2017-2018 Fields Industrial
Optimization Seminar
July 2017-June 2018 • Fields Institute
Organizers: Antoine Deza and Bartosz Protas (McMaster University)
and Danielle Zyngier (Hatch)
The inaugural meeting of the
Fields Industrial Optimization
Seminar took place in 2004. Each
meeting was comprised of two
lectures relating to optimization.
Typically, one speaker is a
university-based researcher and
the other is from the private or
government sector.
The series welcomed the
participation of everyone in the
academic or industrial community
with an interest in optimization
– theory or practice, expert or
student.
The first talks of the 2017-2018
series featured speakers from the
Warsaw School of Economics and
the Canadian Tire Corporation.
The talks addressed issues arising
in economics and management
sciences. The speakers introduced
a number of formulations and
approaches handling large
discrete instances.
The June talks focused on issues
relating to the medical application
of optimization. One speaker was
from the University of Calgary
and the other was from TD Bank.
They presented state‑of‑the‑art
formulations and current
algorithmic challenges.
The November seminar brought
together a professor from
McMaster University and a
researcher from Praxair to
address optimization approaches
in chemical engineering, and in
particular, recent developments
concerning process and
scheduling challenges.
In January, speakers from
McMaster University and
Industrial Algorithms presented
optimization challenges
in chemistry and chemical
engineering ranging from
modeling to applications with a
shared focus on computational
performances. All the seminars
reflected an acute need for
both mathematically advanced
formulations and highly efficient
implementations.
The lively interaction between
the speakers and the audience
illustrated the efforts made by
the speakers to reach a diverse
audience that included engineers,
mathematicians, computer
scientists, graduate students,
and senior researchers. The
post‑seminar mingling created
an excellent environment and
a unique forum for graduate
students to learn about the
skills and expertise required by
the R&D industry. This was very
useful, as nearly half the audience
were PhD students, many of
whom might pursue research
careers in an industrial R&D
setting.
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