Take advantage of these complimentary, pre-meeting Exhibitor Workshops for hands-on demonstrations of the latest industry products and software. All full conference registrants are welcome to preregister or join on site. You’re still able to add these preconference workshops to your current registration.
All Exhibitor Workshops will be held in the Georgia World Congress Center on Saturday, October 25.
10-11:15am
Location: A315
An Introduction to Modeling
with GAMSPy
Presented by: Adam Christensen & Steven Dirkse
Join us to explore GAMSPy’s fundamental functionalities through practical, interactive exercises. We’ll cover everything from defining sets, parameters, variables, and equations to solving models and retrieving results, all within a familiar Python environment. Beyond the basics, we’ll also provide a glimpse into more advanced features, demonstrating how GAMSPy can streamline complex modeling workflows and enhance your analytical capabilities.
Whether you’re a seasoned GAMS user looking to integrate with Python or a Python user curious about optimization, this workshop will equip you with essential skills needed to get started and demonstrate what is possible with GAMSPy.
10-11:15am
Location: A316
Decision Intelligence in Action: AI-Assisted Simulation with the Strategic Decision Lab
Presented by: Alton Alexander
This hands-on workshop introduces the Strategic Decision Lab, a browser-based environment where AI-assisted simulations bring complex problems to life. Using Veydra’s SaaS platform, participants will explore four interactive models—workforce scheduling, healthcare capacity, supply chain bullwhip, and training pipeline readiness.
An AI assistant guides users through building, calibrating, and comparing scenarios, while built-in visualizations and summaries make results easy to communicate. Whether you are an educator looking to enrich your teaching or a practitioner seeking faster insights, this session shows how simulation and AI can combine to accelerate decision-making.
Attendees will leave with immediate access to a free starter simulation they can run on their own device, plus the option to pilot a ready-to-use course module or book an executive workshop.
11:30am-12:45pm
Location: A315
The Benefits of Certifying your
Data Team
Presented by: Nicole Janeway Bills
Certification elevates a data team’s capability, credibility, and business impact. Data Strategy Professionals will explore how recognized credentials in Data Strategy, Data Governance, Data Analytics, and related disciplines strengthen technical skills, improve cross-departmental trust, and support regulatory compliance. Participants will learn how certification fosters a shared vocabulary, boosts productivity, and aligns data work with strategic objectives—resulting in higher quality outcomes and measurable business value.
11:30am-12:45pm
Location: A316
SAS Analytics
Presented by: Rob Pratt
SAS offers extensive analytic capabilities, including machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, statistical analysis, optimization, and simulation. SAS analytic functionality is also available through the open, cloud-enabled design of SAS® Viya®. You can program in SAS or in other languages – Python, Lua, Java, and R.
This workshop will review the SAS analytics portfolio, highlight recently added optimization features, and explore several optimization examples.
Academic faculty, staff, and students can access the latest SAS software through our free academic software platforms SAS Viya for Learners and SAS Viya Workbench for Learners. Access instructions and learning resources will be provided.
1-2:15pm
Location: A315
How to Advance your Optimization Game with FICO® Xpress Solver
Presented by: Michael Perregaard, Tristan Gally, Susanne Heipcke, and Dinakar Gade
In this workshop, we will give an overview of the different solvers in the FICO Xpress Optimization suite, their features, and how to interact with them through the different APIs. Find out how Xpress can solve LPs, MIPs, NLPs, and general MINLPs to global optimality, get an overview of different cuts, heuristics, and other features and learn how to influence the solve using callbacks. We will also give an overview of recent advances to all the different solvers from MIP over hybrid gradient to the FICO Xpress Global solver.
1-2:15pm
Location: A316
5 Pillars of OR project success: A DecisionOps tutorial with Nextmv
Presented by: Carolyn Mooney and Tiffany Bogich
Why do OR projects fail? Why do they succeed? The way a project unfolds often comes down to how a project is run. DecisionOps (yes, it’s like MLOps, but for decision science) makes all the difference because:
- People don’t trust decisions they can’t understand.
- Every optimization run needs to be logged, tracked, and explainable
- Testing reduces rollout risk and increases revenue opportunities
- Structured workflows across a diverse, integrated ecosystem provides choice and resilience
These four things amount to: observability, explainability, systematic testing, and consistency in support of diversity. And they all depend upon a robust platform that facilitates collaboration across modelers, engineers, and business users.
In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to efficiently operationalize open source and commercial decision models, create workflows that link to up and downstream processes like ML forecasting and result visualization, perform robust scenario testing to explore what if questions, and manage model versions and run data. What’s more: You have the opportunity to see all of this in action — and do it yourself live.
