The Xpress team has been growing and is still filling positions. Our latest newcomers are Christian Raack and Francesco Cavaliere. Both have joined the product organization where they’re working on further enhancing the feature richness of the Xpress APIs and ensuring a great onboarding and tuning experience for both internal and external customers.
Pictures: Christian (left) and Francesco (right)
Christian holds a PhD in Optimization from the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). He is an expert in mathematical optimization, specializing in network design, robust optimization, and cutting-plane methods. After a successful academic career, he transitioned to industry, joining the small software company atesio for more than a decade. At atesio, he has been instrumental in developing software applications that automate infrastructure planning, ranging from telecommunications networks to railroad tracks.
With a good blend of deep technical expertise and practical industry insight, Christian has been involved in every stage of bringing mathematical technology into real-world applications, from research and software development to sales, technical account management, and customer support. He has driven successful proof-of-concepts and/or nationwide software rollouts for major clients including Deutsche Bahn, Swisscom, Brightspeed, Bell Canada, and AT&T.
Christian is excited to join the Xpress team to streamline third-level support, guiding clients in effectively using the solver engines, and supporting the sales process with evaluations and tuning for potential customers.
Francesco brings a strong blend of academic and practical experience in both optimization and software engineering. After completing his studies in information and computer engineering in Italy, he pursued a Ph.D. in Operations Research at the University of Bologna, followed by a postdoctoral position at the University of Padova where he focused on the implementation of optimization algorithms in real-world contexts. His research and project work covered a range of complex problems, including heuristic and exact methods for vehicle routing, satellite planning using both exact and heuristic techniques, and network design problems tackled through Benders decomposition in collaboration with industry partners.
At FICO, Francesco will focus on the APIs of Xpress across multiple programming languages, contributing to one of the most advanced commercial solvers for linear, integer, and nonlinear optimization. He’s particularly excited about working at the intersection of abstraction, usability, and performance, an area he finds both technically challenging and creatively rewarding.
Originally from Italy, Francesco enjoys staying active practicing parkour and often spends his free time exploring algorithms and optimization problems through hands-on coding projects.
Learn more and connect with them on LinkedIn: Christian and Francesco
The FICO Xpress team keeps growing, and we will keep you posted about our new colleagues who are onboarding soon.
Until then, you are welcome to try the Community Edition and experiment with the included license (limits on problem size apply).
Updated 1 year ago
Version 3.0