Congratulations to Dr. Parisa Torabi!

Parisa Torabi has successfully defended her PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Bergen. Her dissertation, Combinatorial optimization problems and solution methods for offshore monitoring and maintenance, examines the logistics of marine environmental monitoring, with applications to offshore wind farms and sub-seabed CO₂ storage. The thesis was evaluated by Professor Jens Lysgaard (Aarhus University) and Associate Professor Sigrid Lise Nonås (Norwegian School of Economics), with Professor Magnus Svärd as committee chair and Professor emeritus Tor Sørevik as defence chair.

In the thesis, real operational constraints are addressed: limited time and resources, demanding weather conditions, and the need for coordination between vessels, autonomous underwater vehicles, and technicians. A central contribution is the concept of variable coverage, where monitoring effectiveness depends on the duration of observation at a given location—particularly relevant when ocean currents disperse pollution away from its source.

The work combines mathematical programming, search heuristics, and deep reinforcement learning to develop models and algorithms for route planning, task allocation, and coverage optimization. These methods are demonstrated through case studies in CO₂ storage monitoring and offshore wind-farm maintenance, providing new strategies that support safer, more efficient, and more sustainable offshore operations.