Andrei defends his work on recipe selection

Today, ir. Andrei “Andrew” Mereuţa successfully defended his MSc thesis: Multi-Meal, Multi-Constraint Recommender System to Optimize Grocery Budget and Waste. Many congratulations to him for reaching this milestone!

Andrei was kindly hosted by Picnic, under the supervision of Catalin Stefan Cernat. My colleague dr. Neil Yorke-Smith and I had the pleasure of co-supervising him on behalf of the Algorithmics group of TU Delft.

Andrei worked on Picnic’s meal planner service. His goal was to help consumers minimise costs by selecting a weekly menu in which dishes share ingredients, so consumers can buy in bulk. A secondary goal was to select recipes, ingredients and corresponding packing that minimises the waste that comes from unused ingredients.

To this end, Andrei did a thorough study of integer-linear programming (ILP) and genetic algorithm (GA) methods, and hybrid ILP-GA methods to see how fast they are and how well they achieve both optimisation criteria. He showcased his ability to come up with practical tools that are a good starting point for actual potential integration in real systems.

For me, this was a great opportunity to learn more about how Industry operates. Never before were my YouTube videos interrupted by commercials for a product that I was (however peripherally) involved in developing. I wish Andrei all the best for his next career steps!