The Optimization in Engineering Center (OPTEC) was created in 2005 as one of the twelve Centers of Excellence at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. OPTEC is a center of interdisciplinary research on engineering applications of mathematical optimization, emerging from four different engineering fields: computer science, as well as chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering. The main OPTEC objective is to shift the international state of the art by developing new and efficient formulations of the application-specific optimization problems that arise in each of the considered domains. Such new formulations will be the result of synergetic cooperation between top experts in both mathematical programming and each of the application domains, who are brought together within the OPTEC framework.
Two OPTEC professors have been awarded three "Gouden Krijtjes", the yearly teaching awards given by the organization of engineering students (vtk). Prof. Lombaert was awarded the prize for the best course in civil engineering, and Prof. Diehl the prizes for the best professor and the best course in mathematical engineering (where he teaches numerical optimization). They received these awards at the yearly "proffentap" where experienced students taught them how to draft beer professionally.
