Alberto Santini is an Associate Professor of Operational Research (OR) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research focuses on exact methods for large-scale combinatorial optimization problems, a sub-field of optimization, which, in turn, is one of the main branches of operational research concerned with finding the optimal solution to a mathematical problem from a (usually very large) discrete set of candidates.

Within combinatorial optimization, Professor Santini has worked on problems arising in various real-life settings, from logistics to network design, bioinformatics, and vertical farming. He is motivated by the exciting new applications of OR and is enthusiastic about bringing its tools closer to other disciplines with emerging optimization problems. Using exact or heuristic methods, his work strives to produce efficient algorithms that enable prescriptive decision-making and unlock actionable managerial insights. He has also investigated problems on graphs, challenges in bioinformatics, and the rigorous methodological properties of meta-heuristics.

He has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Bologna, RWTH Aachen University, RWTH Business School, UPF, BSM, and BSE.