Master's students from the Mechanical Engineering degree programme at Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) have presented a paper at the renowned "IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA) 2025" in San Diego (USA) that presents a novel method for automated timetabling for the entire Krefeld South Campus. The IEEE CCTA is an internationally recognised conference that conducts a peer-review process to ensure high scientific standards. The first author is Matthias Beuters, who is an academic staff member at the SWK E² Institute working towards a doctorate.
The paper is entitled "An Integer Linear Programming Approach to a Large-Scale University Course Scheduling Problem" and was written by Matthias Beuters, Silvano Lange, Sophie Lehnen and Jan Wackertapp. It was supervised by Professor Marc Gennat, who supported the students as part of their project on the Master's degree programme in Mechanical Engineering.
The work centres on the development of an algorithm that uses constraints and integer programming to automate complex timetabling for the entire Krefeld South Campus. Numerous requirements such as room occupancy, availability of teaching staff and individual student requests are taken into account. The method saves a considerable amount of time compared to previous manual planning processes and ensures optimal utilisation of resources.
The presentation at the IEEE CCTA 2025 in California offered the students the opportunity to present their research results to an international audience of experts and gain valuable impetus for the further development of their work. The SWK E² Institute sees this success as further proof of the high quality of practical orientation and research at The Hochschule Niederrhein.
