Title:   Mixed Integer Nonlinear Optimization: Algorithms and Software.

Speaker: Dr. Ashutosh Mahajan, Mathematics and Computer Sc. Division,
         Argonne National Laboratory, USA.

Abstract:
Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) finds applications in a wide
variety of applications in science and engineering. These optimization
problems suffer from two difficulties: presence of integer variables that
are used to model on/off decisions or to represent discrete quantities, and

Dr. Jayendran Venkateswaran attended the 2nd International Conference on Services in Emerging Markets (ICSEM 2011) held during Sept 29th - Oct 1st 2011, at IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India.  The conference was organized by Services Research & Innovation Institute (SRII) and SJM School of Management, IIT Bombay.  He presented the paper on "Collaborative Services Provision in Production-Logistics Scheduling: A Coal Industry Example", co-authored with Mr. Anu Thomas, Dr. Gaurav Singh (CSIRO, Australia) and Dr.

Dr. R. Badri Narayan, General Manager (R and D), Centre for Railway Information Systems gave a talk on "CRIS: The IT Engine of Indian Railways" on 29th September, 2011.

The talk was about the kind of applications CRIS handles for the Indian Railways and the challenges involved in development and implementation. The last part of the talk was specifically about the time tabling software being developed currently and the issues that are sought to be addressed using this application.

Tilak Raj Singh, PhD student attended the OR 2011 Conference held at Zurich between August 30 and September 2, 2011.  He gave a presentation on "Calculation of constructible set of configurations for product variety management". This is a joint work with Prof. Narayan Rangaraj, Andreas Schuette (DIAMLER AG, Germany) and Christian Schlange (DIAMLER AG, Germany).

IEOR students actively participated in the sports event held at the Institute.

IEOR won gold in table tennis (girls). The team consisted of Ketki Kulkarni (captain), Neha Phatak and Indu Choudhary. Ketki was unbeaten throughout in the singles tournament. Ketki and Neha were unbeaten in the doubles tournament as well.

IEOR won silver in badminton (boys). The team consisted of Pritam Kamble (captain), Yogesh Valunj and Debayan Das. Pritam was unbeaten in the singles throughout the tournament.

Dr. Yogeshwaran Dhandapani is delivering two lectures on Percolation Theory.

The abstracts of the two talks are as follows:

1) Introduction to basic percolation model ; Existence of a non-trivial phase transition ; Sub-exponential decay in the sub-critical phase.

2) Uniqueness of the infinite cluster ; The critical probability is 1/2 in two dimensions

The talks should be elementary in nature and should be accessible to people with reasonable background in Probability. 

The venue and timings are

Lecture 1: ME 217, 11-12.30; 25th August 2011 (today)

IEOR@IITB is arranging a LaTeX workshop for all the new students of our department.

It is mandatory for all new students to attend this workshop.

LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

Dr. D. Bijual, Ph.D in IEOR, receievd an Award for Excellence in Thesis for the year 2010-11.  The award is given to a selected set of students in the Ph.D. programme for their exemplary contributions during their Thesis work, overall academic performance and contributions during the student's tenure in the doctoral programme.  The award was presented during the 49th Convocation of IIT Bombay held on 5th August 2011.

Ms. Violet Bhattacharya, M.Tech IEOR, received the Institute Silver Medal for the year 2010-11.  The Silver medal was awarded to her for standing first in her M.Tech class by obtaining the highest CPI.   The award was presented during the 49th Convocation held on 5th August 2011.   Violet's Master's thesis was on "The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem - Recent Developments and Analysis of Effects of Parameters", under the guidance of Prof. P.G. Awate.

Dr. Jayendran Venkaetswaran attended the 29th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society held during July 24th - 29th 2011, at Washington, DC, USA .  He presented the paper on "Simulation based Analysis of Service Levels in Stable Production-Inventory Systems", co-authored with Mr. Kaushik Margabandu, Dr. Bijulal and Prof. N. Hemachandra.