2010 INFORMS Annual Meeting

Last day of the conference…

Last day to make the best out of it. Even though the last day of the conference is typically treated as the stepchild of the whole conference, there are a number of good talks on a number of interesting areas, both sponsored/invited and contributed. Since I am more interested in ...

Honored presentors - WA49 WD24

I wish I could have stayed on wednesday to catch these two sessions in particular. I'm highlighting them because I know the speakers will entertain and enlighten you since they are easy to listen to (strong communicators) and also are intelligent creative gifted analysts. First session WA track 49 is held ...

INFORMS Tweetup

There are lots of ways to get out information on the INFORMS conference. This blog is one of them, and it has been great to see the variety of views of the conference. Of course, with more than 4300 participants, there will be lots of variety in how the conference ...

Presentation to the Chairs

I thought we would give you all a quick update of what we have been doing while at the Informs conference. Bob Young (NC State) and I provided updates of Project MINDSET to more than 50 chairs of IE and operations research departments. The presentations were enthusiastically received. The chairs recognize ...

Operations Research in Chile

Andres Weintraub of the University of Chile had a team translate into Spanish and adapt to their environment the book Does This Line Ever Move? Everyday Applications of Operations Research. This has served as a foundation for a broad outreach effort to bring OR into high schools and to ...

immigration policy limits innovation

Even though you might not have the BLOGGER name badge on - you are welcome to comment on an entry - or suggest a new topic for an article title. After observing so many international attendees at our annual meeting come by the job fair, one suggestion given to ...

Are you a session-hopper?

Given the number of parallel sessions and the number of good/interesting talks at the same time slot, to maximize our take from the conference, we all "hop" from one session to another one in the middle of the session time slot. I don't know if anybody can say "I don't ...

The best student chapters…

Tomorrow at the Chapters/Fora breakfast, we will recognize the following student chapters as the most active student student chapters of 2009. Summa Cum Laude Arizona State University Magna Cum Laude University of Massachusetts University of South Florida Cum Laude Texas A&M University North Carolina State University University of Illinois - Chicago Florida International University University of California - Berkeley Oklahoma ...

The “Junior Faculty” with the best paper is…

This is an addition to my earlier posting about the JFIG paper competition. The results for the JFIG paper competition are in. For those of you who have missed the JFIG luncheon, The first place is: Felipe Caro (UCLA-Anderson School of Management) and Victor Martinez-de-Albeniz (IESE Business School, Spain), "Product and Price ...

Avoiding bunches of buses

While the INFORMS conference is big enough to stay within a narrow research area, it is also a great place to get inspiration outside your focus. I hopped in to see a talk given by Don Eisenstein on work he has done with John Bartholdi on "scheduling" buses. Don and ...

Healthcare Operations

I am very pleased to see that one of the key themes of this conference, besides energy, is healthcare operations. There are indeed talks on healthcare across the board, in the M&SOM cluster, the Service Science cluster, the Data Mining cluster, the Decision Analysis Cluster, among others, and of course in the Health ...

job fair impressions

As the up and coming PhD's meet face to face with reps from universities across the globe in search for academic research positions, ll over half the tables were occupied by industry and government players. This year in addition the long time firms who continue to rely on INFORMS to ...

MINDSET Workshop

On Tuesday, the Informs Public Awareness Committee in conjunction with the creators and supporters of MINDSET will be presenting a workshop for local Austin high school teachers. The workshop will cover concepts from the MINDSET textbooks including linear programming, Excel solver, queuing, decision trees, and more. A similar workshop was delivered ...

Interviews

You may have seen two people (Jay Johnson and R. Jean Ruth) around the conference interviewing some of the attendees. What are they doing, you ask? They are interviewing the conference attendees to get different perspectives of why people are attracted to operations research. The questions are pretty simple: 1. What ...

TSL Society business meeting preview

On the agenda tonight at 6:15 in Hilton Salon K is the business meeting of the Transportation Science and Logistics Society. Although "business meeting" sounds a bit dry, this is a great networking event for those of us who focus in on the transportation and supply chain application domains. The ...

COIN-OR Events

COIN-OR users, members, fans, and other interested folks, don't forget to join us for the COIN-OR Users Meeting, 12:15-1:15 today in Conference Center 19B, Level 4. Come by the booth in the exhibit area, pick up a few chocolate coins struck with the visage of Fearless Leader (ret.) John Forrest, and ...

