Thomas Lidbetter

Dr Lidbetter is an assistant professor in the Management Science and Information Systems Department in Rutgers Business School. He began the appointment in 2016 after spending three years at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the UK as an LSE Fellow, in the Management and Mathematics Departments. He retains his links with the LSE, where he is now a visiting fellow.

His work is largely concerned with game theoretic models and their applications to problems of national security, particularly search games, which he studies from a game theoretic and algorithmic perspective. He is also interested in understanding and exploiting links between search theory and other areas of operations research such as scheduling and throughput maximization.

Dr Lidbetter has several publications in prestigious Operations Research journals such as Operations Research and Mathematics of Operations Research. 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 the field of Operational Research. His collaborators and friends include Steve Alpern, Spyros Angelopoulos, Robbert Fokkink, Lisa Hellerstein and Katerina Papadaki.

Dr Lidbetter received his doctorate in mathematics from the London School of Economics. He has also had experience working as an operations research analyst for the UK government, in the Home Office.

Research Interests

Search theory and algorithms, game theory, discrete optimisation, scheduling, mathematical biology.

Awards and funding

• 2019-2022: 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 Rutgers Business School Junior Faculty Research Excellence Award
• 2016 LSE Teaching and Learning Centre Teaching Prize
• 2013 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

Journal Articles

• Happach, F., Hellerstein, L. and Lidbetter, T. (2021) A General Framework for Approximating Min Sum Ordering Problems, INFORMS Journal on Computing (in press)

• Angelopoulos, S. and Lidbetter T. (2020) Competitive Search in a Network, European Journal of Operational Research, 286(2):781-790

• 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

• Lidbetter, T. and Lin, K.Y. (2020) A Search Game on a Hypergraph with Booby Traps, Theoretical Computer Science, 821:57-70

• Lidbetter, T. (2020) Search and Rescue in the Face of Uncertain Threats, European Journal of Operational Research, 285(3):1153-1160

• Alpern, S. and Lidbetter, T. (2020) Search and Delivery Man Problems: When are Depth-first Paths Optimal?, European Journal of Operational Research, 285(3):965-976

• Fokkink, R., Lidbetter T. and Végh, L. (2019) On Submodular Search and Machine Scheduling, Mathematics of Operations Research, 44(4):1145-1509

• Hellerstein, L., Lidbetter, T. and Pirutinsky, D. (2019) Solving Zero-sum Games using Best Response Oracles with Applications to Search Games, Operations Research, 67(3):731-743

• Lidbetter, T. and Lin, K.Y. (2019) Searching for Multiple Objects in Multiple Locations, European Journal of Operational Research, 278(2):709-720

• Angelopoulos, S., Dürr, C. and Lidbetter, T. (2019) The expanding search ratio of a graph, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 260:51-65

• Alpern, S., Lidbetter, T. and Papadaki, K. (2019) Optimizing Periodic Patrols against Short Attacks on the Line and Other Networks, European Journal of Operational Research, 273(3):1065-1073

• Alpern, S. and Lidbetter, T. (2019) Approximate solutions for Expanding Search on General Networks, Annals of Operations Research, 275(2):259-279

• Bonato, A. and Lidbetter, T. (2019) Bounds on the Burning Numbers of Spiders and Path-Forests, Theoretical Computer Science, 794:12-19

• Lidbetter, T. (2017) On the Approximation Ratio of the Random Chinese Postman Tour for Network Search, European Journal of Operational Research 263(3):782-788

• Papadaki, K., Alpern, S., Lidbetter, T. and Morton, A. (2016) Patrolling a Border, Operations Research 64(6):1256-1269

• Csóka, E. and Lidbetter, T. (2016) The solution to an open problem for a caching game. Naval Research Logistics 63(1):23-31

• Lidbetter, T. (2015) A caching game with infinitely divisible hidden material. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization 52(5):3040-3056

• Alpern, S. and Lidbetter, T. (2015) Optimal Trade-Off Between Speed and Acuity When Searching for a Small Object. Operations Research 63(1):122-133

• Alpern, S. and Lidbetter, T. (2014) Searching a Variable Speed Network. Mathematics of Operations Research, 39(3):697-711

• Lidbetter, T. (2013) Search Games with Multiple Hidden Objects. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization 51(4):3056–3074

• Alpern, S. and Lidbetter, T. (2013) Mining Coal or Finding Terrorists: The Expanding Search Paradigm. Operations Research, 61(2):265-279

• Alpern, S., Fokkink, R., Lidbetter, T. and Clayton, N. (2012) A Search Game model of the Scatter Hoarder's problem. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 9(70):869-879

Working papers

• Alpern, S., Lidbetter, T. and Papadaki, K. Continuous Patrolling Games (submitted)

Book Chapters

• Lidbetter, T. (2013) Search Games for an Immobile Hider. Fokkink, R. et al (ed.) Search Theory: A Game Theoretic Approach