INFORMS Comes to San Francisco for the 2026 Annual Meeting

San Francisco is getting ready to welcome the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting on November 1-4! More than 6,000 members of the INFORMS community, including academic scholars, students, practitioners, and industry leaders, will gather at the Moscone Center South and the Marriott Marquis San Francisco to exchange ideas across operations research, analytics, artificial intelligence, and the decision sciences.

AI Meets O.R.  

There could hardly be a more fitting location for this year’s meeting. San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area are at the epicenter of the AI revolution. The city and its neighbors are home to frontier AI labs and the technology companies whose platforms in cloud computing, ride-sharing, delivery, e-commerce, and self-driving run on the optimization, stochastic modeling, and machine-learning methods the INFORMS community has developed for decades. In the Bay Area, the convergence of O.R. and AI is visible everywhere. The 2026 Annual Meeting puts our community at the center of that convergence.

The 2026 program is packed with technical sessions, plenary and keynote presentations, interactive workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, technology showcases, and abundant networking opportunities. Technical sessions span the full breadth of our field, from methodological advances in optimization, applied probability, and machine learning to applications in supply chains, healthcare, energy, transportation, finance, and public policy. With more than 5,000 presentations to choose from, you will need to exercise your best optimization skills to construct your personal schedule. Be sure to check the conference agenda and the INFORMS mobile app for the most up-to-date information on tracks, topics, and locations.

Plenary Speakers

Plenaries are the only sessions in their time slots, bringing the entire conference together in one hall. This year’s plenary lineup captures the meeting's spirit of convergence between O.R. and AI:

• Michael I. Jordan (University of California, Berkeley and Inria Paris), Opening Plenary: A pioneering figure in machine learning and statistics, Prof. Jordan is a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and winner of the inaugural World Laureates Association Prize. He opens the meeting on Sunday morning.
• Karen Smilowitz (Northwestern University), Monday Plenary: An INFORMS Fellow and former Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Science, Prof. Smilowitz is a leading voice on logistics and transportation systems in both commercial and nonprofit applications.
• Russell Allgor (Auger), Tuesday Plenary: An INFORMS Fellow and National Academy of Engineering member, Dr. Allgor is the chief supply chain scientist at Auger, a startup building AI-powered software created to transform global supply chains. He worked for more than 24 years as Amazon’s chief scientist of Worldwide Operations, where he shaped the fulfillment and network optimization systems behind modern e-commerce.
• Andrea Lodi (Cornell Tech), Closing Plenary: Recipient of the INFORMS Optimization Society Farkas Prize and an INFORMS Fellow, Prof. Lodi is a leading authority on mixed-integer programming and data-driven optimization.

Keynote Speakers

The keynote sessions extend the program’s reach from the foundations of computing to AI-enabled scientific discovery and industrial practice. The nine keynotes run in three early-evening blocks, Sunday through Tuesday, with three parallel keynote sessions in each block, featuring:

• Mengdi Wang (Princeton University), Omega Rho Distinguished Lecture, “LabOS: The AI-XR Co-Scientist That Sees and Works With Humans”
• Cynthia Dwork (Harvard University), “Indistinguishability: The Stuff of Magic,” a tour of the complexity-theoretic concept underpinning differential privacy, cryptography, and algorithmic fairness
• Benjamin Van Roy (Stanford University), Morse Lectureship, on reinforcement learning and alignment
• Elena Fernandez (University of Cadiz), IFORS Distinguished Lecture, “Location Science, Once More: New Challenges for a Mature Area”
• Dolores Romero Morales (Copenhagen Business School)
• Peter Belcak (NVIDIA), on reliable and efficient agentic AI systems
• Tueng Shen (University of Washington), on bridging engineering and medicine to transform healthcare
• Konstantina Mellou (Microsoft), 2026 INFORMS Franz Edelman Award Reprise, “Microsoft Cloud Supply Chain: Democratizing Hyperscale Optimization for Cloud Fulfillment”
• Joel Sokol (Georgia Tech), 2026 UPS George D. Smith Prize Reprise, on Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Analytics program

TutORials and Workshops

The TutORials in Operations Research track, published annually by INFORMS, offers accessible introductions to both emerging and established areas of our field for students, practitioners, faculty, and researchers who want to explore topics outside their immediate specialization or get a structured introduction to a developing area. The 2026 lineup gives a good sense of the directions in which O.R. and related fields are moving. Topics include:

• Generative models for decision-making under distributional shift
• Reinforcement learning for large language models
• GPU-accelerated decision optimization
• Decision-focused learning
• Multi-objective combinatorial optimization
• Parallel computing for two-stage stochastic infrastructure planning
• Transform methods for stochastic processing and matching networks
• Fraud analytics as a sequential decision system
• Multiagent online learning
• Self-adapting approximations of Markov decision processes
• Foundations of reinforcement learning and control
• Deep learning for sequential decision-making under uncertainty

Arrive early to take advantage of the pre-meeting programming on Saturday, October 31, including the INFORMS Combined Colloquia, the Data-Mining and Data Science Workshops, the CTL Teaching Excellence and Networking (TEN) Workshop, and exhibitor workshops offering hands-on training with the latest software and tools.