COIN-OR Cup

Congratulations to Pietro Belotti of Clemson and the Couenne development team, who received the 2010 COIN-OR Cup for his work on the Couenne MINLP solver. The goal of COIN-OR Cup prize is to reward effective utilization of COIN-OR or valuable contributions to COIN-OR. This year's Couenne submission for the prize can be ...

Membership on my mind

The INFORMS conference is always a whirlwind for me... seeing old friends, catching up with former students, meeting new people... zipping around between sessions and meetings and meals.... A large part of the problem is trying to jam all of this activity into two-and-a-half days: with two little kids at ...

Highlights from the first day – the job fair, food, music, and rumors

The job fair today was very successful! Those seeking jobs were out in full force from 12-5. It was great to see so many qualified candidates, as well as so many companies and universities hiring again. Just seeing this gave me more confidence in the direction our economy is taking. ...

Introducing MINDSET

Welcome to the Informs blog for the 2010 annual conference! My name is Dr. Kenneth Chelst and I am a Co-PI on Project MINDSET. Project MINDSET seeks to bring Operations Research to high school students, and is a collaborative project between Wayne State University, North Carolina State University, and the ...

COIN-OR/ForrestFest Sunday

Alan King and Robin Lougee write: Don't miss John and John (Forrest and Tomlin) as they struggle to answer searching questions on "Self-documenting Code and Other 'Tricks' of the Trade"! SD40 Panel Discussion: Sunday Nov 07, 16:30 - 18:00 C - Room 9C, Level 3 Chair: Robin Lougee ....AND.... PARTY TIME!!!! 8-10pm Iron Cactus Grill and Tequila ...

Welcome to the Annual Meeting!

Hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather in Austin as much as I am. There were snow flurries in Michigan as I was leaving, so its nice to be back in a Michigan-like summer. If you are interested in a carreer in OR, don't forget to visit the Job Fair today ...

Overbooking, Revenue Management, and Data Mining

Fellow blogger Guillaume Roels wrote that the hotel he reserved overbooked, so he has been exiled to a remote location and he bemoaned the lack of customer service in this transaction. Something similar was obviously going on in my hotel, the Hilton (the main hotel for the conference). Throughout the ...

Inbound notes

(1) Encountered backscatter X-ray screening for the first time at Charlotte Douglas Airport. This may or may not be a big advance in terms of protecting us (google Bruce Schneier and "security theater"), but it certainly seems like a step backward in terms of security line efficiency. First, you need ...

Revenue Management in Action

I haven't received my conference badge yet, and I am already experimenting the power of Operations Research, and in particular of Revenue Management,... unless it is Poor Management? The Hilton Garden Hill, in which I was supposed to stay, overbooked its rooms for tonight and had to relocate me in a ...

Drumroll please for the Junior Faculty with the Best Paper…

39 papers are submitted for this year's competition and each one is evaluated based on the importance of the topic, appropriateness of the research approach, and the significance of research contribution. The competition is chaired by Dr. Hayriye Ayhan. After careful review, the judges have picked 6 finalists: Achal Bassamboo, Ramandeep ...

Doing Good with Good OR Student Competition

This promises to be a great conference in a fun city. I am looking forward to the two sessions on Sunday that will feature the finalists for the Doing Good with Good OR Student Competition (that John Fowler and I co--chaired this year). The sessions are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ...

Packing my bags, putting together a schedule

I'm off to Austin tomorrow, and looking forward to this conference even than most. Partly, this is due to Austin, a city I have never been to before. I particularly like the "Keep INFORMS Weird" page: this looks like it is going to be a fun place to be! But I ...

Packing For the Conference…

Clothes, shoes, toiletries.. Check! Laptop.. Check! Laptop/Cell phone charger.. Check! Clicker.. Check! Presentation files, Chapter/Fora/Subdivision documents.. Check! Things to read/grade/review.. Check! Baby and baby stuff.. Check! This is going to be my daughter's second INFORMS conference, and she just turned 10 months old! It is one thing to get ready for a conference as a professional, ...

All the information you need before you go……

PRINT PROGRAM PDFs SEARCH THE PROGRAM AV: BRING YOUR LAPTOP LCD (computer) projectors will be available in every technical session room. Please note that you must bring your laptop (or share with another presenter) and AC power adaptor. Technical assistance will be available for any AV problems. LOCAL TRANSPORATION TO HOTELS Complete information ...

INFORMS comes to Austin, the city of Live Music and Great Food!

by Liwen (Brandon) Chen To me, there are three very exciting things to look forward to for the rest of the year: starting my new job as an Assistant Professor in Marketing at City University of Hong Kong in July; having another baby boy in August; and returning to Austin for ...