This session is relevant to data science and OR practitioners using tooling such as OR-Tools, Pyomo, HiGHS, VROOM, Gurobi, AMPL, FICO Xpress, Hexaly, Statsmodels, scikit-learn, Databricks, Snowflake, and more.
2:30-3:45pm
Location: A315
Part 1: Pushing the Boundaries of Optimization: What’s New in Gurobi 13 and Beyond
Presented by: Ed Klotz, Robert Luce, and Dan Steffy
Join Gurobi’s expert team for a deep dive into the latest advancements in mathematical optimization. This workshop will explore new features in Gurobi 13, including a CPU-based PDHG solver and a local nonlinear solver. Gain insights into emerging technologies like generative AI for optimization, quantum computing, and our progress on GPU acceleration. The session will conclude with a dynamic panel discussion on the future of optimization and AI. Whether you’re an academic, practitioner, or student, this is your chance to engage directly with Gurobi’s developers and expand your understanding of cutting-edge optimization tools.
2:30-3:45pm
Location: A304
No-code Machine Learning with JMP Pro and JMP Student Edition
Presented by: Ross Metusalem
Building and deploying machine learning models doesn’t have to require expertise in Python or other coding languages. JMP Student Edition (free for academic use at jmp.com/student) and JMP Pro offer interactive, point-and-click tools for building powerful machine learning models for regression and classification, from basic decision trees and neural nets through XGBoost and deep learning models.
Join this workshop to learn how to use these no-code tools for:
- Training machine learning models for regression and classification, including image classification
- Automated cross-validation and hyperparameter tuning.
- Model comparison and deployment.
2:30-3:45pm
Location: A303
Timefold: The Open Source Solver
for Java
Presented by: Geoffrey De Smet and Jeroen Colin
Timefold Solver is a metaheuristics solver for vehicle routing, shift rostering, job scheduling and other planning problems. It’s designed for ease of use, scalability and enterprise usage.
But unlike other solvers, it doesn’t require you to input your constraints/objectives as math equations. It accepts them as plain Java code. They can reuse existing code, for example from date and time libraries. And you don’t face any linear or quadratic limitations.
In this session, we’ll introduce the open source solver, explain the basics and live code a solution for school scheduling.
2:30-3:45pm
Location: A316
AI + Monte Carlo Simulation: Transforming Risk Analysis with
Gen AI
Presented by: Gustavo Vinueza
Learn how to integrate Generative AI into Monte Carlo Simulation to build smarter, and more understandable risk models. This session will showcase how to enhance their risk analysis workflows by integrating the power of Generative AI (GenAI) into Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). You’ll gain practical skills and insights that bridge the gap between modern AI tools and traditional quantitative risk methods.
Main cases to be analyzed: 1) Selecting the Right Distribution, 2) Use Case 2 – Creating Risk Registers, 3) Explaining a Histogram to Non-Experts, 4) Writing Executive Summaries.
4-5:15pm
Location: A315
Part 2: Pushing the Boundaries of Optimization: What’s New in Gurobi 13 and Beyond
Presented by: Ed Klotz, Robert Luce, and Dan Steffy
Join Gurobi’s expert team for a deep dive into the latest advancements in mathematical optimization. This workshop will explore new features in Gurobi 13, including a CPU-based PDHG solver and a local nonlinear solver. Gain insights into emerging technologies like generative AI for optimization, quantum computing, and our progress on GPU acceleration. The session will conclude with a dynamic panel discussion on the future of optimization and AI. Whether you’re an academic, practitioner, or student, this is your chance to engage directly with Gurobi’s developers and expand your understanding of cutting-edge optimization tools.
4-5:15pm
Location: A304
Academic Publishing Workshop
Presented by: Antigona Ulndreaj
We invite you to join MDPI for an Academic Publishing Workshop, where we will provide a detailed overview of MDPI’s open access publishing model, covering important topics such as selecting the right journal, understanding the editorial process, and adhering to key principles of publication ethics. Attendees will also receive practical tips on enhancing their scientific writing and responding to reviewer feedback. Led by experienced Assistant Editor, Antigona Ulndreaj, this session is designed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills needed to strengthen their publication efforts.
4-5:15pm
Location: A316
Enhancing Qualitative and Quantitative Text Analysis with Transparent Generative AI
Presented by: Normand Péladeau
This workshop introduces the integration of GenAI features in WordStat text analytics and QDA Miner qualitative analysis software, showing how generative methods can be combined with traditional approaches for more robust insights. We will highlight how high transparency was achieved to enhance reliability and trust. Participants will explore options for choosing AI engines, working with visible prompts, and integrating user-created or predefined scripts. Examples will range from simple tasks such as sentiment analysis, translation, text extraction, and preprocessing, to more advanced applications, including the fully automated analysis of open-ended responses and customer feedback—while still offering the flexibility to keep the human in the loop when interpretation and judgment matter most.
