Gilbert Laporte has won one of the Canada Council Killam Prizes for 2021. The Killam Prize recognises and celebrates the most inspiring scholars in Canada. Gilbert was recognised for his work and thought leadership in the field of engineering. A prize was also awarded to an academic in each of the fields of humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and health sciences.

Gilbert's research helped improve the lives of people in Canada in many different ways. He developed solutions for problems including

• the routing and scheduling of delivery vehicles,
  
• the promotion of green transportation practices,
  
• the adoption of electric vehicles for goods transportation,
  
• the transportation of people with disabilities,
  
• the creation of electoral maps,
  
• the stationing of ambulance fleets,
  
• the construction of work schedules,
  
• the distribution of community health services.
  

Gilbert joined the School of Management in 2020 from HEC Montréal, where he was a professor of operational research and the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Distribution Management. His career in academia spans four decades, and he is globally recognised for his work developing mathematical tools to aid decision-making for a range of optimisation problems.

He is a member of the Information, Decisions and Operations division and the Centre for Smart Warehousing and Logistics Systems, where he'll continue to advance understanding in the areas of combinatorial optimisation, transportation, and operational research.