What is required of a PhD?

Following the MPhil year, the PhD requires an additional 2-3 years of intensive research.
The core of a PhD thesis in Management Science/Operations will typically consist of
several academic papers, each of which is of a standard sufficient for a publication in a
respected international journal. To encourage inter-disciplinary work we allow some of
these papers to be co-authored with faculty in Cambridge or elsewhere, or with PhD
students from other disciplines. Students have a dedicated thesis supervisor, typically a
member of the Management Science faculty, and a second supervisor to draw on the
expertise of the wider Business School faculty. Students and faculty report regularly on
research progress and discuss difficulties in the weekly Management Science seminar,
which is also a forum for guest speakers relevant to the students' research activities.

A typical example is a recent thesis on electricity markets design, which combined two
single-authored papers on the mathematical and computational analysis of a generic
mathematical model, which can be applied in this context, with a co-authored
computational comparison of two market designs based on a model of the European
electricity network. The latter work was carried out jointly with a post-doc in the
Department of Applied Economics, who provided the necessary economics and policy
expertise.

A further example is a PhD on real options analysis, which combines theoretical and
computational analysis of suitable options valuation models with applications in energy
generation and the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. Whilst the theoretical and
computational analysis is individual work, the application papers are co-authored, one
with a PhD student in Technology Policy with expertise in energy generation, the other
with the student's supervisor.

What is Management Science Research?

Management Science research can be done on three levels:

1. The fundamental level: The foundations of Management Science lie in three

mathematical disciplines: Probability, Optimisation, and Dynamical Systems.
These disciplines provide us with the language for our field. We use this
language, in conjunction with computer science and statistics tools, to build and
analyse models of complex management systems. Fundamental research in
Management Science will typically improve relevant knowledge of the cognate
mathematical disciplines and is often published in applied mathematics journals.
An excellent journal for this type of work is Mathematics of Operations Research.

2. The modelling level: Modelling is at the heart of Management Science. Building

models, analysing them mathematically, gathering and analysing data,
implementing models on computers, solving them, playing with them - all this is
part of Management Science research on the modelling level. Cognate disciplines
 are economics, computer science, numerical analysis and statistics. The flagship
journals for this work are Management Science and Operations Research.

3. The application level: Management Science, just as any other engineering

discipline, has strong aspirations to make a practical impact and be a driver for
change in the real world. When you work with a model, there is always a strong
temptation to shut the door to reality and focus on the much cleaner model world.
A key difference between Management Science and mathematics is that we don't
take our eyes off the application. Almost all journals in the field require a credible
link to real applications. A good journal that is dedicated to reports on successful
Management Science applications is Interfaces.

Students on the MPhil in Management Science & Operations typically focus on one of
the above levels in their dissertation work. We encourage MPhil students to work in
teams, with different team members focusing on the different levels for the same problem
or problem area.

Fundamental work
On the fundamental level, we encourage research in optimisation theory and dynamical
systems. Students who are primarily interested in fundamental work on probability might
wish to explore the MPhil in Statistical Science.

Modelling work
Work on the modelling level includes hierarchical optimisation and game theory, integer
programming for scheduling, stochastic dynamic optimisation, real options, revenue
management, machine learning and data mining, systems dynamics, and demand
forecasting. We encourage students to gain a wide knowledge of different types of
models and be able to explore a variety of modelling approaches in their research work.

Applications
Most of our modelling work goes hand-in-hand with and is driven by one of our core
application areas (some on-going or recent work in brackets):

• Energy industry (gaming models for bidding behaviour in electricity generation,

electricity markets design and regulation, climate change modelling, portfolio
management in the oil and gas industry)
• Transport and aviation (airline revenue management, competition and options
products in the airline industry, road congestion charging)
• Health care and life sciences (patient flow modelling, performance analysis and
improvements of hospitals, effectiveness of contagious disease management,
valuation of drug discovery projects, R&D portfolio management, and contract
design in the life sciences, bio-informatics, etc.)
Strategic industry partners
Our Management Science research agenda, from the most fundamental to the applications
level, is inspired by important practical problems. To enforce this point, we maintain
strategic partnerships with several large corporates in our core application areas, such as
British Airways and Shell, as well as with local small and medium size enterprises such
as the Cambridge University Hospital and Cambridge Antibody Technology. We involve
these strategic partners in our research planning.

Management Science meets business strategy

At present, we are adding a complementary area to our Management Science work: the
use of computer models for strategic management. How can we use models to help a
board of directors make a confident choice between strategic options and make good
long-term decisions in a highly uncertain, highly dynamic, and highly complex business
world? Some key questions are: How can we best communicate modelling work, or the
results thereof, so that they are understandable at the board level and to a wider, non-
technical audience of stakeholders? What is the added value of an additional layer of
technical complexity in our models and how can we trade off the improved relevance of a
more complex model against the implied loss of audience? How can we incorporate
variables that are less amenable to quantifications without losing the discipline imposed
by a quantitative modelling environment?