Job Market Showcase and Career Fair

Building on its successful introduction at the 2025 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, the Job Market Showcase returns as a dedicated cluster where job seekers present their research and gain exposure to prospective employers in academia and industry in one centralized location. It complements the Career Fair at the Marriott Marquis, where job seekers can explore career options and speak directly with recruiting organizations, and employers can showcase their companies and connect with top talent in analytics, data science, and operations research.

Networking, Community, and Recognition

Of course, much of an Annual Meeting happens outside the formal technical sessions. 

The poster sessions and technology showcases offer a conversational way to engage with the latest research and innovations. A poster competition will once again recognize outstanding presentations. INFORMS societies, sections, forums, geographic chapters, and student chapters will also hold business meetings and receptions throughout the conference.  

With 13 societies, 22 sections, seven forums, and numerous chapters represented, these events provide prime networking opportunities tailored to your interests. New members can start their conference at the New Member Connections Breakfast, and international attendees are invited to the International Connections Meet & Greet. 

Please join us in celebrating our colleagues at the INFORMS Awards Ceremony and the INFORMS Student Chapter Annual Awards Ceremony. Come together at the annual INFORMS Member Meeting to celebrate our professional home and recognize our exceptional volunteers and the broader community that supports the organization.

Social Events and the City

The Welcome Reception on Sunday evening (6:30-8:30pm) in Moscone South Hall A kicks off the meeting with food stations, beverages, and entertainment amid the exhibits, the perfect setting to reconnect with colleagues, meet the exhibitors, and make new professional connections. 

We hope you also make some time to enjoy San Francisco. The Moscone Center is in the Yerba Buena neighborhood, steps from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Gardens, and the Metreon’s dining options. A short walk or a cable car ride takes you to Union Square, Chinatown, and the Ferry Building’s celebrated food hall.  

San Francisco is above all a walking city. Stroll the Embarcadero waterfront to Fisherman’s Wharf, follow Crissy Field to Fort Point beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, take in the Pacific views along the Lands End Coastal Trail, climb the Filbert Steps to Coit Tower for a panorama of the bay, or wander Golden Gate Park and its serene Japanese Tea Garden.  

In the evening, sample the city’s deep jazz tradition at SFJAZZ, the nation’s premier stand-alone jazz venue, or at intimate clubs like the Black Cat, Mr. Tipple’s, and Keys Jazz Bistro. If you can extend your stay, there is plenty to explore beyond the city: the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma are little more than an hour north, and just across the Golden Gate, Marin County offers spectacular hiking among the redwoods of Muir Woods, along the coastal bluffs of the Marin Headlands, and up Mount Tamalpais. November is one of the city’s sunnier periods, though we still recommend layers, as weather in San Francisco can change quickly. 

Getting There

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) offers nonstop flights to more than 140 destinations worldwide, and BART, the Bay Area’s rapid transit rail system, delivers you from SFO to Powell Street Station, a 10-minute walk from the conference hotels, in about 30 minutes. INFORMS has partnered with United Airlines and Southwest Airlines for discounted fares, and the official room block at the Marriott Marquis and the InterContinental San Francisco is open until October 8, 2026, or until sold out. We expect the block to fill before the deadline, so we strongly encourage attendees to book early. 

An Accessible and Welcoming Meeting

Accessibility is a top priority of our meeting. All plenary and keynote sessions will feature Wordly AI translation and captioning, providing instant multilingual translation and real-time captions on your mobile device. The Moscone Center will also offer a quiet room, a family and caregiving room, and nursing pods, and all official breaks and receptions will include vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free options. If you need an accommodation not already provided, INFORMS will make every effort to assist.

If you have questions on site, look for the INFORMS NavigatORs or visit the INFORMS Booth in Hall A, where you can also pick up badge ribbons and INFORMS swag. 

We look forward to welcoming you to San Francisco this November. Come for the science, stay for the sourdough!

Alper Atamturk, University of California, Berkeley, and Tim Jacobs, Walmart, are the General Co-Chairs of the 2026 INFORMS Annual Meeting.