ORSNZ Annual General Meeting 2017

There will be an AGM held during the upcoming ORSNZ Conference (date+time to be confirmed). The tentative agenda is:

1. Apologies (to [email protected]);
2. Minutes of the previous AGM;
3. Matters arising from the minutes;
4. President’s report;
5. Honorary Treasurer’s financial statement;
6. Update on Special Interest Groups;
7. Update on website;
8. Mentoring;
9. Election of officers and auditor;
10. Other business.

You can find the minutes from the previous AGM here, and the discussion document about Special Interest Groups here.

If you have any other agenda items, please email them to [email protected] by Sunday 19 November 2017.

Mini-conference on Infrastructure Planning under Uncertainty

As part of the 2017 ORSNZ Annual Conference, there will be a 1-day mini-conference on Infrastructure Planning under Uncertainty on Wednesday 13 December. This day will begin with a plenary presentation by Prof. Michael Ferris (see the program for details), and end with an analytics forum event, and a discussion panel.

Also, we would like to remind you that Tuesday, 31 October is the final day for abstract submissions, as well as early-bird registrations. We welcome both practical and theoretical talks utilising either operations research, or analytics methods.

Workshop on Construction Simulation Opportunities in New Zealand

The joint research group of the University of Auckland and the Auckland University of Technology (SimCon) invites you to join a free 2‐hour workshop “Construction Simulation Opportunities in New Zealand” to gain new insight into the impacts and benefits of using simulation in the built environment engineering.

Event details
When: Tuesday 31 October 2017, 5.00 pm‐7:00 pm
Where: City Conference Centre, WA224 AUT City Campus, 55 Wellesley St, Auckland
Cost: This event is free, and light refreshments will be served.

What will you learn?
‐ The use of simulation to lift productivity and competitiveness within the construction industry
‐ The use of simulation for project planning, control and diagnosis
‐ The cutting‐edge research being developed by SimCon research group

Who should attend?
Architects, engineers, construction managers, general contractors, owners, policy makers and professionals who struggle to understand the real benefits of construction simulation tools and methods.

For enquiries and registration: Please email [email protected]

National Science Challenge 11 sponsors this event.

2018 Optimisation Summer School

Data61 6th International Optimisation Summer School
Kioloa, NSW, Australia,
January 14th to 19th 2018
http://tinyurl.com/optschool

Spend a week by the beach learning about the latest optimisation technologies.  How can you help a business reduce its costs? Or reduce their carbon footprint? Or do both? The school is sponsored by the Decision Sciences Group at Data61
http://www.data61.csiro.au/Our-expertise/Expertise-Decision-sciences

The school will focus on solving large scale combinatorial optimisation
problems in practice. The school is intended for undergraduate students
(3rd year or later), masters or early stage PhD students. Every
undergraduate participant will be assigned an individual mentor.

Topics covered include: introduction to constraint programming, modelling, integer programming, column generation, vehicle routing,
scheduling, evolutionary methods and research skills.

Lecturers include: Phil Kilby, Peter Stuckey, Guido Tack, Menkes van den Briel and Toby Walsh.

Please encourage your PhD, Masters and late stage undergraduates to attend.

Registration:
The registration page is open now and applicants will be considered in order of application so please apply as soon as possible. The school costs $685.  Undergraduates and postgraduates will qualify for a grant to reduce this to just $340. Data61 students can attend at no cost for themselves. The fee covers 5 nights accommodation, all food and drink, and the coach transfer from Sydney.

Deadline: Apply immediately to ensure a place. Applications processed in order of receipt.

Organizer: Prof. Toby Walsh, UNSW and Data61.

Local information
The School will again be held at ANU’s beautiful seaside campus at Kioloa,
near Bawley Point on the south coast of New South Wales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kioloa,_New_South_Wales

 

2017 AUT Mathematical Sciences Symposium

The AUT Mathematical Sciences Symposium will be held from Thursday 23 November to Friday 24 November 2017 at AUT’s city campus.

