INFORMS Annual Meeting

INFORMS Annual Meeting
Name	INFORMS Annual Meeting
Status	Active
Genre	Professional conference
Frequency	Annual
Venue	Various
Location	Various
Country	International
First	1953
Organizer	Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

INFORMS Annual Meeting The INFORMS Annual Meeting is the flagship conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, attracting practitioners from IBM, Microsoft, Amazon (company), Google, Intel, Boeing, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citi, ExxonMobil, Shell plc, BP plc, Siemens, Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, AT&T, Verizon Communications, Cisco Systems, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Facebook, Uber Technologies, Airbnb, Netflix, Tesla, Inc., Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Company, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Cornell University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, Purdue University, Texas A&M University, New York University, Imperial College London, and London School of Economics for interdisciplinary exchange. The meeting covers topics spanning John von Neumann's game theory legacy through contemporary applications in supply chains, finance, healthcare, telecommunications and transportation.

Overview

The INFORMS Annual Meeting convenes academics, industry leaders, and government-affiliated researchers from institutions such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Department of Defense, European Commission, United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve System, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Banco Santander, HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Royal Dutch Shell, TotalEnergies SE, Pfizer, Moderna, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Roche, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer AG, Sanofi, AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Company, Amgen, and Gilead Sciences to present peer-reviewed research, panels, and tutorials.

History and development

Origins trace to earlier gatherings of operations research practitioners linked with Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences, reflecting intellectual currents from figures like George Dantzig, Herbert Simon, Frank Ramsey, Leonid Kantorovich, Katherine Johnson, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, John Nash, Leonard Kleinrock, Richard Bellman, Ilya Prigogine, Rudolf Kalman, Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Erwin Schrödinger, Alan Turing, Edward Lorenz, Paul Samuelson, Jan Tinbergen, Hyman Minsky, Kenneth Arrow, Amartya Sen, Milton Friedman, Robert Solow, James Tobin, Robert Lucas Jr., Daniel Kahneman, Vera Rubin and institutions such as Bell Labs, RAND Corporation, Brookings Institution, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, SRI International, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The meeting evolved alongside developments in linear programming, integer programming, stochastic processes, and computational optimization exemplified by milestones like the Simplex algorithm, the Ellipsoid method, and the rise of mixed-integer programming.

Program and activities

Sessions include plenaries, invited talks, symposia, poster sessions, tutorials, workshops, and job fairs featuring employers such as Google DeepMind, OpenAI, NVIDIA, AMD, Palantir Technologies, Bloomberg L.P., Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, European Space Agency, International Telecommunication Union, Cisco Systems Research, and Nokia. Topics often highlighted connect to advances by researchers like Shapley, Lloyd S., Karp, Richard M., Cook, Stephen A., Tarjan, Robert E., Cormen, Thomas H., Levitin, Anany, Knuth, Donald E. and applied problem domains such as routing, scheduling, queuing theory, inventory control, forecasting, machine learning, data analytics, network design, and robust optimization.

Attendance and membership

Attendees range from members of INFORMS to representatives of SIAM, IEEE, ACM, AAAI, American Statistical Association, Royal Statistical Society, Institute of Actuaries, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, European Operations Research Societies, Canadian Operational Research Society, Australian Mathematical Society, Operations Research Society of Japan, Chinese Operations Research Society, Brazilian Operations Research Society, Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa and corporate partners. Student chapters from Harvard Business School, Wharton School, MIT Sloan School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, INSEAD, London Business School, Kellogg School of Management, Booth School of Business, Columbia Business School, Rotman School of Management often run competitions and networking events.

Awards and recognitions

The conference hosts presentation of medals, prizes, and awards associated with INFORMS, honoring achievements connected to luminaries such as John von Neumann and George Dantzig, and parallels awards like the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the Turing Award, the Fields Medal, the Abel Prize, the Crafoord Prize, the John von Neumann Theory Prize, the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize, the Daniel H. Wagner Prize, and named lectures invoking figures such as Herbert Simon, Paul A. Samuelson, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace.

Organization and governance

The meeting is organized under the governance structures of INFORMS, interacting with program committees, section chairs, and boards that include representatives from INFORMS President, past leaders who have affiliations with MIT, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, Cornell University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, Duke University, University of California, Berkeley, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Rice University, and international partners such as European Operations Research Societies and International Federation of Operational Research Societies. Corporate sponsorships frequently come from IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Amazon Web Services, Google Research, Facebook AI Research, Siemens Corporate Technology, Boeing Research & Technology, Shell Technology Center, ExxonMobil Research, and philanthropic support from foundations like Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Impact and notable outcomes

The conference has catalyzed collaborations that influenced projects tied to Manhattan Project-era organizational roots, operational advances used by NASA Apollo program, logistics optimizations for Walmart, pricing strategies adopted by Amazon (company), scheduling systems in Delta Air Lines, network resilience work relevant to AT&T, and public health modeling during outbreaks addressed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization. Research first presented at the meeting has led to patents assigned to IBM, spin-offs like Palantir Technologies, adoption of algorithms in Google Search, and policy influence in international institutions such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Category:Conferences Category:Operations research