Minutes of the Optimization Section (OS) Business Meeting during
the INFORMS Conference in San Jose, California, November 19, 2002

1. The meeting was called to order by Robert Freund, OS Chair at 6:20 p.m. Present at the meeting were Stephen Billups, Yu Xia, Robin Lougee-Heiner, Hua Ni, Gus Gassmann, Nicole Growe-Kuska, Bill McGill, Time Lowe, Mike Gertz, Steve Dirkse, Sven Leyffer, Todd Munson, Illya Hicks, Leticia Velazquez, Ann Bixby, Jerry O'Neal, David Ryan, Gokhan Ozevin, Tito Homem de Mello, Zhifeng Li, Jose Correa, Mohit Tawarmahani, Renato D. C. Monteiro, Suvrajeet Sen, Julie Higle, Madiagne Diallo, Jaimie Lee, Joo-Yeouh Oh, Matthew Saltzman, Pitu Mirchandani, David M. Gay, Irv Lustig, W. Gavin Ekins, Lewis Ntaimo, Cole Smith, Yupo Chan, Hande Benson, Marina Epelman, Nicolas Stier, Fernando Ordonez, Gul Gurkan, Matthew Gulati, Tamas Terlaky, Janos Pinter, and Ted Ralphs.
2. OS Chair Rob Freund, filling in for Franz Rendl (chair of the prize committee) awarded Sam Burer the 2002 optimization prize for young researchers for his paper titled "Semidefinite programming in the space of partial positive semidefinite matrices". The prize committee consisted of Franz Rendl (chair), Michael Ferris, Renato Monteiro, Andreas Shultz, and Henry Wolkewicz. Sam was given a plaque along with $1000. Sam then gave a 15 presentation of his work.
3. OS Officer Report (by Rob Freund):
   1. Rob thanked the following OS officers whose terms are expiring: Hanif Sherali (Vice-chair for Global Optimization), Renato Monteiro (Vice-chair for nonlinear programming), and David Morton (Vice-chair for stochastic optimization).
   2. Effective after the meeting, Renato Monteiro will begin a two year term as OS Chair. Furthermore, the following Vice-chairs will serve the final year of their two-year terms: Eva Lee (Vice-chair for integer programming), Tamas Terlaky (Vice-chair for linear programming and complementarity), and Jim Orlin (Vice-chair for network flow programming).
   3. Rob announced the results of the OS section elections, which were conducted via email and completed November 8, 2002. The following people were elected to serve two year terms as vice chairs: Janos Pinter (Vice-chair for global optimization), Alex Shapiro (Vice-chair for stochastic optimization), and Yin Zhang, (Vice-chair for nonlinear programming). Additionally, Stephen Billups was re-elected to serve a second year as Secretary/Treasurer.
4. Secretary/Treasurer report (by Stephen Billups):
   1. The final audited financial report for year 2001 indicates that the OS section received $2,890 in revenue from membership dues and $239.85 from interest in 2001, for a total of $3,129.85 in revenue.
   2. Expenses in 2001 totaled $1,576.88 from $1000 for the Optimization Prize, $87.88 for the prize plaque, $237.00 for advertising for the Optimization Prize in SIAM News, and $252.00 for refereshments for the fall meeting.
   3. The year end balance for 2001 was $9,007.16.
   4. The (unaudited, and incomplete) financial report for 2002 as of 9/30/02 indicates dues revenue of $2,293.00 and expenses of $112.10 (SIAM News advertisement). Major expenses for the year have not yet been recorded. Current balance as of 9/30/02 was $11,188.06.
5. Report by Cole Smith on a proposal for student paper prize for most innovative optimization application.
   1. Cole acknowledge the ad hoc committee that was formed at last year's OS business meeting to investigate how to spend surplus revenue of the OS section. The ad hoc committee consisted of John Birge, Jim Cochran, Karen Lewis, Rob Freund, and Cole Smith.
   2. Cole reviewed some of the discussion from last year's meeting: these included providing financial support for an optimization related conference, organizing an OS-section coffee break at an optimization conference, sponsoring a best student paper competition, and awarding prompt and thorough refereeing.
   3. The ad hoc committee felt that a "best student paper" competition would overlap too much with other student paper prizes, and would therefore have less effect on society. The committee suggested that a better purpose would be to fund papers on innovative applications, and involve young researchers that otherwise would not attend INFORMS. Given a surplus of $1000/yr, two awards could probably be given each year. Details of the suggested competition were as follows: Eligibility: Author must have been a student the previous year. The student must have been responsible for conducting the research and writing the paper. Judging Panel: Would consist of a committee of 5 members. 3 of these would be long-term members serving staggered 3-year terms. The other 2 members would be short term, serving 1 year terms. Submission deadline: February 15. Application: Would include a letter from an organization impacted by the application describing the significance and impact of the application.
   4. Discussion: Irv Lustig suggested that we have 3 finalists, and that we provide financial assistance for all 3 to attend the meeting. It was suggested that we get a corporate sponsor for the travel costs. This proposal seemed to be well received. Another proposal was to limit the award to first time attendees. This proposal met with a fair amount of dissent. Another suggestion was that current students should receive preferential treatment. Someone asked the question "what is the relation of this prize to the Nicholson prize?" There was some concern that someone might submit the same paper to several different competitions and win multiple prizes. Cole Smith said that we can't formally do anything to prevent double submissions. A suggestion was made to coordinate with other prize committees.
   5. Cole Smith will make a formal proposal, which will be voted on via email.
6. Other Business.
   1. 2 conferences were announced.
   2. Marina Eppelmann, who is coordinating the invited sessions for the 2003 Atlanta meeting suggested that we coordinate between invited, sponsored and contributed sessions. It was proposed that the incoming chair be responsible for coordinate our sponsored sessions with the program chair.
   3. Tamas Terlaky raised the issue of whether we should apply to become a society rather than a section. One advantage is that each society gets a vote on the INFORMS governing board, whereas 3 sections together share a single vote. There was no disagreement, and it stated that the membership encourages the new chair to look into Society Status.
7. The meeting was adjourned at 7:10 p.m.

Submitted by Stephen Billups, OS Secretary / Treasurer.