Research

I am a computer scientist and an applied mathematician. I belong to the academic community of Operations Research.

My research focuses on the foundational theory and algorithmic development for combinatorial optimization and integer programming. I am particularly interested in advancing both exact and approximate methods for optimization over integers, aiming to deepen theoretical insights while designing effective and scalable algorithms for NP-hard problems arising in real-world applications. My work has addressed a range of topics so far, including linear, nonlinear, and uncertain network design; coloring, covering, and partitioning; routing; (versions of) the traveling salesman and the quadratic assignment problems; and the optimization of exponential functions over discrete domains (e.g., entropy-based models, optimal embedding trees). I have been interested in practical applications arising from supply chain management, telecommunications, and transportation, as well as in the theoretical aspects of combinatorial optimization, including the study of the polyhedral structure of combinatorial optimization problems, the design of decomposition algorithms, and the computational complexity of specific combinatorial problems. I have also contributed to the development of optimization methods for bioinformatics, with particular focus on tumorigenesis and genome-wide association studies. In recent years, my research has focused intensively on the combinatorial and optimization aspects of phylogenetics, contributing to the development of distance-based methods, specifically minimum evolution and balanced minimum evolution.

My research activities have been supported by several competitive funding programs, including the European Marie Curie Fellowship Program (grant HPRN-CT-1999-00106); the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), through the Aspirant and Chargé de Recherches mandates, the CDR grant S/25-MCF/OL J.0026.17, and PDR grant 2021-40007831; the Fonds Brachet (IBMM Prize 2007); the Louvain Foundation (grant Coalescens ); the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) (grants 1R01CA140214 and 1R01AI076318); and the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF), through the Honorary Fellowship 2010–2011 for biomedical engineering research in the United States.

Mathematical Genealogy

Scientific Production

The works listed below are provided solely for personal use. They are organized by application area and include only manuscripts submitted to or published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals. I sign only articles for which I am the lead author or to which I have made substantial contributions. Some of the linked files may be subject to publisher copyright restrictions. If you have accessed this page area, please ensure that your institution holds the appropriate subscription before downloading or consulting any of the PDFs below.

Keywords: combinatorial optimization, integer programming, polyhedral combinatorics, decomposition algorithms, branch-&-cut, branch-price-&-cut, computational complexity, routing, network design, coloring, covering, partitioning, location, games on graphs, constructive characterizations, high performance computing, massive parallel enumeration, enumeration of trees, lattices of unrooted binary trees, tree coding, Huffman coding, information entropy, entropy encoding, cross-entropy encoding, Kullback–Leibler divergence, encryption schemes, tree metric, submodular functions, convexity, Schur convexity, mathematics of evolution, phylogenetics, phylodynamics, mathematical modeling of tumor progression, genome-wide association studies, medical bioinformatics, deep reinforcement learning, hierarchical clustering, optimization aspects of machine learning.

Journals & Metrics

Journals in Operations Research

  • Computers & Operations Research
  • Discrete Applied Mathematics
  • Discrete Optimization
  • European Journal of Operational Research
  • INFORMS Journal on Computing
  • International Transactions in Operational Research
  • Mathematical Programming A
  • Networks
  • Operations Research Letters
  • Optimization Letters
  • 4OR

Journals in Bioinformatics

  • Bioinformatics
  • BMC Algorithms for Molecular Biology
  • BMC Evolutionary Biology
  • Evolutionary Bioinformatics
  • IEEE/ACM Transactions in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
  • Human Immunology
  • PLoS One
  • Algorithms

Classification of the scientific production by topics

Network optimization and theory of complex systems with applications to mathematics of evolution, tumorigenesis and computational phylogenetics

Coloring and Covering with Applications to Haplotyping & Disease Association Studies

Graph Theory

  • D. Catanzaro, S. Chaplick, S. Felsner, B. V. Halldórsson, M. M. Halldórsson, T. Hixon, and J. Stacho.
    Max point-tolerance graphs.
    Discrete Applied Mathematics, 216(1): 84–97, 2017.

Cutting Plane Methods

Industrial Applications: Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Scheduling, Routing, Inventory, and Deep Reinforcement Learning

Articles Submitted

Working Papers

  • D. Catanzaro, B. Pierre, G. Joret, and F. Pisanu.
    On the complexity of degree-constrained network design problems with nonlinear objectives, 2026.

