Amal de Silva
Founder
Turning complex problems into decisions people can act on.
- 30 years
- Building optimization systems
- 4 continents
- USA, Asia, Europe, Australia
- 10+
- Industries served
- In production
- From concept to daily operational use
Amal has built optimization systems for logistics, transportation, aviation, energy and manufacturing — the industries where a scheduling decision is measured in vehicles, aircraft or shifts rather than percentages.
That work covers most of what Gradient Path now does. Bus driver routing, aircrew scheduling, aircraft tail assignment, rail maintenance crews, locomotive and railcar movement, airport gate allocation — each built, deployed and put into daily operational use, several still running. Before founding Gradient Optimization he was a Senior Research Scientist at Apple; earlier, at Gurobi Optimization itself, solving modelling problems for customers across transportation, energy and finance.
PhD in Computer Science and Operations Research, Griffith University. MEng in Industrial Engineering and Management, Asian Institute of Technology. BSc in Electrical Engineering, University of Moratuwa.
What the work involves.
Mathematical optimization
LP and MIP modelling, constraint programming, and heuristics — genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu search.
Scheduling & routing
Workforce, crew, fleet and asset problems, at the sizes real operations actually run.
Advanced analytics
Simulation and stochastic models where the inputs themselves are uncertain.
Operationalization
Getting models out of notebooks and into production systems people depend on daily.
Where the experience comes from.
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2018 – 2026
Apple — Senior Research Scientist, Planning & Logistics
Supply chain optimization for production planning, demand-supply matching and procurement.
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2017 – 2018
ENGIE Storage — Asset Optimization Lead
Cutting customers' electricity costs by shaving demand peaks and arbitraging energy price.
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2016 – 2017
Gurobi Optimization — Senior Optimization Support Engineer
Modelling and performance problems for customers in transportation, energy and finance.
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2014 – 2016
IBM — Client Technical Specialist, Optimization
Emergency crew mobilisation, airline crew routing, offshore helicopter logistics, rental fleet repositioning.
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2011 – 2014
GE Transportation — Optimization Engineer
Railcar fleet movement, rail maintenance crew scheduling, and container loading optimised for fuel consumption.
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2010 – 2011
Amobee — Principal Engineer
Optimising ad placement across networks at platform scale.
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1998 – 2009
ILOG — Principal Optimization Consultant
Semiconductor fab scheduling that raised throughput 15%, and airline crew routing.
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1995 – 2005
Jeppesen / Preston Aviation — Senior Engineer, OR Analyst
Bus routing, ship loading, rolling stock routing, and airport gate assignment still in daily use.
Ten industries, one underlying problem.
Tell us about the plan you are trying to improve.
If your problem resembles any of the above — or looks nothing like them but has the same shape — we would like to hear about it.