PhD Courses

LNMB offers a biennial PhD programme. The academic year is composed of three trimesters, each having a duration of 9 or 10 weeks. The 10th week is typically reserved as a backup in case one of the lectures in the first 9 weeks is cancelled, but may be used as a regular slot at the discretion of the lecturers.

PhD course programme 2024 – 2025

First Trimester (September 9 – November 11)

• MQSN (Markovian Queues and Stochastic Networks)
• CAO (Convex Analysis for Optimization)
• MDP (Markov Decision Processes)

Second Trimester (November 18 – December 16 and January 6 and January 20 – February 10)

• NSP (Networks and Semidefinite Programming) — not streamed
• AlQT (Algorithmic Methods in Queueing Theory)
• CGOR (Cooperative Games with applications to OR) — not streamed

Third Trimester (February 17 – May 12 with the exception of April 21 and May 5)

• OML (Optimization and Machine Learning) — streamed
• AMD (Algorithmic Mechanism Design)
• RA (Randomized Algorithms) — not streamed

New PhD students

If you are a new PhD student, which means that you have not attended LNMB PhD lectures before or forgot to complete this step, please first fill out the

Please note that skipping this step means that you will miss out on important information (e.g., regarding conferences, news, or diploma requirements). Once this step is completed, you can register for any of the courses in the programme through the links below.

Registration and deregistration

Please register at your earliest convenience to make sure you obtain the needed information prior to the start of the course. Late registration is possible up to the fourth lecture, after which the registration system no longer accepts further registrations.

• Registration form Trimester 1 (lectures start on September 9, 2024)
• Registration form Trimester 2 (lectures start on November 18, 2024)
• Registration form Trimester 3 (lectures start on February 17, 2025)

For external students, if you wish to drop the course and avoid charges, please cancel your registration within the same deadline. Late or no notifications will be fully charged. To unregister for the course, simply email your intention to lnmb@utwente.nl

Upon registration for a course, participants receive an automatic email confirmation. In the week before the start of the trimester, all registered participants will receive the latest information regarding the location, course website, and links to submit assignments. Late registrations should email lnmb@utwente.nl to request this information.

Timetable of PhD courses

Location

The courses are given at the Campus Utrecht Science Park and are fully in person. Accommodations for online lectures may be possible only for external students, but are not guaranteed. Please email us at lnmb@utwente.nl to make enquiries if this may be arranged for courses you are interested in.

Credits and certificates

The credits for participants who have passed the assignemnts successfully are 4 EC per course. All participants that completed the course successfully receive their certificate automatically.

In case a course are only attended, or when the exercises are not passed successfully, then the workload is set at 1 EC. Participants who qualify for 1 EC can receive a certificate on their request, provided they email the secretariat at lnmb@utwente.nl within a month from the completion of the course and at any rate no later than a week after grades have been published. To fulfil attendance requirements, participants cannot miss more than two lectures per course. Furthermore, they need to physically attend lectures, unless a lecture is given fully online or prior permission from the LNMB director has been received.

Evaluation

After the course every participant is asked to fill in an evaluation form which will be distributed around two weeks after the course.

PhD representative

LNMB PhD students elect a PhD representative. The representative attends the board meetings of the LNMB and can be contacted if you want to provide input for the LNMB PhD programme. The current PhD representative is:

Indicative PhD course programme 2025 – 2026

The PhD programme has a cycle of two years. The programme of the PhD courses of the year 2023 – 2024 can be found here. This programme gives an indication of the programme for 2025 – 2026.