His research focus is on using optimization and heuristic solution methods (and combinations of these) to solve practical problems, including those in personnel scheduling, rostering and network models. He uses column generation and simulation techniques in his work on ambulance services optimization. He is a winner of the 2001 Euro Award for Excellence in Practice for work on supply chain optimization in the pulp mill industry and was, until 2014, the President of the Operations Research Society of New Zealand. He is the developer of the free OpenSolver and SolverStudio tools for optimisation in Excel. In OptALI he will share his expertise on the combination of simulation and optimisation in practical applications.