Prof. em. Dr. Hans-Jakob Lüthi

Hans-Jakob Lüthi joined the faculty of the ETH as full Professor of Operations Research in August 1993, became the director of the Institute for Operations Research and held this position until his retirement on January 31, 2012.

Hans-Jakob Lüthi, born on October 14, 1946, studied mathematics at the ETH Zurich. After obtaining his degree he was awarded a grant for postgraduate studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. There he began to work on his doctoral degree under the supervision of Prof. Carl Lemke in the area of nonlinear complementarity theory; he obtained his Ph.D from the ETH in 1973. His dissertation was awarded the silver medal of the ETH.

In 1976 he received a visiting professorship at the Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Rio de Janeiro where he finished his habilitation thesis to become a lecturer of operations research at the ETH Zurich in 1977. In 1982-83 he spent an academic year as guest professor at RPI, and as a visiting scientist at the MIT center of operations research. Then, in 1987 he founded the consulting firm Lüthi, Mandl & Partner AG, providing services in the area of information and organizational engineering.

His main research areas concern the design of mathematical models for industrial and economic applications. In particular, the core competence of the institute encompasses a methodology for the design of intelligent decision support in operational engineering domains. Herein enclosed are methods for describing and analyzing processes in its structural and dynamic complexity and integrating mathematical models for supporting planning and scheduling tasks in a dynamic environment.

Farewell Lecture May 21, 2012