Things in the OR world I am looking forward to in 2009 – Part II: Conferences

Is it me, or are there more conferences and workshops than usual this year? (please don’t  take this statement as a complaint.  After all, it goes under the category “I am looking forward to”.) Got to be me…

* The year started fast with INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) conference in January, which I heard was “excellent” (quoting a colleague).  It is held every two years.

*  In August, there is the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP), which is held every three years. So, that’s an additional one this year.  It has been 60 years since the so-called zeroth ISMP, which was also held in Chicago.   It is a great conference and I am really looking forward to it.

Summer is always very busy with conferences.

* It starts with Industrial Engineering Research Conference (IERC). May 31-June 2, Miami, FL.

*  Shortly after, there is the CORS/INFORMS International Meeting.  June 14-17 in Toronto, Canada.

*  And, it ends with ISMP (see above) at August 23 – 28, 2009. This is right around the time when the school starts.

Needless to say, there is the INFORMS Annual Meeting, once again held in October.  I will have a tutorial at INFORMS, with my former adviser, David Morton.  Also, at the IERC.  I’m very excited about this.

* But probably it is all the back-to-back conferences that will soon take place in AZ that make me think the conferences are more frequent this year:

1. NSF Regional Grants Conference.  This will be held March 30-31, 2009, Tempe, AZ.   Operations Research director Robert Smith will be here.
2. INFORMS Western Regional Conference, will be held April 24-25 at ASU.   Leo Lopes and I put together several optimization sessions and I am looking forward to connecting with my colleagues at ASU.  (We are so close yet so far away.)
3. INFORMS Practice Conference.  This is right after the Western Regional Conference, April 26-28, Phoenix, AZ.  At the pre-conference workshop, Gurobi is expected to officially release their new software (which was my Expectations-Part I).

While on that subject, for more on Gurobi, Microsoft Solver Foundation (MSF), SAS optimization suite and other exciting happenings on the software side of operations research in 2009, please take a look at this blog post by Sanjay Saigal.

The above is certainly not a comprehensive list, rather, a personal one.  There are many other conferences like this one or specialized workshops like this one (on constraint programming and more) or this one (on mixed integer programming).  I know some BlogORs write about the conferences.  I am new at this, so, I will “try” to blog about these conferences as I attend them.

On a personal note, besides the above conferences, I am looking forward to:

* 2 Weddings
* 1 US Supreme Court Bar Swearing-In Ceremony
* Drinking less coffee (this is easy)
* Eating less chocolate (this is almost impossible!)