Virtual 2020 INFORMS Annual Meeting has something for everyone

For the first time ever, the INFORMS Annual Meeting will be entirely virtual. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to be felt worldwide, this new format ensures that the global INFORMS community stays safe, healthy and well-connected during these challenging times.

From Nov. 7-13, the inaugural Virtual INFORMS Annual Meeting will feature more than 4,000 synchronous and asynchronous presentations from O.R. and analytics professionals across the globe.

With five full meeting days featuring live and on-demand presentations each day, this year’s meeting provides a unique virtual experience that allows participants to interact with the content they want, whenever and wherever they want to access it. Highlights include:

• A meeting schedule that provides the opportunity to create a meeting experience to fit your schedule, with a combination of live and recorded presentations, chat sessions, on-demand content and engaging networking opportunities
• Unique opportunities to connect and interact with presenters and other meeting participants to build lasting relationships
• Interactive virtual meeting guides who can help you navigate and enhance your meeting experience
• A robust and comprehensive lineup of live plenary and keynote speakers
• Two additional full days of content

The meeting program will include presentations with Q&A opportunities that will be made available for download, along with thousands of other on-demand sessions. This win-win format not only allows participants to view talks they otherwise would not have been able to attend, but also allows participants to present their ideas to a wider audience. Whether you are a student trying to impress future employers, a seasoned academic interested in sharing ideas, or a practitioner advertising their latest impactful product, this format will give you greater opportunities for exposure.

The technical program itself consists of an exciting array of presentations. The cutting-edge plenary sessions will address such topics as elections polling and gerrymandering, data challenges for the 2020 U.S. Census, and COVID-19 modeling and policy. The keynote speakers will cover state-of-the-art advancements in a broad range of timely topics, including social distancing models, disaster relief, supply chains, machine learning, simulation for big data, quantum computing, artificial intelligence and more. Furthermore, this year’s tutorials will cover a wide spectrum of topics, such as analytics-based issues of diversity, algorithmic bias, healthcare analytics, public education, entrepreneurship, wine analytics (!) and more. A new highlight of the conference is a specialized cluster of practice-curated sessions. The full speaker and presentation program will be available in mid-September.

Pre-Meeting Events

In accordance with previous year’s Annual Meetings, INFORMS will continue to offer specialized opportunities leading up to the conference such as the INFORMS Combined Colloquia and INFORMS Workshop on Data Mining & Decision Analytics.

The Virtual 2020 INFORMS Combined Colloquia will be held Nov. 7 and are designed to provide attendees with technical material, career experiences from senior and junior OR/MS professionals and an environment for networking. The deadline to apply is Sept. 10. The three colloquia include: Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium, Doctoral Student Colloquium and New Faculty Colloquium.

The Virtual 2020 Teaching Effectiveness Colloquium is designed to address the needs of graduate students about to enter the academic job market, as well as faculty looking to stay abreast of the “best practices” regarding OR/MS/analytics pedagogy. The colloquium features a wide variety of speakers from business and engineering schools who will address different aspects of incorporating and assessing effective teaching techniques into any undergraduate or graduate curriculum.

The Virtual 2020 Doctoral Student Colloquium is intended for doctoral students who need guidance deciding between a career as an academic or a practitioner. It will include sessions dedicated to examining both career options and choosing between the two. It also addresses topics like navigating the job hunt, dealing with work-life balance issues, and suggestions concerning job market preparation and positioning. It has been organized with current doctoral students 2-3 years from graduation in mind; however, nominations will also be accepted from students in their final year of a doctoral program. Multiple funding opportunities will be available to doctoral students looking to attend the 2020 Doctoral Student Colloquium.

The Virtual 2020 New Faculty Colloquium – introduced for the first time in 2014 – is expressly tailored to meet the needs of academics at the beginning of their careers. It gives faculty in their first two years insight into successfully navigating the tenure process, including how to build and maintain a research program, advise students, balance research, teaching and service, write successful proposals and more. Nominations of faculty in their first or second year are preferred. 

INFORMS Workshop on Data Mining & Decision Analytics

The Data Mining Section of INFORMS will organize the 15th INFORMS Workshop on Data Mining & Decision Analytics set for Nov. 7. The workshop provides the opportunity for participants to share their recent research work with peers from data mining, decision analytics and artificial intelligence.

To participate, a full paper should be submitted before the Sept. 1 deadline for consideration. All submissions will also be considered for a best paper competition in both theoretical and applied research tracks.

INFORMS and the conference organizing committee looks forward to welcoming you online at the Virtual 2020 INFORMS Annual Meeting.