Waldo Gálvez

I am currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Universidad de Concepción (UdeC), since March 2024. From 2021 to 2024, I was part of the Institute of Engineering Sciences at Universidad de O'Higgins (UOH) in Rancagua, Chile, first as a postdoc and then as an Assistant Professor. Before that, I worked as a Postdoc at the Chair of Algorithms and Complexity at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), led by Prof. Susanne Albers, for almost two years. I received my PhD (2019) from the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Inteligenza Artificiale (IDSIA) and Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland, where I was very fortunate to be advised by Prof. Fabrizio Grandoni. Before IDSIA, I received my master's and bachelor's degree in Applied Math from Universidad de Chile under the wise guidance of Prof. José Verschae.

My research focuses mainly on the Design and Analysis of Algorithms, and more specifically on online, parameterized and approximation algorithms for packing and network design problems. My current projects involve studying Geometric Packing problems (e.g. Geometric Knapsack, Independent Set of Rectangles, Strip Packing) and their connections to Scheduling settings where jobs must use multiple machines. Recently, I have also been studying how to incorporate Diversity and Fairness constraints to classical Combinatorial Optimization problems.

• Our paper "Computing Diverse and Nice Triangulations", joint work with GiBeom Park, Mayank Goswami, Arturo Merino, and Meng-Tsung Tsai, received the Best Paper Award at FCT 2025.

• I will give a talk at the MIP Workshop South America 2025, which will take place in Viña del Mar, Chile, from December 9 to 12, 2025.

• I was chair of the XX Summer School on Discrete Mathematics, which took place in Viña del Mar, Chile, from January 6 to 10, 2025. 

• I was part of the local organizing committee for LATIN 2024, which took place in Puerto Varas, Chile, from March 18 to 22, 2024.

• Roberto Oliva, MSc in Operations Management UOH, co-advised with Víctor Verdugo (January 2025).

• Benjamín Guajardo, Informatics Engineering UOH (January 2025).

• Felipe Salas, Industrial Engineering UOH (January 2025).

• Manuel Muñoz, Informatics Engineering UOH, co-advised with Arturo Merino (January 2025).

• Carlos Bozo,  MSc in Mathematical Modeling and Artificial Intelligence UOH, co-advised with Víctor Verdugo (November 2024). 

• Nicolás Muñoz, Informatics Engineering UOH (October 2024).

• Franco Martínez, Industrial Engineering UOH (March 2024).

• Lía Reyes, MSc in Operations Management UOH, co-advised with Víctor Verdugo (January 2024).

• Consuelo González, MSc in Operations Management UOH, co-advised with Víctor Verdugo (January 2024). 

My basic research is funded by ANID through the following grant: 

• Approximation Algorithms for Two-Dimensional Demand Allocation Problems, 2023-2026, Principal Investigator ("Fondecyt de Iniciación").

Prior grants include:

• Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms for Efficient Energy Management Problems, 2023-2025, Principal Investigator ("Subvención a la Instalación en la Academia").

A copy of my CV can be found here.