In memoriam | Maarten Hendrikus van der Vlerk (28-10-1961 - 9-10-2016)

With deep regret we announce the unexpected death of Prof. Maarten van der Vlerk.

Maarten van der Vlerk was professor of Stochastic Optimization at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Operations since 2008. He served as Program Director of the Bachelor of Science Econometrics & Operations Research and of the Master of Science Econometrics, Operations Research & Actuarial Studies. He was member of the General Board of the LNMB, the Dutch Network on the Mathematics of Operations Research.

Maarten graduated in Econometrics at the University of Groningen in 1990, and was awarded his PhD in 1995 from the same institution. After a period at CORE (Louvain-la-Neuve) he returned to Groningen. In 1999 he received a prestigious research fellowship from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He was an internationally recognized researcher in the field of Stochastic Programming. He was actively involved in the Stochastic Programming community.

Maarten was an outstanding teacher; he won the lecturer of the year award in 2014 from the Faculty of Economics and Business. His courses Stochastic Programming and the Specialization Course Applied Operations Research, based on student evaluations, ended up in the top 5 of the faculty almost every year.

We will always remember him for his warm personality, his honesty and his dedication. It is sad to realize that we will never hear his warm and sonorous voice again.

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