The Operations Research Challenge (TORCH) is a one-day team competition for high school students (grades 9 – 12) located on the University of Toronto St. George campus. The event is organized primarily by graduate students in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, specializing in operations research (OR). OR is a cross-disciplinary field in industrial engineering that shares concepts from mathematics and computer science to improve decision making. With the global shift towards a more analytically demanding society, OR tools, such as mathematical modeling and optimization, have become highly relevant; seeing widespread application. Our free, full-day contest is designed to showcase real-world applications of OR, to encourage creative thinking and team collaboration, and to illustrate potential career paths through our speaker series. Student participants work together in teams of three or four to solve problems and compete for prizes.

Our mission is to generate interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) with a specific focus on OR. Hence, we reach out to the younger generation before they enter university or college such that they are aware of this field, whose existence is not even known to most high school students. Since our inception in 2011, we are proud to have exposed over roughly 800 students to OR from a wide range of schools in Ontario. In 2020, TORCH celebrated its 10th Anniversary of introducing students to OR.