5:30-6:45pm
Location: A303
From Classroom to Industry: Modern Optimization with AMPL for Energy, Finance, Supply Chain, and Beyond
Presented by Gleb Belov & Marcos Dominguez Velad
Optimization has never been more critical – or more accessible. This talk will show how students and applied researchers can bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world impact using AMPL in modern workflows. With free academic licenses now including commercial-grade access to leading linear solvers (Gurobi, CPLEX, Xpress, Mosek, COPT, HiGHS and more), AMPL offers an unmatched opportunity to develop and apply optimization skills directly in industry contexts.
We will explore how AMPL integrates seamlessly with the tools you already know – Python, R, Jupyter, Colab, VS Code, cloud platforms, and modern data pipelines – making it a “set it and forget it” system for building models that stay faithful to the real problems you’re solving. Attendees will see how AMPL powers large-scale, mission-critical applications in energy, finance, transportation, and supply chain, enabling companies to save costs, increase efficiency, and improve decision-making.
By combining intuitive modeling with cutting-edge solver technology, AMPL empowers students and researchers not just to learn optimization, but to contribute immediately to high-impact, industry-grade projects. Join us to discover how AMPL can position you, or your students, at the forefront of applied optimization.
5:30-6:45pm
Location: A315
Advancing Optimization Excellence: How FICO® Xpress’s Latest Features Scale Decision Intelligence
Presented by: Michael Perregaard, Tristan Gally, Susanne Heipcke, Dinakar Gade, Carlos Zetina, Alexander Biele, and Rusty Burlingame
Join our workshop to discover the cutting-edge innovations in Xpress Solver 9.8 and our updated APIs! Get a firsthand look at how Xpress Insight empowers business users to harness the full potential of analytical models faster than ever before.
Experience the latest features and performance enhancements in FICO® Xpress Solver, including groundbreaking advances to our mixed-integer linear solver, the latest enhancements to our primal-dual hybrid gradient solver, and the newest features of FICO Xpress Global solver. We will present advancements in the Solver APIs and Xpress Mosel, outlining recent updates to modelling capabilities.
In the second half of this presentation, we showcase how to accelerate Optimization Workflows with Xpress Workbench & Insight using Docker. We will demonstration the ease of setup and minimal configuration required to achieve a unified development experience across Workbench and Insight using automated Docker-based workflows.
Hear from Rusty Burlingame, Principle Operations Research Advisor of Southwest Airlines, speak about how Southwest is leveraging advanced analytics to improve customer experience, enhance employee engagement, and streamline operations to maximize revenue and support growth.
5:30-6:45pm
Location: A316
Hexaly, a New Kind of Global Optimization Solver
Presented by: Fred Gardi
Hexaly is a new type of global optimization solver. Its modeling interface is nonlinear and set-oriented. It also supports user-coded functions, enabling seamless integration of simulation with optimization or machine learning with optimization. The Hexaly API unifies modeling concepts from mixed-integer programming, nonlinear programming, and constraint programming. Under the hood, Hexaly combines various exact and heuristic optimization methods: spatial branch-and-bound, simplex methods, interior-point methods, propagation, automatic branch-cut-price, local search, and surrogate modeling.
Hexaly stands out from traditional solvers like Gurobi, CPLEX, and OR-Tools by delivering super-fast solutions to problems such as routing, sequencing, scheduling, packing, clustering, matching, assignment, and location. For example, Hexaly provides solutions that are close to the best-known results in the literature for vehicle routing problems with thousands of points and scheduling problems with millions of tasks, achieving this in just one minute of runtime on a basic computer.
In addition to the Optimizer, Hexaly offers an innovative platform called Hexaly Studio, designed to prototype, develop, and deploy optimization applications quickly in a low-code fashion. This web-based platform is also well-suited for educational purposes; like all other Hexaly products, it is free for faculty and students.
5:30-6:45pm
Location: A304
Littlefield 2.0: A factory management simulation for teaching Operations Management
Presented by: Samuel Wood
Littlefield for Operations is a competitive online simulation of either a factory or a medical laboratory that has been used by more than half a million students in 500+ universities in 60+ countries. Professors use the simulation as a pair of graded assignment to engage and excite and students in studying operations management topics like process analysis and inventory control. This presentation will introduce Littlefield 2.0 and allow participants to play a very fast and challenging scenario in the new student interface.
Participants are encouraged but not required to bring a laptop or tablet to play the game.
