Bachelor Student Prize Winner

Eighteen students completed their bachelor's degree in 2020 with a thesis that was labelled ‘excellent’ by their faculty. Here you will find a short introduction to these excellent theses in the form of an "elevator pitch" from each student, plus a video in which the supervisor briefly addresses the lucky winner.

Francine Fijen

 School of Business and Economics  |  Bachelor Econometrics and Operations Research

"The Search for a Moving Target: Under the object’s worst case initial position"

Francine's elevator pitch 
A single object moves between two locations according to a known Markov transition matrix. Player 1 assigns the object to a starting location. Oblivious of this decision, Player 2 searches a location. If the object is found, the game terminates. Otherwise, the object may move and Player 2 searches again, adhering to restrictions imposed on their actions. Player 1 aims to maximise the expected search time. Given this worst-case scenario, player 2 aims to minimise the expected search time. The aim is to determine how different restrictions on Player 2’s abilities affect both players’ optimal strategy, and the game value.