MSc. Alisson García Herrera, a faculty member of the Logistics and Transportation program at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (FCNM) of ESPOL and a doctoral candidate at the Public University of Navarre (UPNA), was awarded the Best Oral Communication prize in the Transport Systems and Mobility symposium at the 6th Doctoral Congress in Engineering 2025 (DCE25), held at the University of Porto, Portugal.
The DCE is an event that brings together doctoral students and researchers from various engineering fields, recognizing presentations that stand out for their scientific quality, methodological rigor, and clarity of exposition. MSc. García Herrera’s presentation, titled “Collaborative logistics and heuristic optimization for sustainable last-mile urban distribution,” was developed as part of her doctoral research.
Her research focuses on the challenges of last-mile distribution in urban environments, where city growth and the rise of e-commerce increase congestion, costs, and environmental impact. The study evaluates crowdshipping as a complement to traditional systems, integrating principles of collaborative logistics and multi-objective optimization models. To this end, she developed a variant of the Team Orienteering Problem, which allows designing efficient routes considering constraints such as driver availability, travel times, and load capacity.
In addition to her doctoral work, MSc. García Herrera led the comprehensive design of the Master’s program in Transportation Engineering and Sustainable Mobility. This program was created in response to the shortage of professionals specialized in planning and mobility, a reality that affects the quality of life in cities where congestion and the lack of efficient systems impact people daily. For Alisson, this master’s degree reflects the university’s social commitment and represents an opportunity to promote technical solutions that improve mobility and sustainable urban development in the country.
This recognition at DCE 2025 highlights the international reach of the research conducted and reaffirms ESPOL’s contribution to education and knowledge generation addressing current transportation and mobility challenges. From ESPOL, we extend our congratulations for this important recognition, which reflects Alisson’s dedication, talent, and vision in the academic field.