Seven invited speakers have been confirmed, including several ORSNZ members. The invited speakers are:

  • Richard Arnold, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
  • William Godsoe, Lincoln University, New Zealand
  • Eckhard Platen, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
  • Andrea Raith, University of Auckland, New Zealand
  • Marco Reale, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Matt Wand, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
  • Ilze Ziedins, University of Auckland, New Zealand

To submit a contributed talk, abstracts of up to 250 words should be submitted through the symposium website by Monday 13th November 2017.  Registration is free of charge and open to all members of the mathematical sciences community. Click here to register.

For further information visit the symposium’s website or contact [email protected].

ORSNZ annual conference 2017: Plenary speaker announced

Michael C. Ferris

Plenary Speaker Confirmed
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Michael Ferris, the Optimization Theme Leader at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will be a plenary speaker at the upcoming ORSNZ annual conference being held in Auckland, December 11-14.

This plenary will be held on the Wednesday morning (13 December).

Registration and Abstract Submission
If you have not yet submitted an abstract, please do so. October 31 is the deadline for both abstract submission, and the early-bird registration. Please try to submit your abstract in advance of this date, to enable us to provide responses in a timely manner.

ORSNZ Annual Conference 2017

The link for registering for the upcoming ORSNZ Annual Conference (10 December – 14 December 2017) is now live. You can register from this page.

Note that the deadline for both early-bird registration and abstract submission is 31 October 2017.

More details about the conference are given below.

Call for Papers

Abstracts can now be submitted for the upcoming ORSNZ Annual Conference, being held in Auckland from the 10th to the 14th of December 2017. This year it is being held in parallel with the Joint IASC/NZSA conference, at the University of Auckland Business School.

Abstract Submission

We welcome presentations on any aspect of operations research, analytics or management science, especially practical applications.

Submissions from students and practitioners are greatly encouraged. Abstracts should be 200 words or fewer and are to be submitted as plain text (not a PDF file) through EasyChair.

Oral presentations will be 20 minutes in length (15 + 5 for questions). All abstracts will be considered by the conference committee, and the authors notified of their acceptance or otherwise.

Please see this page for more information on the abstract submission process. Note that the abstract submission deadline is October 31, with optional full papers due by November 27.

Registration

Early bird registration closes on October 31, and the final deadline for registration is December 3.

Please see this page for details about the registration fees. (The registration payment page is not yet live, but will be available within the next week.)

ORSNZ Young Practitioners’ Prize (YPP)

OR practitioners and students who are within 5 years of graduation on the first day of the conference (10 December) are invited to compete for $1000 of prizes in the ORSNZ Young Practitioners’ Prize competition. When registering for the conference, competitors should request that their paper be entered for the YPP, and also include YPP as a keyword when submitting the abstract. Note that a full paper must be submitted in order enter the YPP.

Plenary Speakers

The following plenary speakers have been confirmed for the IASC/NZSA conference.

  • Jennifer Bryan
  • Ross Ihaka
  • Luke Tierney
  • Simon Urbanek

Please see this page for more information, including brief bios for each of the speakers.

(Note that by registering for the ORSNZ conference you will be able to attend these plenaries and other sessions of the IASC/NZSA conference.)

Smart Markets for Water Resources

Tuesday, July 18, 2017
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Upstairs, Ilam Homestead
University of Canterbury

Increasing pressure on water resources means that society needs to be smarter. New technologies can combine with market approaches to get more value from water while better protecting the environment. Join us in the release of a book on one new technology, Smart Markets for Water Resources: A Manual for Implementation. The book is co-authored by John Raffensperger (now at Rand Corp.) and Waterways member Mark Milke.

The event provides an opportunity to look forward to better incorporating new technologies and market approaches in water resource management. Dr Eric Crampton, Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative, will open with a short presentation regarding the role of markets in freshwater management.

For more details see: Smart Markets for Water Resources flyer

Nibbles provided. Drinks available at the Staff Club Bar downstairs.

Please email [email protected] to RSVP.