  • D. Catanzaro, E. Legrand, and P. Schaus.
    A dynamic programming approach for the job sequencing and tool switching problem, 2025.
    (Conference version accepted at CPAIOR 2025)

  • D. Catanzaro, R. Pesenti, and R. Ronco.
    On the spectrum of path-length density matrices of unrooted binary trees, 2026.

  • D. Catanzaro, B. Pierre, and R. Pesenti.
    Optimization and Analytics for Distance-Based Phylogeny Estimation, 2026.

  • D. Catanzaro and R. Pesenti.
    On numerical stability of the balanced minimum evolution problem, 2026.

  • D. Catanzaro.
    On the relationships between the minimum evolution and the maximum likelihood principles of phylogeny estimation, 2026.

Frequently Asked Codes & Data

Please, contact me in the case instances of specific problems or source codes for any of the above works may be needed.

Talks

A small list of some talks given in conferences and seminars.

Talks in Conferences

  • Algorithmic Advances and Implementation Challenges: Developing Practical Tools for Phylogenetic Inference, ICERM, Brown University, Rhode Island, on November 18-22, 2024 (video).
  • 25th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2024), Montreal, Canada, on July 21-26 2024.
  • International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization (ISCO 2024), Tenerife, May 22-24, 2024.
  • Sumner Workshop 2023 on Phylogenomics and Evolutionary Networks, Christchurch, New Zealand, February 13-16, 2023.
  • Deco 23, 26th Annual New Zealand Phylogenomics Meeting, Napier, New Zealand, February 7-10, 2023.
  • Cargese Workshop on Combinatorial Optimization, Cargese, France, September 19-23, 2022.
  • 32th European Conference on Operations Research (EURO 2022), Espoo, Finland, July 3-6, 2022.
  • Mathematical and Computational Evolutionary Biology (MCEB 2022), Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland, June 26-30, 2022.
  • International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization (ISCO 2022), Paris, May 18-20, 2022.
  • 30th European Conference on Operational Research (EURO) 2019, Dublin, Ireland, on June 23-26, 2019.
  • 23th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2018), Bordeaux, France, on July 1-6 2018.
  • International Conference 2018 on Applied Combinatorial Optimization (EURO/ALIO 2018), Bologna, Italy, on June 25-27 2018.
  • Conference, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, on May 23-27, 2016.
  • 30th Annual Conference of the Belgian Operations Research Society, Louvain la Neuve, Belgium, on January 28-29, 2016.
  • 22th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2015), Pittsburgh, PA on July 12-17 2015.
  • 26th European Conference on Operational Research (EURO) 2013, Rome, Italy, on July 1-4, 2013.
  • Journées Graphes et Algorithmes 2012 (JGA), Clermont-Ferrand, France, on November 14-16, 2012. Invited Talk.
  • 2nd Bio-Optimization Workshop: Optimization techniques applied to biology, Lisbon, Portugal, on September 22, 2012. Plenary Talk.
  • Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Medicine (EURO-CBBM), University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, on September 13-15, 2012.
  • 21th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2012), Berlin, Germany, on August 19-24 2012.
  • International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (ISBRA 2012), Dallas, Texas, on May 21-23, 2012.
  • 26th Annual Conference of the Belgian Operations Research Society, Brussels, on February 2-3, 2012.
  • Bio-Optimization Workshop: Optimization techniques applied to biology, Coimbra, Portugal, on June 25 2011. Plenary Talk.
  • 24th European Conference on Operations Research (EURO XXIV), Lisbon, Portugal, on July 11-14 2010.
  • International Workshop on Combinatorial Optimization (Aussois 2010), Aussois, France, on January 3-9 2010.
  • 20th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP 2009), Chicago, Illinois, on August 23-28 2009.
  • 23th European Immunogenetics and Histocompatibility Conference (EFI) 2009, Ulm, Germany, on May 09-12 2009.
  • Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Medicine (EURO-CBBM), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Rome, Italy, on September 15-17 2008.
  • 7th Cologne-Twente Workshop on Graphs and Combinatorial Optimization, Universitá degli Studi di Milano, Gargnano, Italy, on May 13-15 2008.
  • International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization 2008, University of Warwick, Warwick, United Kingdom, on March 16-19 2008.
  • Future Directions in Phylogenetic Methods and Models, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, United Kingdom, on December 17-21 2007.
  • 9th Evolutionary Biology Meeting, Marseille, France, on September 21-23 2005.

