The "Friedrich List" Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences at TU Dresden welcomes Dr. Nikola Bešinović (36) as a new member of the faculty community. As an expert in railway transport systems and their analysis and optimisation, he is moving from the renowned TU Delft/Netherlands to TU Dresden.

Nikola Bešinović follows Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rainer König as acting head of the Chair of Rail and Public Urban Transport. He retired on 1 April 2022 after 22 years at the faculty.

Dr. Bešinović had been working in Delft since 2012 - first as a doctoral researcher and, following his PhD in Railway Science in 2017, as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. His PhD thesis "Integrated Capacity Assessment and Timetabling Models for Dense Railway Networks" deals with designing advanced mathematical models and approaches for railway timetabling.

Research focus is an excellent fit for systemic research approach within the faculty

"Given his research focus, Dr. Bešinović is an excellent fit for us and the systemic research approach within our faculty," says Prof. Günther Prokop, Dean of the "Friedrich List" Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences. "We are very pleased to have been able to win him over as acting head and thus seamlessly continue and also further develop research and teaching at the chair. Railway operations, railway traffic and railway technology have a long tradition in research and teaching at the faculty. With Dr. Bešinović, new and forward-thinking impulses will certainly be set here".

Nikola Bešinović’ current research interests are to develop analytics and optimization methodologies to promote efficient, reliable, and sustainable transport systems. His main focus is on railway traffic management systems, where he proposes data-driven decision-making approaches to enhance railway operations, train scheduling and driver behaviour. In the process, he also deals with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). He is also interested in new resilient transport concepts, determining critical infrastructure and operations, and impacts of increased transport demand on further technological development of railway systems.

"I am very much looking forward to my work, my new team and the cooperation with my colleagues at the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences and beyond at TU Dresden and its partners," says Nikola Bešinović. He sees great potential in the Chair of Rail and Public Urban Transport, which was an important factor in his decision to move to Dresden: "There are clearly development opportunities here to become one of the top professorships in rail transport research in Europe - if not number 1."

Academic career

2004 – 2009 Bachelor (BSc) in Railway Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of Belgrade

2009 – 2011 Master (MSc) in Operations Research in Transport, University of Belgrade

2012 – 2017 PhD researcher in Railway Science, TU Delft

Seit 2017 Lecturer and Researcher at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Department of Transport and Planning, TU Delft

2016 Visiting Researcher at Network Rail, UK

2018 – 2019 Visiting Researcher at Beijing Jiaotong University, China

Awards (selection)

Young Railway Operations Researcher Award from IAROR

First Prize at the TRAVISIONS Young Researcher Competition

Best Student Paper from INFORMS Railway Application Section

3RD Best IEEE ITS Dissertation Award

Current research topics

- Assessing and enhancing resilience of railway and multimodal transport systems

- Integrated passenger and train disruption management for metro systems

- Optimizing railway operations for maintenance possessions

- AI in railway transport planning and rescheduling

- Railway timetabling under growing passenger demand

Memberships

- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

- International Association of Railway Operations Research (IAROR)

- Netherlands Research School on Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics (TRAIL)

Dr. Nikola Bešinović

Portrait of a man with long hair in a braid and beard

New interim head
Chair of Rail and Public Urban Transport
"Friedrich List" Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences
TU Dresden
mail: nikola.besinovic@tu-dresden.de