Minutes of the Optimization Section (OS) business meeting during the INFORMS conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 09, 2000:

1. The meeting was called to order by Bob Vanderbei, OS chair-elect, at 6:20 pm.

   The following people were present: Julie Higle, Cole Smith, Joyce Yen, Carlton Scott, Leon Lasdon, Sheldon Jacobson, Margaret Wiecek, Matt Saltzman, Robin Lougee-Heimer, Steftcho Dokov, David Morton, Tamas Terlaky, Janos Pinter, Shabbir Ahmed, Mohit Tawarmalani, Gyana Parija, John Chinneck, Sanjay Saigal, David Gay, Robert Fourer, John Birge, Janny Leung, Suvrajeet Sen, Lisa Fleischer, Laszlo Ladanyi, Kees Roos, Bob Vanderbei, and Chanaka Edirisinghe.

2. Presentation by Bob Vanderbei:
   1. The current officers of the Optimization Section:
      1. Gerard Cornuejols - Chair (gc0v@andrew.cmu.edu)
      2. Bob Vanderbei - Chair-elect
      3. Sharon Filipowski - Secretary/Treasurer (Sharon.Filipowski@PSS.Boeing.com)
      4. Vice Chairs:
         1. Richard Barr (barr@seas.smu.edu)--Network Flow Programming
         2. Stephen Billups (sbillups@carbon.cudenver.edu)--Linear Programming and Complementarity
         3. Chanaka Edirisinghe (chanaka@utk.edu)--Stochastic Programming
         4. Jon Lee (jlee@ms.uky.edu)--Integer Programming
         5. Nick Sahinidis (nikos@uiuc.edu) --Global Optimization
         6. Paul Tseng (tseng@math.washington.edu)--Nonlinear Programming
   2. The Optimization Prize for Young Researchers was advertised in a number of societal publications. Nominations should be sent to Bob Vanderbei before July 15, 2000. The Prize Committee has the following members: Kees Roos, Sebastian Ceria, Suvrajeet Sen, and Bill Cook.
   3. Current membership numbers in the OS:
      1. Dec 97 - 513
      2. Dec 98 - 604
      3. Dec 99 - 651
      4. March 2000 - 453 (We expect increased OS membership by the end of the year. At this point last year, the OS had received just over half of all dues collected by the end of the year.)
      It was also noted that the current membership levels make the OS the largest section within INFORMS.
   4. There is a positive balance of about $6500 in the OS bank account. We expect to have additional incoming revenue this year from dues. Furthermore, the main expenses for the year will be $1000 for the Optimization Prize, about $215 for advertising the Optimization Prize in SIAM news, and about $1000 for refreshments at the meetings. No new ideas were presented for the leftover budget.
3. Focused Optimization Meeting Suvrajeet Sen indicated that during the Seattle meeting it was suggested that a focused optimization meeting will be planned for every three years, with the first being suggested for 2001. Julie Higle and Bob Fourer indicated that SIAM meeting is held every 3 years and the next scheduled one is in 2002 and thus have the Optimization meeting in 2001. Leon Lasdon suggested June 2001 Informs meeting in Hawaii to be the venue for the optimization meeting. John Birge proposed Hawaii as the venue and David Gay seconded. No objections were raised. Leon Lasdon was aked to find details with regard to schduling etc and he will report to the OS chair.
4. INFORMS OnLine Matt Saltzmann brought to the attention that preprints, working papers, presetations of various research topics of interest to OS section members are online at http://www.informs.org/databases.html.
5. The meeting was adjourned at 6:50 pm.

Respectfully submitted by Chanaka Edirisinghe.