Bulletin 102, April 98 
ismp 97
The 16 International Symposium on
Mathematical Programming
ismp 97 at EPFL
 
Last August, following Bonn, Cambridge MA, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Ann Arbor, it was Lausanne's privilege to host the sixteenth triennial Symposium of the Mathematical Programming Society. Nearly 1'400 scientists from 62 different countries came together to discuss their latest work at EPFL for a week and made this the largest Math. Programming Symposium to date. Why such a record participation? Surely the unique charm of Leman Lake area, coupled with favorable currency rates had some role to play therein. So certainly did the Internet. Indeed ismp97 was among the very first international congresses ever to be interactively organized with its participants via the web. From a very early stage on, the growing lists of participants, invited sessions and abstracts were posted and constantly  updated. Such active information exchange spurred many people's desire to participate, building up the event's momentum. Most probably, though, the very large number of participants simply reflects the field's own vitality and growth. Even top executives are now becoming aware of the relevance to their decision making of OR tools developed by math. programmers and are said to sometimes pay up to eight figures for them.

As in the past, many celebrities who have shaped the field faithfully attended the Symposium. But so did a large number of young people  from all over the world who still have most of their careers in front of them. Next to the twenty-five exciting featured talks (see box) some impressive theoretical and practical advances were also reported during the 400 parallel sessions totaling 1200 presentations. It is rejoicing that the field continues to attract many very gifted new people.

A main theme of ismp97 was the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the simplex method for linear programming. It was highlighted by George Dantzig's plenary lecture at the opening session about how LP first began and later by the simplex birthday party with Dick Cottle as MC and keynote speeches by  Hans Künzi, Phil Wolfe, Tom Magnanti and Bob Bixby. The Collège de cuivres de Suisse romande under André Besençon brilliantly underscored the spirited Monday's opening session addresses by City Council Chair Bidaud, EPFL president Badoux, vice-president Dominique de Werra, George Dantzig and John Dennis.

Anthony Fiacco and Phil Wolfe were honored on their seventieth birthday in special sessions organized by their friends. And there were memorial sessions for Gene Lawler and for OR pioneer Steven Vajda.

Further special events included prize awards during the plenary opening session. The Fulkerson Prize (for outstanding papers in discrete mathematics)  went to Jeong Han Kim. The Beale-Orchard-Hayes Prize (for excellence in computa-tional mathematical programming) went to Steven Dirkse and Michael Ferris. The Dantzig Prize (for outstanding research in mathematical programming) went to Roger Fletcher and Steve Robinson. Finally, the A.W. Tucker Prize (for an outstanding paper by a student) went to  David Karger.

The six largest groups of participants came from the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Switzerland. Stipends and travel aids to over a hundred scientists from weak currency countries were made possible thanks to the generous support from organizations like ASRO/SVOR, DGOR, GMÖOR, EURO, the Swiss National Science Foundation, Risklab, as well as Swissair and several other Swiss companies. This enabled participants from places as remote as Baku, Ulaanbaatar or Concepción to attend the symposium. We gladly take this opportunity to extend all sponsors our warmest thanks.

The Lausanne Symposium will probably go to the annals as one of synthesis and consolidation, marking the era when Mathematical Programming was recognized as a key tool of computer aided decision making and modeling, but also as a well established branch of applied mathematics. This is obvious from numerous far reaching applications of Math. Programming to all areas of management, engineering and science reported during the meeting. Huge projects involving energy management, finances, airline scheduling, molecular biology, engineering design, just to name a few, illustrate this. The clear trend towards consolidation also manifests itself in the creative interplay between non linear, stochastic and combinatorial optimization, both in theory and practice, further closing a gap that had been widening for many years.

While we now know how to solve linear programs with hundreds of thousands of variables and constraints and traveling salesman problems with several thousands of cities to proven optimality, there still are many challenging open problems awaiting their solution. Foremost are complexity questions, in particular the status of pivoting methods for linear programming. Surely some answers will be reported during ismp2000 in Atlanta.

A word of thanks is due to all participants as well as to the members of the organizing committee and the local team for what they did on, in front of and behind the scenes to make ismp97 an unforgettable and stimulating event. It all would not have been possible without everone’s joyful and effective help. Finally we very gratefully acknowledge the generous support and encouragement by EPFL.
 
 
Thomas M. Liebling
Chairman, Organizing Committee ismp97
 

 
Featured State-of-the-Art Lectures
 
(Most underlying papers appeared in a special issue of Mathematical Programming B)
 
Alfred Auslender, Paris How to Deal with the Unbounded in Optimization: Theory and Algorithms
Egon Balas, Pittsburgh Recent Advances in Lift-and-Project
Alexander Barvinok, Ann Arbor  Measure Concentration in Optimization
Rainer E. Burkard, Graz Efficiently Solvable Special Cases of Hard Combinatorial Optimization Problems
Andreas W.M. Dress, Bielefeld Two Applications of the Divide and Conquer Principle in the Molecular Sciences
Arne Stolbjerg Drud, Bagsvaerd Interactions between Nonlinear Programming and Modeling Systems
Matteo Fischetti, Udine Algorithms for Railway Crew Management
Michel X. Goemans, Cambridge Semidefinite Programming in Combinatorial Optimization
Robert Gumerlock, Zurich Financial Risk Management - A Business Between Regulation and Research
Peter L. Hammer, New Brunswick Logical Analysis of Numerical Data
Pierre Hansen, Montreal Cluster Analysis and Mathematical Programming
Gil Kalai, Jerusalem Linear Programming, the Simplex Algorithm and Simple Polytopes
Masakazu Kojima, Tokyo Exploiting Sparsity in Primal-Dual Interior-Point Methods for Semidefinite Programming
Monique Laurent, Paris Cuts, Matrix Completions and Graph Rigidity
Jan Karel Lenstra, Eindhoven The Mystical Power of Twoness: in Memoriam Eugene L. Lawler
Yurii E. Nesterov, Louvain-la-Neuve Interior-Point Methods: an Old and New Approach to Nonlinear Programming
Manfred W. Padberg, New York Facets, Rank of Integer Polyhedra and Other Topics
Jong-Shi Pang, Baltimore Error Bounds in Mathematical Programming
Andrzej Ruszczynski, Madison Decomposition Methods in Stochastic Programming
Herbert E. Scarf, New Haven Test Sets for Integer Programs
Eva Tardos, Ithaca Routing in Networks
Tamas Terlaky, Delft Criss-Cross Methods: A Fresh View on Pivot Algorithms
Philippe L.M. Toint, Namur Recent Progress in Unconstrained Nonlinear Optimization without Derivatives
Uwe T. Zimmermann, Braunschweig Discrete Optimization in Public Rail Transport
Jochem Zowe, Erlangen Free Material Optimization via Mathematical Programming
 
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