PhD in Clustering Approaches for Logistics Route Planning via Adaptive Districting in a Stochastic Environment Inria in France

Inria Lille / Centrale Lille is recruiting a fully funded PhD candidate for a 3-year project on Clustering Approaches for Logistics Route Planning via Adaptive Districting in a Stochastic Environment.

The thesis is part of a collaboration with La Poste and focuses on stochastic optimization, vehicle routing, last-mile logistics, clustering, and adaptive districting. The research aims to model delivery route construction as a clustering problem under uncertainty, develop efficient solution methods, and validate the approaches on real-world data from an industrial partner.

Key research directions include: modeling demand variability and operational constraints; designing robust district assemblies and route structures; and developing scalable algorithms, especially matheuristics, for large-scale combinatorial optimization problems.

Applicants should have a Master’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, or a related field. Strong programming skills and a solid background in combinatorial optimization and integer programming are expected. The posting also highlights coding experience in C++, Java, or Julia.

Funding includes a gross salary of €2,300 per month. Additional benefits mentioned in the Inria posting include subsidized meals, partial public transport reimbursement, annual leave, RTT days, teleworking options, and social security coverage.

Application deadline: 2026-05-31. Start date: 2026-09-01. Applications must be submitted online via the Inria portal with a CV and cover letter.

Supervision is listed as Yue Su, Frédéric Semet, and Luce Brotcorne.