Dr. Wouter Van Heeswijk

Biography

Wouter van Heeswijk is an Assistant Professor at the University of Twente specializing in Operations Research and Financial Engineering. His research focuses on optimization, simulation, and machine learning with an emphasis on reinforcement learning and its applications in logistics and finance. Wouter teaches a variety of Bachelor’s and Master’s courses primarily within the Industrial Engineering & Management (IEM) program, where he covers reinforcement learning, option pricing, Markov decision processes, and simulation optimization. He has supervised over 100 students in thesis research and teaches reinforcement learning at the PhD level both nationally and internationally. His work has been published in notable journals and conference proceedings, including Transportation Science and the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). He has been involved in significant national research projects and European initiatives such as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action on Digital Finance. Wouter also supervises several PhD candidates and holds leadership roles including chairman of the IEM Program Committee and member of the curriculum team for the IEM satellite program, in addition to chairing the Reinforcement Learning Network.

Research Interests