Efficient Solution Procedures for Multistage Stochastic Formulations of Two Problem Classes

To my family iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank my advisors Ellis Johnson and John-Paul Clarke for their patience and continuous support during my doctoral research. I have learned so much from them. Their valuable insights and suggestions always pointed me in the right direction, and made it possible to successfully complete this dissertation. I am thankful to Earl Barnes for his helpful suggestions and perspectives on my research, as well as to the other members of my doctoral committee-Shabbir Ahmed and David Goldsman-for their valuable comments. I am also grateful to Paul Collopy of DFM Consulting for his practical insights, and to members of the Air Transportation Laboratory for taking part in discussions regarding this research. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my wife Banu for all the support, unconditional love, and patience she has shown me throughout this process. There is no way that I could have done this without her. I also want to thank my son Renan for continuously reminding me during the last phases of this research what is most important in life.