All Annual Meeting attendees receive exclusive early access to the 2010 TutORials online book concurrently with the Meeting. Entitled "Risk and Optimization in an Uncertain World," the 2010 volume is the perfect complement to the series of talks. All INFORMS 2011 members receive access on January 1, 2011. For access, go to www.informs.org/tutorialsonline and enter your INFORMS member username and password. If you do not know your username or password, you may request it at that link. You can order the 2010 book or CDs of previous volumes (2005-2009) through the TutORials website http://www.informs.org/Journal/Tutorials-in-OR. For more information, visit INFORMS Booth #46.

9am-5pm, Convention Center, Exhibit Hall 3
Over 50 exhibitors are hand to share their expertise and services. Name badges must be worn for admittance to the Exhibit Hall. Free Internet WiFi in Exhibits area and E-mail Center.

9am-5pm, Convention Center, Exhibit Hall 3
Employers and job seekers get together for their prearranged interviews. Good luck to all.

Most are 6:15-7:15pm, but check below to be sure.
See rooms below (C = Convention Center; H = Hilton)
Don't miss your Community Business Meeting. Communities are the lifeblood of INFORMS.

by Michael Lim
The massive blackout of August 14, 2003 directly affected about 55 million people residing in the northeastern and midwestern United States and Ontario, Canada. One of the people indirectly affected by this blackout was Professor Daniel Bienstock of Columbia University. As someone who is always on the lookout for challenging real-life problems to solve, this massive blackout kicked his "operations research" brain into overdrive. The first thing that struck him was that the blackout was not an instantaneous event; it was a sequence of events or a cascade. He therefore believed that with the right computational tools, he should be able to model the cascade. To Bienstock, the challenge of controlling a blackout cascade was like a multistep game with a fictitious adversary. He attempted to tackle this complex, covert cascade behavior by using a learning model. The model begins with an initial fault event, followed by the operators' real-time response, which seeks to shed minimal power demand in low priority areas in order to work toward breaking the vicious cycle of the cascade. Because it provides for the possibility that the initial responses may be unsuccessful and therefore requires further learned responses, this model is a learning model. Bienstock is optimistic that given more comprehensive data, interactions with the practitioners, and funding, operation researchers should be able to come up with a smart power grid that is capable of controlling cascading blackouts caused by an act of God or that are man-made. We wish him and other operation researchers success in this endeavor.

by Isaac Laughlin
Advances in computer power and software efficiency are energizing practitioners of operations research who work on problems related to mining. A group of these practitioners gathered on Sunday morning to share their latest work on extraction scheduling. Each of their presentations relied on integer programming, and each introduced different innovations intended to facilitate the solution of the problems with existing technology.

Donal O'Sullivan of the Colorado School of Mines, Andrés Weintraub of the University of Chile, and Menkes van den Briel of the University of Colorado each presented variations of the extraction scheduling problem for underground or open-pit mines. A hallmark of these problems is their extremely large size: in a mining scenario there can be millions of blocks to be potentially extracted, a complex system of constraints related to the mechanics of mining, numerous safety and environmental regulations in place at the mine, and the contractual production obligations agreed to by the mine. Once all of these constraints have been formulated into an integer programming problem, they can number in the hundreds of thousands, making it easy to see why solutions couldn't have been imagined with less clever approaches and computing power.

Despite the difficulty of these problems, the potential rewards are huge. Weintraub's research has yielded 5% increases in the net present value of the mined material, a $100 million advantage over the benchmark. With such achievements possible, it's easy to see why this is considered a fruitful area of research. The participants in this field are devoted to continued collaboration and are looking forward to exchanges both at INFORMS meetings and in Workshops for Operations Research in Mining. Information about the latter can be found online at www.orm.cl.

by Michael Lim
With the rapid development of information and communication technology and globalization, the international concerns for energy and environmental issues are gaining significant momentum. Professor John Weyant of Stanford University has an interest in public policy as well as science, engineering, and system analysis. He has been researching in energy and the environment for the last 30 years, and he was acknowledged as a major contributor to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. In regard to the design of climate and energy policies, he believes in the need to incorporate flexibility. In the short run, he points out that it is crucial to change human behavior. He believes that most people are capable of consuming less energy. In the long run, he looks toward the rapid development of energies such as solar, wind, and biofuel. Regarding modeling capabilities, he suggests that it is important to represent the evolution of technology and the influence of human behavior on the implementation of new technology, and to have a more realistic policy architecture. If you are interested to be involved with public policy, he suggests that you should get some formal training on public policy involvement, to be conservative when talking to the media, to explain the limitations of your models when talking to policy makers, and to be aware that things that you say may be quoted out of context. However, if you are successful, you will be making a very important contribution to society.

by Isaac Laughlin
In the fall of 2008, as the world reeled from the turmoil in financial markets, Indeval began using Dali, a new financial settlement system intended to minimize onerous inefficiencies present in the systems that allow banks to conduct their business electronically. The result of Dali's implementation has been more efficient and secure financial markets in Mexico, where Indeval operates. This accomplishment has earned Indeval the admiration of their peers around the world, and now from practitioners of O.R.: as a result of their important and impressive accomplishment, Indeval received the 2010 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Banks prefer to hold assets other than cash, because those assets allow them to profit from their deposits. Under crisis conditions, it may be critically important that they are able to convert those assets to cash quickly and efficiently to meet demands from their depositors. Dali's O.R.-based core allows for the markets where banks make such conversions to function with a high degree of efficiency. Because of this, banks are able to go about their business without worrying about how long it may take to convert those assets to cash. Dali has reduced liquidity requirements of banks operating in the market by 52%, meaning that in such dire circumstances the market itself places less stress on the institutions it serves.

