Passing of Pierre Hansen

The members of the HEC Montréal community were saddened to learn of the passing of Pierre Hansen in January 2025. He was a Tenured Researcher in the Department of Decision Sciences and a faculty member at the School from 1990 onwards. Pierre Hansen held the Data Mining Chair and was Director of the Group for Research in Decision Analysis (GERAD) from 1996 to 2001.

Pierre Hansen was one of the world’s leading researchers in his field. A prolific author, he published over 400 papers throughout his career and was cited nearly 38,300 times. His research work spanned over 15 disciplines. Thanks to his vast scientific contributions, he was awarded the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) Gold Medal and was inducted into Canada’s Academy of Science. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1999, he also won the HEC Montréal Award for Research Excellence in 2013.

He and the late Nenad Mladenovic founded Variable Neighborhood Search, a cutting-edge technique widely used to solve complex optimization issues.

Pierre Hansen also supervised multiple PhD and postdoctoral students, thus contributing to the teaching of an entire generation of researchers.

Both the School and the global academic community will carry on his scientific and human legacy.