2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting
October 14-18, 2023

Attendees will get a first look at our latest product release, Gurobi 11.0—including exciting performance improvements to Gurobi’s core algorithms and additional support for nonlinear functions. The latter includes direct support of general nonlinear functions beyond the piecewise linear approximations provided in previous versions. The workshop will also include an interactive panel discussion “From skepticism to success: Getting buy-in for optimization projects” with optimization experts across academia, industries, and Gurobi.  

The Gurobi team will also be presenting a live demo of OptiMods, an open-source project that provides Python users with high-level access to optimization capabilities. Developed by the Gurobi Tech teams, the project aims to put optimization in the hands of more people—especially those without prior knowledge of optimization and mathematical modeling.  While primarily intended for newcomers, experienced optimization practitioners may gain insights on obtaining acceptance of optimization-based solutions. 

All Workshop attendees will receive a free Gurobi 11.0 t-shirt and be entered into a drawing to win Apple AirPods Pro.

In this tutorial, attendees will get a first look at the additional support for nonlinear functions available in Gurobi 11.0. Previous versions of Gurobi supported a set of frequently used general nonlinear functions through piecewise linear approximation. Gurobi 11.0 extends the spatial branch and bound algorithm that supported nonconvex quadratic constraints and objectives starting with version 9.0 to handle more general nonlinear constraints and objectives, including higher degree polynomial, logarithmic, exponential and trigonometric functions.  This tutorial will discuss how to extend the McCormick relaxation used in the spatial branch and bound to these more general nonlinear functions, and the resulting implications regarding how to get good performance.​

Dr. Joel Sokol, with the help of technical team members and experts from Gurobi, has been hard at work developing a new online course introducing optimization through the lens of data science that will be released in late fall 2023! This free course was developed to help teach trained data scientists how to add optimization to their toolbox, and when to use it in their advanced problem solving. We will cover a comprehensive introduction to optimization, how to translate real life problems into optimization, and when optimization is the best tool to solve a problem.​

In the course, Dr. Sokol introduces learners to world class tools to help them problem solve and provides everything from basic hands-on exercises to more advanced full real-world use cases to reinforce all new concepts of prescriptive analytics as you learn them. We are looking forward giving you the first preview of what this course includes, how to access it once released, and a look into a new way of teaching mathematical optimization to data science learners with expertise from Dr. Joel Sokol and the team of PhD experts from Gurobi Optimization who helped him develop this comprehensive introduction to mathematical optimization.