Minutes of the Optimization Section (OS) business meeting during the INFORMS conference in Seattle, WA, October 27, 1998:
1. The meeting was called to order by Jong-Shi Pang, OS chair, at 6:30 pm. Present were: Jong-Shi Pang, Nick Sahinidis, Yu Chan, T. Terlaky, R. Vanderbei, Tom McCormick, Sanjay Mehrotra, David Gay, Steven Dirkse, Song Xu, Todd Munson, Carlton Scott, Lisa Fleischer, Kevin Wayne, Serkan Hosten, Robert M. Freund, Stanislav Vryasev, Yang Dai, J. P. Shectman, Edgar E. Blanco, Shuzhong Zhang, Mike Todd, John Mitchell, Pitu B. Mirchandani, George G. Polak, Robert L. Armacost, Julia Pet-Edwards, Leslie Hall, Bruce W. Lamar, Paul Tseng, Sharon Filipowski, Ted Ralphs, Reha Tutuncu, Sebastian Ceria, Akiko Yoshise, Mahyar Amouzega, Danny Rak, Katya Scheinberg, Gabor Pataki, Robert Mifflin, Claude Lemarechal, Jane Ye, Siegfried Schaible, Richard Cottle, David F. Rogers, Haude Yurttan, Mohit Tawarmalani, Fagle A. Chudak, John Birge, Shabbir Ahmed, Michael Ferris.
2. Outgoing chair's report (Jong-Shi Pang):
Thanks were expressed to OS officers for bringing the section to this stage, and to Paul Tseng and Sharon Filipowski for organizing the sponsored sessions of the Seattle conference.
The set of OS officers effective after the Seattle meeting is:
- Michael Ferris: chair (fall 98-fall 99)
- Gerard Cornuejols: chair-elect (fall 98-fall 99); chair (fall 99-fall 00)
- Sharon Filipowski: secretary/treasurer (fall 98-fall 99)
- Paul Tseng: Nonlinear Programming (fall 98-fall 00)
- Chanaka Edirisinghe: Stochastic Programming (fall 98-fall 00)
- Nick Sahinidis: Global Optimization (fall 98-fall 00)
- Sebastian Ceria: Integer Programming (fall 97-fall 99)
- Janny Leung: Network Flows (fall 97-fall 99)
- Yinyu Ye: Linear Programming (fall 97-fall 99)
3. Secretary/tresurer's report (Nick Sahinidis):
A brief history of the OS was provided. The section was formed in the fall of 1995. At that time, the petition to form the OS was signed by about 40 individuals whose names are listed here. The OS membership grew to 357 in 1996, 513 in 1997, and is currently approximately 700. The largest INFORMS subdivision has fewer than 1000 members; OS is currently the fastest growing section.
There is a positive balance in our bank account of over $4500. INFORMS promised to increase the frequency and improve the quality of the financial reports it sends to subdivisions.
Our web page has been rebuilt. Send comments for improvements to nikos@uiuc.edu.
4. Incoming chair's report (Michael Ferris):
Thanks were expressed to outgoing chair Pang for serving the OS.
INFORMS plans to introduce a practice meeting. Beginning in 2001, the spring meeting will be a practice meeting whereas the fall meeting will have a format similar to current INFORMS meetings. The fall meeting will include an extra day (Saturday). Suggestions are solicited on how to best coordinate the OS activities with INFORMS' plans for the practice meeting (email suggestions to: ferris@cs.wisc.edu). Leslie Hall mentioned that Magnanti has placed on the INFORMS web page a set of slides related to the rationale behind the decision for the practice meeting.
The proposal to launch an OS prize for young researchers was brought up for discussion and vote. Freund and Vanderbei proposed to augment the original proposal to allow for more than one author to share the prize at any given year. The motion was approved and the first prize will be awared in the fall 1999 meeting in Philadelphia.
Other conference activities: The Cincinnati meeting is well on its way and there is still time for submissions. George Polak reported that Procter & Gamble provided $125,000 in support of the conference and that the OS has organized 20 sessions for this conference. Sebastian Ceria mentioned that some invitations for sponsored sessions for Philadelphia have already being sent.
5. The meeting was adjourned at 7:15 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Nick Sahinidis, OS secretary/treasurer.