Whether a worldwide implementation of Dali could have prevented the collapse of Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns is an impossible question to answer, but nonetheless, Dali has won admirers the world over and will likely influence the directions of similar systems in countries outside of Mexico. As it does, it will be applying the power of O.R. to make world markets more efficient.

Moving Spirit Award
William Carper, Southeastern Chapter
Sandra Eksioglu, Mississippi State University Student Chapter

Moving Spirit for Fora
Illya Hicks, Minority Issues Forum

Judith Liebman Award
Hoda Parvin, University of Michigan Student Chapter
Ambarish Acharya, Mississippi State University Student Chapter
Kory Hedman, University of California-Berkeley Student Chapter

Aviation Applications Section Dissertation Award
Poornima Balakrishna

Data Mining Section Student Paper Award
Jian Guo

Data Mining Contest
Cole Harris, Christopher Hefele, Nan Zhou

Energy, Natural Resources & the Environment Section
Student Paper Award
Li Xu

Energy, Natural Resources & the Environment Section Best Publication Award
Winner in Energy: Jian Yao, Ilan Adler, Shmuel S. Oren
Winner in Forestry: Alastair McNaughton, David Ryan

Energy, Natural Resources & the Environment Section Best Paper in Sponsored Sessions Award
Winner in Energy Sponsored Sessions: Paul R. Kleindorfer
Winner in Forestry Sponsored Sessions: Matthew Thompson

Section on Location Analysis SOLA Chuck ReVelle Rising Star Award
Larry Snyder

Society for Marketing Science 2009 Frank M. Bass Dissertation Paper Award
Kenneth C. Wilbur

Society for Marketing Science 2009 John D. C. Little Award
Brett R. Gordon

Society for Marketing Science 2010 Long Term Impact Award
Peter E. Rossi and Greg M. Allenby

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Society
Distinguished Service Award
Tava Lennon Olsen

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Society Fellows Award
Steve Nahmias

M&SOM Best Paper Award
Xuanming Su

Optimization Society Khachiyan Prize
George L. Nemhauser

Farkas Prize of the Optimization Society

Zhi-Quan Luo

Optimization Society Student Paper Prize
Shiqian Ma

 
Optimization Prize for Young Researchers
Anthony Man-Cho So

Management Science in Railroad Applications Student Competition Award
Winner: Twan Dollevoet
Second Place: Lingyun Meng

Revenue Management & Pricing Section Section Prize
Huseyin Topaloglu

Service Science Section Best Paper Award
Winners: Murat Kurt, Brian T. Denton, Andrew J. Schaefer, Nilay D. Shah, Steven A. Smith
Second Place: Roland T. Rust, Ming-Hui Huang
Third Place: W. K. Victor Chan, Cheng Hsu
Finalists: LiYing Cui, Soundar Kumara, Dongwon Lee 

"Introducing MINDSET" by Ken Chelst.
Welcome to the Informs blog for the 2010 annual conference! My name is Dr. Kenneth Chelst and I am a Co-PI on Project MINDSET. Project MINDSET seeks to bring Operations Research to high school students, and is a collaborative project between Wayne State University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina Charlotte. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation, and we are currently in our 4th Year. We have developed two full text books; one book is based on deterministic modeling and the second is based on probability. Both books use real world applications to show how Operations Research is used in industry and government, and each book is a stand-alone semester of course work for high schools. The courses are being piloted in more than 20 classrooms throughout Michigan and North Carolina, and significant interest has been shown nationally and internationally. Read more.

INFORMS is using the latest in social networking technology to keep you informed and connected as never before at the Annual Meeting.

Blogs - Visit the Annual Meeting website during the meeting for commentary from your friends and colleagues.

Tweets - All attendees are invited to share what they are doing and seeing in real time. Remember to add hashtag "#informs2010" to your tweets, and they will appear on the Annual Meeting homepage during the meeting. Also "follow" the official conference twitter feed, INFORMS2010, to receive important conference announcements.

LinkedIn - Connect with other attendees on the Annual Meeting LinkedIn Group to discuss key topics.

Photos and Video - Attendees are encouraged to take photos and video at the meeting; send your photos to photosandvideo@mail.informs.org, and we'll post them on the Annual Meeting website.

Free Wireless Internet - It's easy to stay connected. The Austin Convention Center features free wireless Internet throughout, including all meeting rooms.

Stop by the INFORMS booth in Exhibit Hall 3 (Booth #46) to receive valuable products and information:

• Speakers Book Store - over 30 titles on display!
• 50% off INFORMS books sale
• Free sample journals
• Free 2009 Edelman DVD - just ask!
• Information on volunteering
• Free Community newsletters
• Membership information (what's changing in 2011)
• Renewal assistance
• Presidents slide show
• 25+ Year Ribbons

9am-12:30pm
You may still be able to register. Go to the INFORMS Registration Desk to inquire. The cost is $54; lunch is not included. State Capitol Building, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, State History Museum, and more.