Bio

2009-2013, PhD in Department of Mathematics, LSE2007-2009, MSc in Operational Research, LSE2004-2005, MMath in Mathematics, University of Cambridge2001-2004, MA in Mathematics, University of Cambridge

Thomas Lidbetter joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment in 2022. Prior to that, he was awarded tenure at Rutgers Business School after being on the faculty there for six years. Previously, he worked in the Departments of Mathematics and Management at the London School of Economics as an LSE Fellow for three years. He retains links with the LSE, where he is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow.

Dr Lidbetter’s research is largely concerned with search and sequencing problems and their applications in the realm of national security. His work employs techniques from game theory and discrete optimization to find policies that are efficient, robust and easy to implement.

Dr Lidbetter has several publications in such highly regarded operations research journals as Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research and INFORMS Journal on Computing. He won the 2013 Doctoral Dissertation Award from the UK Operations Research Society for “the most distinguished body of research leading to a doctorate in operations research”. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

While working towards his doctorate in mathematics from the London School of Economics, Dr Lidbetter also worked for the UK government in the Home Office.

Awards

  • NSF award for “Continuous Search and Patrolling on Networks” (award number 1935826) 2019-2022
  • NSF award for “Collaborative Research: Minimum-cost strategies for Sequential Search and Evaluation” (award number 1909446), with Lisa Hellerstein 2019-2022
  • Rutgers Business School Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award 2019
  • LSE Teaching and Learning Centre Teaching Prize 2016
  • Doctoral Dissertation Award for the most distinguished body of research leading to a doctorate in the field of Operational Research, from UK OR Society 2013
  • Mathematics Class Teacher Prize, LSE Department of Mathematics 2013

Research Interests

  • Search theory and algorithms
  • Game theory,
  • Discrete optimisation
  • Scheduling
  • Mathematical biology

Selected Publications

  • A General Framework for Approximating Min Sum Ordering Problems ABS Happach, F., Hellerstein, L. and Lidbetter, T. (2021) A General Framework for Approximating Min Sum Ordering Problems, INFORMS Journal on Computing (in press)
  • Competitive Search in a Network ABS Angelopoulos, S. and Lidbetter T. (2020) Competitive Search in a Network, European Journal of Operational Research, 286(2):781-790
  • The Largest-Z-ratio-First algorithm is 0.8531-Approximate for Scheduling Unreliable Jobs on m Parallel Machines ABS Agnetis, A. and Lidbetter, T. (2020) The Largest-Z-ratio-First algorithm is 0.8531-Approximate for Scheduling Unreliable Jobs on m Parallel Machines, Operations Research Letters, 48(4):405-409
  • A Search Game on a Hypergraph with Booby Traps ABS Lidbetter, T. and Lin, K.Y. (2020) A Search Game on a Hypergraph with Booby Traps, Theoretical Computer Science, 821:57-70