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OR/MS Today - February 2004 Operations Research Center - Side Story INFORMS Conference to 'Apply Science to the Art of Business' By Terry Cryan MIT and INFORMS expertise will come together on April 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Mass., for the INFORMS conference, "Applying Science to the Art of Business." Now in its fourth year, the conference will be held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the MIT Operations Research Center (ORC). The joint program begins April 25 with the MIT-INFORMS symposium (see page 32 for symposium details) and reception, followed by two full conference days. The symposium and reception are open to both MIT ORC registrants and conference registrants. Two visionary business leaders will headline the conference program: Patrick T. Harker, dean of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and Lawrence D. Burns, vice president of R&D and planning, General Motors. The other 80-plus speakers on the program represent leading companies (Intel, Amazon.com, Federal Reserve Bank, IBM, Forrester Research, StorageTek and others), as well as top business and engineering schools (Stanford, Harvard Business School, Cornell, Penn State and others). MIT ORC faculty and alumni are among the featured speakers. The program will offer specialized tracks on financial applications, retail operations, supply chain management, new trends and emerging areas for OR. Eleven methodology tutorials will each be presented twice and cover areas such as large-scale neighborhood search, new-category product development, managing uncertainty, agent-based modeling and supply chain risk. In addition, exhibiting companies will provide software tutorials. For the first time, the conference expanded the reach of speaker invitations through a call for presentations. Two special tracks will feature the 22 presentations chosen through this highly selective submission and review process. These sessions cover the OR landscape, from demand dispatching to information quality, capital allocation in healthcare, real options tools, small OR problems, semiconductor supply chains and much more. The 2004 Franz Edelman Competition, sponsored by CPMS, The Practice Section of INFORMS, will be fully integrated into the conference so that attendees can select Edelman presentations as part of their track choices. On April 26, seven finalists will showcase high-impact examples of OR in practice, with the winning presentation reprised the next day as a plenary. The Young Researcher Roundtable, introduced in 2003, will be continued at the Cambridge conference. The program provides young faculty with insights into the critical business problems facing industry, helping them to broaden their research. Participants are nominated by their departments and selected by the conference Advisory Council. Pre-conference workshops led by exhibiting companies will be offered on April 25, with attendance free to conference registrants. These were a popular new feature at the 2003 meeting, with more than 150 people attending. Another new program is being introduced this year, a continuing education workshop on revenue management for the non-specialist (see box below for details). The early registration rate of $785-members, $895-nonmembers is available through April 2 (rates increase by $100 after April 2). Companies can also take advantage of a "team discount" rate of $690 (by April 2) when they send three or more attendees to the meeting. All social and meal functions (breakfasts, lunches and two evening receptions) are included in the registration fees. The conference hotel, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, is ideally located, adjacent to MIT, close to Harvard Square and just across the river from Boston. The low INFORMS room rate is $159 single/double (call 800-233-1234 or 617-492-1234, or reserve online at the conference Web page). For continuing updates and to register, go to www.informs.org/Conf/Practice04; 800-343-0062 or 401-722-2595; meetings@informs.org.
Terry Cryan is the director of meetings for INFORMS. Return to main story: The 'Center' of Attention OR/MS Today copyright © 2004 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 2004 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. |