Please join us on Wednesday, March 6, 2024 for the Pierce Seminar at 4 PM in Room 1-131 with Prof. Andrea Lodi. 

Abstract Title: Mixed-Integer Programming: 75 years of history and the Artificial Intelligence challenge 

Abstract: 

Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) technology is used daily to solve (discrete) optimization problems in contexts as diverse as energy, transportation, logistics, telecommunications, biology, just to mention a few. The MIP roots date back to 1958 with the seminal work by Ralph Gomory on cutting plane generation. In this talk, we will discuss — taking the (biased) viewpoint of the speaker — how MIP evolved in its main algorithmic ingredients, namely preprocessing, branching, cutting planes and primal heuristics, to become a mature research field whose advances rapidly translate into professional, widely available software tools. We will then discuss the next phase of this process, where Artificial Intelligence and, specifically, Machine Learning are already playing a significant role, a role that is likely to increase.

Bio:

Andrea Lodi is an Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion since 2021. He received his PhD in System Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2000 and he has been Herman Goldstine Fellow at the IBM Mathematical Sciences Department, full professor of Operations Research at the University of Bologna, and Canada Excellence Research Chair at Polytechnique Montréal. His main research interests are in Mixed-Integer Linear and Nonlinear Programming and Data Science. He has been recognized by IBM and Google faculty awards, the 2021 Farkas Prize by the INFORMS Optimization Society and as 2023 INFORMS Fellow. Andrea Lodi has been network coordinator and principal investigator of EU and Canadian projects and consultant of the IBM CPLEX research and development team (2006-2021).