Seminars

  • Louvain Institute of Biomolecular Science and Technology, UCLouvain, December 6, 2024.
  • Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering, University of Bologna, April 11, 2023.
  • Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, April 9, 2023.
  • Business School, University of Edinburgh, April 26, 2023.
  • Computer Science Department, Université Libre de Bruxelles, February 8, 2022.
  • 1ère journée ROADEF et ORBEL, joined annual meeting of ROADEF and ORBEL, February 1, 2020. Workshop held online due to COVID19 restrictions.
  • Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica “Antonio Ruberti” (IASI-CNR), Roma, Italy, February 26, 2020.
  • IB2, Univerité Libre de Bruxelles – Vrij Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, April 22, 2016.
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy, February 12, 2015.
  • Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, De Duve Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, February 5, 2015.
  • Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE), Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, October 28, 2014.
  • Department of Applied Mathematics, SINTEF, Oslo, Norway, on November 8, 2013.
  • CODeS – KAHO Sint-Lieven, Catholic University Leuven, Gent, Belgium, on August 23, 2013.
  • Operations Research Unit, Polytechnic of Mons, Belgium, on June 8, 2013.
  • Computer Science Department, Polytechnic of Lille, France, on May 13, 2013.
  • Computer Science Department, University of South Denmark, Odense, Denmark, on February 12, 2013.
  • Unit of Bioinformatics and Sequence Analysis, INRIA Lille – Nord Europe, France, on December 4, 2012.
  • CODeS – KAHO Sint-Lieven – KU Leuven, Gent, Belgium, on December 3, 2012.
  • Department of Computer Science, King’s College London, UK, on November 6, 2012.
  • Laboratoire d’Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM)-CNRS, Montpellier, France, on October 3, 2012.
  • Center of Genomic Science, Italian Institute of Technology, Milan, Italy, on September 19, 2012.
  • Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands, on September 17, 2012.
  • Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, on June 5, 2012.
  • Bioinformatics Research Center and Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark, on October 20-21, 2011.
  • School of Mathematics, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, on May 30th – June 1, 2011.
  • Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY, on April 26, 2011.
  • Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, on April 8, 2011.
  • Department of Computer Science, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland, on June 10, 2010.
  • Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, on June 2, 2010.
  • Computational Evolutionary Genomics Group, University Medical Center (C.M.U.), Department of Medicine, Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (S.I.B.), Geneva, Switzerland, on June 22, 2009.
  • Computer Science Department, Universitá degli studi di Torino, Turin, Italy, on June 16, 2009.
  • Bioinformatics Research Group, Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT/SCD), Catholic University Leuven, Belgium, on November 5, 2008.
  • OptLab, Department of Information Technologies, University of Milan, Crema, Italy, on May 17, 2008.
  • Centro de Investigação Operational, Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, on February 10-12, 2008.
  • Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Développements en Intelligence Artificielle (IRIDIA), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, on March 20, 2007.
  • 13th Mathematical Programming Meeting – 3rd FNRS cycle, Han-sur-Lesse, Belgium, on March 22-23, 2007.
  • CINBIOS (Centre de BioInformatique et BioModelisation) meeting, Department of Computer Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, on September 29, 2006.
  • Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory (TIK), E.T.H. Zurich, Switzerland, on October 7, 2004.
  • Metaheuristics Network Final Meeting, Edinburgh, UK, on June 27-29, 2004.

Teaching

Current Courses at Louvain School of Management of UCLouvain

Doctoral Courses

  • Advanced Discrete Optimization (LLSMA2019) – 2023 / Now

Master Courses

  • Quantitative Decision Making (MLSMM2155) – 2014 / Now
  • Supply Chain Management (MGEHD2223) – Master HD – 2014 / Now

Bachelor Courses



Past Courses at the Université Catholique de Louvain

Louvain School of Management

  • Tools for Supply Chain Management Decisions (LLSMS2031) – 2018 / 2019
  • Projet Quantitatif et Gestion de Projets (MLSMM2117) – 2014 / 2017
  • Production Management and Modeling (LLSMG2053) – Master 60 LLN – 2019 / 2023

Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain

  • Combinatorial Optimization (LINMA2450, former L. Wolsey’s course) - Math Engineering - Master – 2018 / 2019


Past Courses at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen – Faculty of Economics & Business

Master Courses

  • Combinatorial Optimization – EORAS Master program – 2013 / 2014
  • Capita Selecta EORAS – EORAS Master program – 2013 / 2014

Bachelor Courses

  • Foundation of Logistics System Engineering – 2013 / 2014
  • Supply Network Analysis – 2012 / 2013


Past Courses at the Université Libre de Bruxelles – Computer Science Department

Bachelor Courses

  • Algorithms 2 (INFO-F-203) – Bachelor – 2011 / 2012 and 2014 / 2015


Teaching Resources

Disclaimer: The material available on this webpage is intended for my own use and may include resources that either belong to UCL or that are covered by copyrights. If you reached this page, and you are not a student of UCL, please ensure that your institution has the appropriate rights of use before accessing any of the links above. Also note that the content of the courses listed above is periodically subjected to change. If you participate in one of my courses, please refer to the official Teams channel for supplementary information.

Supervision Activity

Below I list the current and some of former doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows for which I acted as an advisor, as well as the doctoral students and postdocs with who I had (and in most cases I still continue to have) strong scientific collaborations.

Current Doctoral Students and Postdocs

Francesco Pisanu Francesco Pisanu was awarded his doctoral degree from the LIPN, Laboratoire d’Informatique de l’Université de Paris Nord for his studies on box-total dual integrality and total equimodularity. In September 2024, he started his postdoctoral studies at CORE under my supervision.

Emma Legrand Emma graduated in Computer Science Engineering at the Université Catholique de Louvain (2023) and started in September 2023 her doctoral studies in co-supervision with my colleague Pierre Schaus.

Brieuc Pierre Brieuc graduated in Computer Science Engineering at the Université Catholique de Louvain (2023) and started in September 2023 his doctoral studies under my supervision.

Former Doctoral Students and Postdocs

Allan Sapucaia Doctor in Combinatorial Optimization from the University of Campinas (2017-2022) under the supervision of both Pedro J. de Rezende and Cid C. de Souza. His doctoral studies focused on computational geometry and integer linear programming, with special attention to the development of decomposition techniques for partitioning, packing and covering problems. Allan got both the von Neumann Award (Highest GPA among C.E graduates – Institute of Computing, UNICAMP 2017) and the Babbage Award (Highest GPA among C.E students – Institute of Computing, UNICAMP 2015) and during the academic years 2022 and 2023 he worked, under my supervision, on optimization problems defined over specific classes of acyclic connected graphs. As of January 2024, Allan moved to the department of network optimization of Amazon EU.

Henri Dehaybe Henri graduated in Management Engineering at the Université Catholique de Louvain (2017). Henri’s doctoral studies are currently co-supervised by my colleague, Philippe Chevalier and myself. Henri privately defended his doctoral thesis on June 23 2025 and publicly on September 9 2025 and by mid 2026 will move to the Polytechnique of Montreal to pursue his postdoctoral studies.

Martin Frohn Martin graduated in economathematics at the University of Cologne (2017). At present, I supervised his doctoral studies, which focused on specific combinatorial and optimization aspects of computational phylogenetics. Martin defended his doctoral thesis on October 27 2021 and currently is postdoc at the Technical University of Eindhoven.

Collaborations with Doctoral Students and Postdocs

Luca Zattoni Luca is an Italian PhD student from the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering “Guglielmo Marconi”. His doctoral studies are supervised by Prof. Enrico Malaguti. Luca will visit CORE from February 2025 to May 2025. Luca will defend his doctoral thesis by April 2026.

Federico Michelotto Federico is an Italian PhD student from the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering “Guglielmo Marconi”. His doctoral studies are supervised by Prof. Michele Monaci and Prof. Enrico Malaguti. I am collaborating with him in the context of the development of new integer programming formulations for the Minimum Evolution Problem carried out during his research visit at CORE from September 2024 to February 2025. Federico will defend his doctoral thesis by April 2026.

