Optimising Delivery of GenV's Early School Wave

Speaker: Kelvin Liu – (Optima/Melbourne University) Title: Optimising Delivery of GenV's Early School Wave Abstract: Generation Victoria (GenV) is a longitudinal child and parent cohort study run from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, in partnership with other organisations including the University of Melbourne. Its Early School Wave will send assessment teams into around 1,800 Victorian primary schools from mid-2028, measuring children across domains including cardiovascular function, bone health, lung capacity, cognition and motor skills. These measurements will form the basis of future research into how early-life indicators relate to chronic disease and other health conditions, so the wave needs to be delivered efficiently and at scale without compromising data quality. The talk outlines how optimisation techniques could support this delivery. Over a three-month project, GenV and I identified three problems central to delivering the wave: scheduling children through assessments within a school, deploying teams across the school network, and managing consumables and biosample logistics. I explored a range of scheduling and assignment methods for tackling the first two, which GenV identified as the more pressing. I also set out the limitations of those methods, which stem mainly from the information and data currently available. Bio: Kelvin is an OPTIMA Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He completed his joint PhD with the University of Melbourne and KU Leuven in 2025, where his research focused on applying instance space analysis to mathematical model formulations of multi-dimensional cutting and packing problems. He recently completed a three-month research contract with GenV on the delivery of its Early School Wave. His current research is on applications of AI in optimisation.