News – Operations Research Society of New Zealand

ORSNZ AGM 2025 and Agenda

The 2025 ORSNZ Annual General Meeting will be held at the upcoming 57th ORSNZ Conference on Friday 21 November starting at 1pm.

The preliminary agenda for the meeting is:

Apologies (to [email protected]);
Minutes of the previous AGM (here);
Matters arising from the minutes;
President’s report (here);
Honorary Treasurer’s report and financial statements (here);
Updates from regional and special interest groups (please send agenda items to [email protected]);
Updates regarding the ORSNZ status as an Incorporated Society under the new Incorporated Societies Act 2022;
Future Conferences;
If time permits: Communications, Social Media and Website redevelopment;
Election of officers and auditor;
Other business.

You can assign a proxy to vote on your behalf using the 2nd page of this form; this should be sent to [email protected].

I look forward to seeing you all at the conference and AGM.

Please note that conference registrations close today (10/11/2025) – please get in touch with me if you would like to register after this date.

Andrea Raith
ORSNZ President

Job Opportunity – Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Decision Sciences/Supply Chain Management at Victoria University of Wellington

An opening for a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Decision Sciences/Supply Chain Management at Victoria University of Wellington is now available on the university website: https://ejye.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1/jobs/preview/1007925

Closing date 28 June

Andrea Raith (ORSNZ President) on behalf of Vicky Mabin

Job Opportunity – Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the University of Auckland

Kia ora koutou,

Please see link below for a call for applicants for three Lecturer/Senior Lecturer positions in Operations and Supply Chain Management in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Link – https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/TheUniversityOfAuckland/744000063647030-lecturer-senior-lecturer-in-operations-and-supply-chain-management

Applications must be submitted online, by the closing date of 27 June 2025 to be considered.

Noho ora mai, Sarah (ORSNZ Vice President)

ORNSZ conference – prize winners

Kia ora koutou,

For those who were unable to attend the 2024 ORSNZ conference held 5/12/2024 – 6/12/2024 – please join me in congratulating the prize winners of the Young Practitioner Prize (YPP) and the JAG memorial prize for the best application of OR for improving lives.

YPP best paper award: Dominic Keehan – Estimation of Shifting Probability Distributions using the Wasserstein Distance

YPP best presentation award: Ahmed Abdelhadi – Simulation-optimization approach for charging setup for electric taxi adoption using dynamic charger swapping for optimal distribution and location

JAG memorial prize: Zainab Rizvi – Towards Multi Scale Analysis of Energy Systems with Microgrids

JAG memorial prize: Juliette Foley – Minimisation of Cost and Emissions for Supermarket Product Purchases Across Recipes

All our prize winners are also listed on the ORSNZ Prizes page (here)

We also thank our sponsors for support: Suez for support of the YPP prize, Gurobi Optimization for support of the JAG prize, and Supply Chain Company for support of student attendance at the conference.

Ngā mihi,
Andrea (ORSNZ President)

ORSNZ AGM 2024 and Agenda

The 2024 ORSNZ Annual General Meeting will be held at the upcoming 56th ORSNZ Conference on Thursday 5 December starting at 1pm.

The preliminary agenda for the meeting is:

Apologies (to [email protected]);
Minutes of the previous AGM;
Matters arising from the minutes;
President’s report;
Honorary Treasurer’s report and financial statements;
Updates from regional and special interest groups;
Future Conferences;
Website redevelopment;
Election of officers and auditor;
Other business.

You can assign a proxy to vote on your behalf using the 2nd page of this form; this should be sent to [email protected].

I look forward to seeing you all at the conference and AGM.

Andrea Raith
ORSNZ President

ORSNZ Annual Conference registrations open

The ORSNZ Annual Conference will be held Thursday 5/12/2024 and Friday 6/12/2024 at the University of Auckland.

Some of the key dates are (full list here):
– abstracts are due Friday 8/11/2024
– Paper deadline (optional) and YPP paper deadline Friday 15/11/2024
– early bird registrations are available until Friday 15/11/2024

Thanks to some very generous sponsorship the registration fees are low this year, so hopefully many of you can join us. Registration details and the Humanitix registration page are linked here.

There are two prizes available, the ORSNZ Young Practitioners’ Prize (YPP) and the John A. George Memorial Prize (JAG). Details can be found on the conference website.

Please note that there may be travel support for students out of Auckland, as well as some free registrations for students and recent graduates participating in the Young Practitioner Prize (YPP). Please get in touch by emailing [email protected] to find out more.

