Written by Alysson Costa ×

Image source: ABC News

Alison Harcourt's Story

When I was in the first year of my PhD, my supervisor asked me who the author of the seminal 1960 paper that proposed the branch and bound method in integer programming was. I was ashamed I didn't know, but he was quick to understand: "Nobody knows it. I've asked this question many times to a lot of senior people in Optimisation, and they never remember. They are two women: one was my supervisor 'Ailsa Land' from the London School of Economics. The other had your name: 'Alison' Doig. All I know is that she changed her name after publishing that paper with Ailsa. I once heard she went back to Australia to raise sheep".

Although I knew he was joking about the sheep part of the story, I never forgot their names. Ailsa and Alison. One was my academic "’grandma’, and the other was this mysterious lady that apparently had vanished from the academic world after publishing such an influential paper. This was 2002. After that, I finished my PhD and went back to Brazil to teach Optimisation at the University of São Paulo. Every time I would get to the point of talking about the branch‐and‐bound method I would remember that story I heard in 2002 and repeat the dialogue: "who knows the authors of the branch‐and‐bound paper? No one? They are two women..."

After seven years at São Paulo, I moved to Melbourne, also to teach Optimisation. When I got to branch‐and bound, I told the story again and emphasised that Alison was Australian. This time, things went differently. A student raised her hand and said: "we have a tutor here whose name is Alison and who I think has changed her name". I thought it was unlikely but, to my surprise, there she was, now Alison Harcourt. She had also changed topics, moving away from optimisation and now making significant contributions to society with the use of statistics.

When I was invited to organise AMSI Optimise, my first thought was to ask Alison Harcourt to take part. People should hear her story, and she should have the recognition she deserves. Fortunately, she accepted and things took a nice turn: her story was shown in an ABC 7:30 segment. Then came the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the University of Melbourne and the nomination as ‘Victorian Senior Australian of the Year’. Hopefully, next January we will see her declared ‘Senior Australian of the Year’.

As a last note, I made sure to tell my supervisor (and everyone else that I have met since then) that Dr Harcourt was not raising sheep, but still doing science and helping build the new generations of statisticians and mathematicians, as she has done for the past six or seven decades.

You can also hear more about Alison’s story on the ACEMS podcast The Random Sample

Written by Dr Alysson Costa

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AMSI Optimise

In 2018 ACEMS co-sponsored AMSI Optimise. AMSI Optimise is an annual event aimed at bringing together academics, students and practitioners in Optimisation. The meeting, running for its second year, is structured around several different activities, designed to meet the diverse needs of the audience. In 2018, the meeting hosted international and national plenary speakers, contributed talks, short practice courses, panel discussions and a poster session, on top of the social and networking activities.

Alysson Costa and Geoff Prince

The themes of AMSI Optimise 2018 were optimisation under risk and humanitarian applications of optimisation. The invited international speakers were selected with these topics in mind. Professor Terry Rockafeller (University of Washington) presented two talks focusing on optimisation under uncertainty, while Associate Professor Marie‐Ève Rancourt (HEC Montréal) gave two lectures on her work on logistics problems related to relief operations, food security and healthcare delivery in developing countries. Associate Professor Maria Antònia Carravilla (University of Porto) presented a review of industry/academia collaboration between her research group and several industries in both the private and public sector.

AMSI Optimise hosted speakers from both academia and industry, from organisations such as the Country Fire Association, Victoria Police Force, Reserve Bank of Australia, Defence Science and Technology Group, Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety, among others. Companies such as Opturion and Biarri Mathematics were also present and invited speakers from both organisations spoke to the contingent. These talks were complemented by the ‘Workshop’ part of the conference, where researchers from various universities across Australia presented their current investigations.

Two short practice courses on integer programming and influence charts and a case study from the health industry were also on the program. This was complemented by two panel discussions. The first dealt with interactions between academics and practitioners in the humanitarian sector while the second discussed the participation of women in optimisation.

ACEMS Chief Investigator Kate Smith‐Miles chaired the Women in Optimisation panel, with two female international speakers, as well as Alison Harcourt from the University of Melbourne.

ACEMS' Peter Taylor and Kate Smith-Miles

The Women in Optimisation panel was very popular among the audience and motivated ABC to do a 7:30 segment on Alison Harcourt. While Alison has made seminal contributions in optimisation and statistics, she was mostly unknown (even among some of her colleagues) despite her working as a tutor in statistics at The University of Melbourne and Monash University for several decades. Alison gave up her research career after being forced to leave her position as Senior Lecturer when she became a mother.

Since Alison appeared on the Women in Optimisation panel and in the subsequent 7:30 feature, recognition for Alison's life achievements has finally started to appear. She was offered an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the University of Melbourne and was also declared ‘Victorian Senior Australian of the Year’. She is now in the running for Senior Australian of the Year.

AMSI 2018 organiser Alysson Costa writes about his discovery of Alison Harcourt at the University of Melbourne in the pop out story above

Biarri Co-founder Joe Forbes speaks at AMSI Optimise 2018