Andrea Gasparin Andrea graduated in Computer Science Engineering at the University of Trieste (2017) under the supervision of my colleague, Lorenzo Castelli. I co-supervised his doctoral studies, part of which carried out at CORE during the fall 2022. Andrea was awarded his Phd on December 2023 and as of 2026 is postdoc at the Department of Computer Science Engineering at the University of Trieste.

Roberto Ronco Roberto carried out his undergraduate and doctoral studies in Computer Science and Operations Research at the University of Genoa, Italy, under the supervision of Massimo Paolucci. Large part of his research efforts focuses on scheduling problems. I have collaborated with Roberto in the context of his doctoral studies, part of which carried out at CORE during the fall of 2021. Roberto defend his doctoral thesis on February 2022 and currently is a researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

Céline Engelbeen Céline completed her doctoral studies at Department of Mathematics of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2010, under the supervision of my colleague Samuel Fiorini. She worked on constrained decompositions of integer matrices in the context of intensity modulated radiation therapy. Celine is currently tenured lecturer at ICHEC.

Luciano Porretta Luciano graduated in Computer Science at the University of l’Aquila, Italy, under my co-supervision (2010). He carried out his doctoral studies at the Graphs and Mathematical Optimization Unit of the Computer Science Department of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, under the supervision of my colleague Bernard Fortz. He was awarded the title of Doctor of Sciences in January 2018. I have intensely collaborated with Luciano on a large part of his doctoral studies, focused on models and methods in genome-wide association studies. Luciano is currently principal research scientist at the belgian branch of OM Partners.

Doctoral Defense Committee Memberships

I have been member of the following doctoral defense committees:

  • Francesco Pisanu. On box-total dual integrality and total equimodularity. Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris Nord (LIPN), Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, December 2023. Role: Examinator.
  • Jehum Cho. Optimization Under Uncertainty with Power System Applications. Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Université Catholique de Louvain, December 2023. Role: Examinator.
  • Andrea Gasparin. PHYLOES Un approccio mediante Strategie Evolutive per l’inferenza filogenetica basata sul Balanced Minimum Evolution Criterion. Department of Information and Industrial Engineering, University of Trieste, Italy, December 2023. Role: Co-Advisor.
  • Daniel Felipe Avila Girardot. Optimization under uncertainty in power systems supported by parallel computing. Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Université Catholique de Louvain, January 2024. Role: Examinator.
  • Xavier Gillard. Discrete Optimization with Decision Diagrams. Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, Louvain School of Engineering, Université Catholique de Louvain, August 2022. Role: Examinator.
  • Julien Dewez. Lower Bounds on the Nonnegative Rank Computational Approaches. Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, Université Catholique de Louvain, November 2021. Role: Examinator and Secretary of the Evaluation Committee.
  • Martin Frohn. Models and Methods for Computational Phylogenetics based on Minimum Evolution. Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Université Catholique de Louvain, September 2021. Role: Advisor.
  • Nikita Doikov. Development of Second-Order Methods for Convex Optimization Problems. Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, Louvain School of Engineering, Universitè Catholique de Louvain, June 2021. Role: Examinator and Secretary of the Evaluation Committee.
  • Josè Miguel Pesada Perez. Express shipment service network design: Challenges, advances and robustness. Louvain School of Management, Universitè Catholique de Louvain. June 17, 2020. Role: Chairman of the Evaluation Committee.
  • Luciano Porretta. Models and methods for genome-wide association studies. Graphs and Mathematical Optimization Unit, Computer Science Department, Universitè Libre de Bruxelles, January 2018. Role: Examinator.
  • Cyrille Dejemeppe. Abstractions and algorithms for scheduling applications. Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics, Louvain School of Engineering, Universitè Catholique de Louvain, June 2016. Role: Examinator.
  • Veronica Dal Sasso. Branch-and-price approaches for pure-parsimony haplotyping. Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Italy, December 2016. Role: Examinator.

Offices & Contact

Campus Louvain-la-Neuve

Address: Center for Operations Research and Econometrics
Université Catholique de Louvain
Voie du Roman Pays 34, L1.03.01, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Bureau: B-115
Phone: +32 (0)10 47 43 23
Email: Email

Campus Mons

Address: Louvain School of Management
Université Catholique de Louvain
Chaussée de Binche 151, M1.01.01, 7000 Mons, Belgium
Bureau: B-302
Phone: +32 (0)65 32 33 13