I would also like to draw everyone’s attention to the Optimization Community Event, connected by Gurobi, which will be held on Thursday 5/12/2024 from 3:30pm at Old Government House (University of Auckland). The event is free-of-charge but ORSNZ attendees need to register for this event in addition to ORSNZ conference registration (registrations are also available on the same Humanitix ticket page).

We look forward to many interesting talks and discussions. The abstract submission form is linked here.

Andrea Raith (ORSNZ President)
on behalf of the conference organising committee (Sarah Marshall, Lisa Hillas, Mike O’Sullivan).

Congratulations to ORSNZ conference prize winners

Kia ora koutou,

For those who were unable to attend the 2023 ORSNZ conference – please join me in congratulating the prize winners of the Young Practitioner Prize (YPP) and the JAG memorial prize for the best application of OR for improving lives.

YPP best paper award: Dominic Keehan – Multistage production planning and price modelling
YPP best presentation award: Mostafa Papen – Towards the development of a Virtual Safety Officer – Few-Shot-Learning prototype
JAG memorial prize: Shirekha Layangani – An Analysis of Oncology Drug Prescription Patterns using Hidden Markov Models

Andrew Mason was awarded the Hans Daellenbach Prize in 2022, and presented with the award after his 2023 ORSNZ plenary titled “From MacSimplex to OpenSolver: A 35 year Journey Applying Operations Research”.

Andrew Mason with Hans Daellenbach certificate and ORSNZ president Mike O'Sullivan.

All our prize winners are also listed on the ORSNZ Prizes page (here).

Ngā mihi,
Andrea (ORSNZ President)

JuMP – recent developments

Oscar Dowson, industry representative on the ORSNZ council, presented a summary of recent JuMP developments at the 2023 ORSNZ conference. Some of the highlights are support for multiobjective optimisation, nonlinear complimentarity and many other additions and improvement. For an overview of new and improved features, have a look at Oscar’s blog post JuMP: the year in review (2023).

If you haven’t tried JuMP yet – it’s a modelling language for mathematical optimisation in the Julia programming language. I highly recommend it for your next optimisation project. There are lots of good examples and tutorials to get you started (see here).

Energy futures: Hydrogen for New Zealand workshop 29/1/2024

We would like to draw your attention to the upcoming workshop Energy futures: Hydrogen for New Zealand to be held at the University of Canterbury on Monday 29/1/2024.

The ORSNZ Special Interest Group Energy and Natural Resources is supporting this event, with two members participating.

The workshop is free of charge, but please do register here. For those unable to attend in person, there is an option to participate in two of the sessions remotely.

Lecturer in Operational Research or Applied Mathematical modelling, University of Southampton

Please find below a lectureship opportunity in Operations Research (OR) or applied mathematical modelling within the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton, England.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Applications are invited for a fixed-term Lectureship (Assistant Professor) in Operational Research or applied mathematical modelling to start on 1 October 2023 or as soon as possible afterwards, until 30 September 2025.

Location: Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton
Salary: £38,205 to £42,978 Per annum
Full Time Fixed Term until 30 September 2025 Closing Date: Friday 11 August 2023
Interview Date: To be confirmed
Reference: 2385223PJ

The successful candidate will help us to deliver our taught programmes in Operational Research and Mathematics for Business or Applied Mathematics. The successful candidate should either have a PhD or be close to completing a PhD in Operational Research, Applied mathematics, or a related research area. They should also be able to demonstrate ability and experience of teaching mathematics at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

About us
The School of Mathematical Sciences has a strong record of providing an excellent learning and research environment. Our research portfolio spans statistics, operational research, pure mathematics, applied mathematics and theoretical physics. The University of Southampton is a member of the Alan Turing Institute, and a number of researchers from the School of Mathematical Sciences are Turing Fellows. The School of Mathematical Sciences hosts several research centres that collaborate widely across the University, including the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI) and the Centre for Operational Research, Management Science and Information Sciences (CORMSIS). Further information about Mathematics at Southampton can be found at http://www.soton.ac.uk/maths/

This is a full time (1.0 FTE) fixed term post tenable from 1 October 2023.

Potential applicants who wish to discuss this post are welcome to contact the Head of Operational Research, Professor Joerg Fliege ([email protected]).

Application Procedure:
The application deadline is midnight on the closing date stated above. If you need assistance, call Recruitment on +44 (0) 23 8059 2750, or email [email protected]. Quote reference 2385223PJ on all correspondence.