IMA Hot Topics Workshop:

Mixed-Integer Programming

July 25 - 29, 2005

Sponsors

With support from the Mathematical Sciences Department of IBM Research, for the travel of early-career researchers, and from SAS Operations Research & Management Science.

The proceedings of this workshop have been published in a special issue of the journal Discrete Optimization.

Organizers:

Alper Atamturk
Department of Industrial Eng. and Oper. Research
University of California - Berkeley

Daniel Bienstock
Department of IEOR
Columbia University

Sanjeeb Dash
IBM - Research

Adam N. Letchford
Management Science
Lancaster University
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/letchfoa/

Jeff Linderoth
Industrial and Systems Engineering Department
Lehigh University

http://www.lehigh.edu/~jtl3/

Description:

Mixed-integer programming (MIP) has entered a fourth, and critical, phase. The initial phase of development, beginning in the 1950's, identified some core methodological and modeling techniques, and discovered the inherent complexity of combinatorial problems. The second phase (late '60s through mid '80s) embarked on a primarily methodological path, which paralleled, in a smaller scale, that taken by the Theoretical Computer Science community. The third phase (1990's) used the methodological developments of the prior decades to obtain software implementations far superior to any available before.

We are now in the fourth phase, which recognizes the (often stunning) implementational successes recorded in the last ten years, while also acknowledging the fact that much more methodological work is needed. In this phase, building bridges to other areas of mathematics is an important component. Nevertheless, MIP now constitutes a unique computational science: it attempts to routinely solve problems that are fundamentally intractable and that arise from many applications, and it does so by blending mathematics, ever more sophisticated implementations, and innovative modeling.

This meeting will bring together many of the leading researchers in both the theoretical and computational aspects of MIP to highlight recent advances, foster interaction and collaboration, and to discuss how to expand the role of MIP in several potential high-impact application areas, such as network design for the Power Grid, computational biology, medical treatment planning, and cryptography.

Special Issue on Integer and Mixed-Integer Programming of the journal Discrete Optimization Call for Papers

A special issue of the journal Discrete Optimization will be devoted to this workshop. The editors of the special issue, Jon Lee and Adam Letchford, invite all participants in the IMA workshop, whether speakers or not, to submit papers by the deadline of 15 September 2005. To be considered for publication, papers should be directly related to integer or mixed-integer programming, but need not be connected to specific talks given at the workshop. Submitted papers will undergo the full refereeing process of Discrete Optimization.

Paper should be prepared in LaTeX and submitted electronically, in PDF or PostScript format, to either of the guest editors, indicating in the email that the paper is to be consider for the special issue "IMA-MIP". Authors are requested to put their e-mail address on the manuscript.

LIST OF CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS