Tibor Illés

Tibor Illés studied mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) where he obtained MSc in Mathematics (1987), doctor of university (dr. univ.) degree in Operations Research (1989) and PhD in Applied Mathematics (1996). Gyula Farkas Prize of János Bolyai Mathematical Society has been awarded to him in December 1991.

Tibor Illés’ first job (Research Assistant 1987-89, Research Associate 1989) was at the Applied Mathematics Department, Computation and Automatization Institute of Hungarian Academy of Sciences (known as MTA SZTAKI). He moved to ELTE in September 1990.

In 1993, he got permanent position as Assistant Professor at Operations Research Department, ELTE (Associate Professor 1998-2010, part time 2010-16). He moved to Department of Differential Equations, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME DET) in 2010. From July 2011, he served as head of BME DET until the end of August 2020. In September 2020 Dr. Illés and his colleagues founded the Corvinus Centre for Operations Research (CCOR) at Corvinus University of Budapest (CUB), Hungary and became the first leader of CCOR. Dr. Illés is a professor of operations research at CUB since September 2022.

Dr. Illés worked for Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, North-Cyprus (Assistant Professor 1995-1996, Associate Professor 1998-2000), Department of Stochastics, Statistics and Operations Research, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands (Research Fellow, 1996-1997), Department of Management Science, Strathclyde University (MS SU), Glasgow, Scotland, UK (John Anderson Research Lecturer in Optimisation 2007-2009, part time senior lecturer 2009-2018).

Dr. Illés received several research fellowships like the Hungarian State Eötvös Research Fellowship (University of Copenhagen, 3 months, 1995), Research Fellowship of German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Julius Maximilians University, Würzburg, 2 months, 1998), Bolyai János Research Fellowship (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 3 years, 2000-2003), Operations Research Professor Fellowships at MOL - Hungarian Oil Company (September 2003 – August 2004, April 2005 – March 2006, July 2006 – June 2007), and visiting positions amongst others Visiting Fellowship – Peregrinatio II. Foundation (Delft University of Technology, 3 months, 1994), Visiting Research Fellowships at McMaster University, Advanced Optimization Laboratory (5 months in total during the years 2002 – 2006), Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Tibor serves as editor/associate editor at several international journals like Pure Mathematics and Applications (since 1999), Central European Journal of Operations Research (since 2006), Journal of Optimization Theory and Application (since 2021) and the Hungarian journal Alkalmazott Matematikai Lapok (AML, since 2017). He was editor of several special issues for EJOR (Vol. 143, 2002; Vol. 157, 2004; Vol. 191, 2008), CEJOR (Vol. 23, 2015), AML (Vol. 35, 2018; Vol. 36, issue 1, 2019), EURO Journal on Computational Optimization (Celebrating 20 years of EUROpt, part of volume 10, 2022), JOTA (Vol. 202, 2024) and recently VJOM (Vol. 53, issues 3-4, 2025).

Current research interests of Dr. Illés are in linear and nonlinear optimization, and applications of operations research. Tibor has published more than 70 research papers in high quality international (and national) journals (e.g., SIOPT, EJOR, JOTA, JOGO, OMS, Optimization Letters, CEJOR), and conference proceedings. According to google scholar his papers received more than 950 citations and his h-index is 18. He participated at more than 80 conferences in Europe and North America and gave research talks at those conferences. Based on his works on theory, algorithms and applications of continuous optimization he has been invited to several conferences as plenary/semi plenary speaker. He organized streams, invited sessions at many operations research conferences in Europe and North America.

Since 1994 Tibor Illés was principal investigator of many OTKA (Hungarian National Research Fund) research projects. He was co-investigator of an EPSRC project led by Professor Maria Fox during the years he served as full time academic staff at MS SU.

With Tony Mulholland in 2009 they have developed optimization models for analysing multi-component absorption spectra for Cascade Technologies (Sterling, UK). As member of the project team at Delft University of Technology during the years 1994-1997 they have developed optimization model and numerical solution methods for reloading patterns of fuel batches of nuclear reactor core.

He also led several applied operations research projects for leading Hungarian companies’ during the past thirty years. Dr. Illés with his team developed several new operations research models including: computer colour formulation optimization model based on two-constant Kubelka-Munk theory; crew scheduling and engine assignment problem for transportation companies; model for multi-robot multi-depot problem and a solution algorithm; multimodal transportation model for Budapest; blending-, production planning- and look back analysis models based on pooling- and linear constraints for oil industry; day-ahead electricity model variants (Cosmos/Euphemia) for coupled market; and some other OR models.

Tibor Illés has been active in various professional societies and scientific committees, amongst others the EURO – The Association of European Operational Research Societies, where he was representing Hungarian Operations Research Society (HORS) as the President of HORS from 2011 until 2014. Currently, he is permanent representative of HORS in the EURO Council. Dr. Illés is among those few, who were initiating and founding members of the Hungarian Operations Research Society in 1991.

With Professor Tamás Terlaky, he initiated the EURO WG on Continuous Optimization and led the working group with Tamás between 2000 and 2003. His work for the European continuous optimization community has been acknowledged by awarding him (and Tamás Terlaky) the title of Honorary Coordinator of EUROPT in Istanbul, July 4, 2003.

Tibor Illés was serving as secretary of the Applied Mathematics Committee of János Bolyai Mathematical Society for two years. He is elected member of the Operations Research Scientific Committee of Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) since 2008 and worked as secretary of the committee until 2011. He has been re-elected six times so far. From 2013-2019 he served (two terms) as representative of operations researchers in the General Assembly of HAS.

He was appointed member of Hungarian National Research Fund (OTKA) Mathematics and Computer Science Panel (2011-2012). Since 2000, Tibor has been core member of the Council of the Mathematical Doctorial School, Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences.

His PhD students Arif A. Akkeles (EMU 2004), Zsolt Csizmadia (ELTE 2007), Marianna Nagy (ELTE 2010), Adrienn Nagy (ELTE 2015), Petra R. Rigó (BME 2020), Filiz Bilen (EMU 2023) successfully defended their PhD theses. Four of them received the prestigious Gyula Farkas Prize (Zsolt 2007, Marianna 2011, Adrienn 2015, Petra 2020) for outstanding research results in operations research by János Bolyai Mathematical Society.

Updated: July 10, 2025