The INFORMS Computing Society Conference Was Terrific!

I hope that all that attended the INFORMS Computing Society Conference, which ended yesterday, made it home back safely!

I'd like to thank the organizing committee for such a great conference. The venue at the Omni hotel in Richmond, Virgina made for a convenient location, great socializing, and fabulous plenary talks and tutorials plus sessions.

 

 

I was pleased that three of our doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management, Tulay Flammand, Heng Chen, and my student, Sara Saberi, got a chance to present their work there and to do some serious networking.

It was great to reconnect with many wonderful colleagues - I capture only some of them in the photos here. It was fun to also meet new people, including one of the plenary speakers,  Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, with whom I shared a taxi to the Richmond airport after the conference. (On the way to the conference I shared a cab from the airport with Sheldon Jacobson.)  The full conference program and the conference Proceedings can be downloaded here.

 The hotel was close to the State House with a minipark and only 2 blocks from the river walk.

 

And I will make good use of my conference souvenir umbrella, which was a challenge carrying on the two-legged flights but everyone got to hear how it was a souvenir from the INFORMS Computing Society conference.

Thanks, again, to the organizers and to the speakers for the great intellectual stimulation and fun!

Packed Up and Off to the INFORMS Computing Society Conference in Richmond

Having a conference such as the 2015 INFORMS Computing Society Conference, which takes place in Richmond, Virgina, January 11-13, 2015,  is a treat.

The theme of the conference is: Operations Research and Computing: Algorithms and Software for Analytics.

The timing of the conference is convenient for faculty and students since it is taking place during the winter break between academic semesters.

I have packed up my suitcase and briefcase and will soon be heading to the airport.

The weather in Richmond is much milder than here in western Massachusetts so that will make the conference pleasant as well.

The conference organizing committee and the stream chairs did a terrific job putting the program together There will be many methodological sessions as well as application-based ones - I am especially interested in the network applications, the homeland security, and the  health applications tracks. There is also a marvelous lineup of plenary speakers and tutorial speakers.  The first plenary speaker is Professor George Nemhauser of Georgia Tech, tomorrow morning - a talk not to be missed.

The program and the Proceedings can be downloaded from this page.

On Tuesday morning, in a session in the Network Applications track, I will be presenting a paper, with assistance from my doctoral student, Sara Saberi, entitled: "A Game Theory Model for a Differentiated Service-Oriented Internet with Duration-Based Contracts." This paper is joint with also Professor Tilman Wolf of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst and Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Hartford.

Our paper can be accessed from the online Proceedings, compliments of INFORMS.

Many thanks to the Editors of this volume: Drs. Brian Borchers,  J. Paul Brooks, and Laura McLay!

Our presentation can be downloaded from the Supernetwork Center site here.

Looking forward to seeing many INFORMS Computing Society members soon in Richmond, Virginia!