DORS Prize 2025 Winner

At the General Assembly on the 12th of March, 2026, The Danish Operations Research Society (DORS) awarded the DORS Prize 2025 for the best master's thesis to Asta Susan Rustad for her thesis title: "Integrated Optimization of Layout and Cable Routing for Offshore Wind Farms". Asta conducted her thesis at DTU under the supervision of Professor David Pisinger.

Every year, DORS awards the DORS Prize to the best OR thesis of the year. An evaluation committee consisting of operations research experts decides the winner by evaluating the submitted theses. During the evaluation, emphasis is put on theses that analyze and solve practical problems using OR. This year, the committee consisted of: 

        • Niels- Christian Fink Bagger, Senior Decision Scientist at Maersk.

        • Ali Ghavamifar, Postdoctoral Researcher at Denmark Technical University (DTU).

        • Farnaz Farzadnia, Postdoctoral Researcher at Copenhagen Business School (CBS).

In the thesis, Asta studied the joint design of offshore wind farms by linking turbine placement and cable routing. These two problems traditionally solved separately. A semi-integrated optimization approach is developed that incorporates a validated estimate of cable costs directly into the turbine layout model. To support this framework, upper and lower bounds on cable costs are derived, and scalable heuristic methods capable of solving large-scale instances are implemented.

The committee found the thesis to be well written and it was easy to see that Asta had put much effort and care into the work. 

DORS congratulates Asta Susan Rustad on the DORS Prize 2025!