Jacobus (Jaap) Wessels (19 January 1939 – 30 July 2009) was a Dutch mathematician and Professor of Stochastic Operations Research at the Eindhoven University of Technology,[1] known for his contributions in the field of Markov decision processes.
[2] In 1960, Wessels started his academic career at the University of Amsterdam as assistant to Jan Hemelrijk, an authority in the field of stochastic processes.
Wessels' research interests focused on topics such as queuing theory, neural networks and structured Markov processes, and more specifically "decision support methodology and he applies his favorite research topics in operations management, communication processes, manpower policy making and environmental problems.
"[4] Wessels' most cited work is the 2000 publication Model-based decision support methodology with environmental applications, edited with Andrzej Wierzbicki and Marek Makowski.
Several fields in science also occupy themselves with the nature of different aspects of decision making: philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, etc.