Dear colleagues,
We would like to invite submissions to the Special Issue “New Trends and Novel Applications of Bilevel Optimization” in the International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR).
This special issue aims to highlight recent methodological advances and emerging applications of bilevel optimization in areas such as logistics, transportation, energy systems, supply chains, machine learning, and related fields.
Submission deadline: September 30, 2026.
Call for Papers: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/assets/14753995/cfp/call-for-papers-bilevel-optimization-1771438426537.pdf
Bilevel optimization provides a natural framework for representing hierarchical decision-making processes in which multiple actors or decision levels interact sequentially. Over the past years, its use has expanded across a wide range of application areas, including supply chain, logistics, transportation systems, environmental management, energy planning, communication networks, security, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. This sustained interest is largely driven by the capability of bilevel models to reflect nested decision structures and to explicitly represent interactions between decision makers with potentially conflicting objectives.
From a computational and theoretical perspective, bilevel problems are widely recognized as challenging. Their intrinsic complexity has motivated significant research efforts aiming to strengthen the theoretical foundations of bilevel optimization and to develop more effective solution methodologies. In the last two decades, considerable progress has been made in both algorithmic design and analytical understanding, although many challenges remain open.
This special issue seeks to offer a timely platform for disseminating high-quality contributions on recent advances in bilevel optimization. While applications constitute a central focus, submissions addressing theoretical developments are also strongly encouraged. In particular, the special issue welcomes studies proposing new methodological approaches, as well as submissions establishing connections with robust, stochastic, and multi-objective optimization frameworks.
This special issue of ITOR welcomes contributions spanning the full spectrum of bilevel optimization, from theoretical foundations to real-world applications. Manuscripts addressing both exact solution methods and heuristic approaches are encouraged. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Linear and nonlinear bilevel programming,
• Continuous and integer bilevel programming,
• Bilevel optimization under uncertainty,
• Bilevel optimization with multiple objectives,
• Exact solution methods for bilevel problems,
• Decomposition, reformulation, and relaxation techniques,
• Heuristic, metaheuristic, and matheuristic approaches for bilevel problems,
• Computational tools and solver implementations for bilevel optimization, and
• Applications of bilevel optimization in transportation, supply chain, logistics, energy, production, healthcare, environmental systems, and social sciences.
All papers submitted for this special issue will undergo the standard peer review procedures established by ITOR. Submitted papers must be original, unpublished, and not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All submissions must fit within the domain statement of the journal and will be judged for their relevance to the special issue’s scope, innovativeness, and the extent of theoretical and practical research contribution.
Contributions should be prepared according to the instructions to authors, which can be found on the journal homepage on https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14753995/homepage/ forauthors.html. Authors should submit and upload their contributions using the submission site https://wiley. atyponrex.com/journal/ITOR, indicating in their cover letter that the paper is intended for this special issue.
For further information, please feel free to contact the guest editors.
We would greatly appreciate it if you could share this call with colleagues who may be interested.
Best regards,
Guest Editors in charge of this issue:
José-Fernando Camacho-Vallejo (Tecnológico de Monterrey, México)
Maria João Alves (Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal)
Rosa G. González-Ramírez (Universidad de los Andes, Chile)