Mehmet Gumus, Associate Professor at McGill University, created a web app for Covid-19 Analytics so that it calculates the expected end-date for COVID-19 for each country on a real-time basis. The expected end-date for each country is calculated based on the weekly geometric average of daily growth rates. At every hour, he receives new information and update his end-date prediction accordingly. Also, he calculates the expected end-date only for the countries whose new cases are trending down.

Here is the link for the updated website:
http://covid.plannica.net

Congradulations to Samuel Pelletier, directed by Gilbert Laporte and Ola Jabali from HEC Montréal. He received the 2019 Best Thesis award for his thesis entitled "Goods Distribution with Electric Vehicles."

For more information.

Even though the 16th Copper Mountain Conference On Iterative Methods was canceled, the selection of the winners of the Student Paper Competition was completed. After careful review of all the submissions, the committee has selected Alexis Montoison as one of the winners.

Alexis Montoison, PhD student at Polytechnique Montréal, is supervised by Dominique Orban.

Congratulations Alexis!

Despite the confinement to which we are currently subject (April 2020), GERAD wishes to mark the birthday of our colleague Pierre Hansen, who celebrated his 80th birthday in late March 2020. Pierre Hansen has been a member of GERAD since the early 1990s, when he joined the faculty of HEC Montréal. He was also director of GERAD from 1996 to 2001. Since 2004, he holds the Data Mining Chair at HEC Montréal.

Pierre Hansen’s work focuses on several themes, in particular metaheuristics (including the so-called Variable Neighborhood Search approach), non-convex quadratic programming, mathematical chemistry and computer-assisted scientific discovery. In addition, his work can be applied to many disciplines and thus presents a remarkable multidisciplinary character. Finally, his work is widely cited: Pierre Hansen has accumulated nearly 38,300 citations in his career with an h-index of 85, according to Google Scholar.

His scientific excellence has earned him numerous recognition, including the 1986 EURO Gold Medal and the 2013 HEC Montréal Grand Prize for Research. He is also a member of the International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry and the Royal Society of Canada.

GERAD is therefore particularly proud to count such a researcher among its members.

Happy birthday, Pierre!

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Edouard Wagneur.
Thank you for reading the following message from Jean-Jacques Loiseau.

To all participants of Optimization Days 2020,

GERAD and the Optimization Days organizing committee take the evolution of the Coronavirus epidemic very seriously and follow closely the directives of the governments of Québec and Canada regarding travel and social events restrictions.

With the health and well-being of all in mind, it is with regret that we decided to cancel Optimization Days 2020.

We hope everyone stays healthy and we look forward to welcoming you to Montreal for Optimization Days 2021.

The Optimization Days 2020 organizing committee

In the context of the measures put in place to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus, our team will be teleworking and the face-to-face research activities are suspended until further notice. Our offices will be closed. We invite members to conduct their meetings online or by phone whenever possible.

We ask you to respect the Québec public health governmental directives (https://www.quebec.ca/sante/problemes-de-sante/a-z/coronavirus-2019/) as well as those of your university.

We therefore remain available and continue our ongoing operations. Adjustments to upcoming training and events, if any, will be communicated.

Thank you for your collaboration.

Consult the latest directives:
HEC Montréal affiliate university: https://www.hec.ca/en/notice/
Our offices (Université de Montréal): https://urgence.umontreal.ca/

Best Presentation Award
Charles Cossette, "The Basics of Multi-Robot Formation Control"

2nd Best Presentation Award (ex aequo)
Narges Sereshti, "Epidemic Models and Coronavirus"
Rosemarie Santa González, "Humanitarian Relief with Mobile Clinics"

Congratulations!

The first series of the Edge Intelligence Workshop was held successfully in 2-3 March 2020 with more than 100 participants from academia and industry.

Title: Improvements on column-generation-based algorithms for vehicle routing and other combinatorial optimization problems

We are proud to announce that Mr. Tayeb Mhamedi, candidate presented by Marilène Cherkesly and Guy Desaulniers and Mrs. Narges Sereshti, candidate presented by Raf Jans and Yossiri Adulyasak are the winners of the 2019-2020 – FRQNT International Internship Program.

Congratulations!

Here are the winners who will each receive a half-fellowship of $30,000:

• Aldair Alvarez Diaz, candidate proposed by Jean-François Cordeau and Raf Jans;
• Azadeh Maroufmashat, candidate proposed by Olivier Bahn and Peter Caines;
• Alfredo Daniel Moreno Arteaga, candidate proposed by Marilème Ckerkesly.

Congratulations!

A scholarship of $3500 will be attributed to:

* Luc Laporte, sponsored by Jean-Pierre Dussault and Dominique Orban.

Congratulations!

The GERAD is collaborating with the OR Montreal student chapter and Concordia University to promote operations research to the high school student by proposing a competition that will take place on March 14, 2020, at Concordia University, at Concordia University. Registration is free and the competition will be in French and in English. website

Title: Résolution exacte du problème de partitionnement de données avec minimisation de variance sous contraintes de cardinalité par programmation par contraintes

Register for the 2020 Optimization Days.

March 10, 2020 - Deadline for submission of abstracts for the Optimization Days
April 3, 2020 - Deadline for the registration fee discount

The last issue of the Newsletter is now available. Enjoy!
* Spotlights on ... - GERAD’s new director: Olivier Bahn
* Collaborations - Numerical optimization in Julia with the JuliaSmoothOptimizers framework
* Impact papers - Tight-and-cheap conic relaxation for the AC optimal power flow problem
* Where are they now? - R. Montagné, É. Prescott-Gagnon, O. Rubel
* Postdoctoral fellows - M. Diago Martínez, M. Gasse, S. A. Mojallal, J. A. Rodríguez
* Who are they? - J. Jalbert, W. Qi

At the December 12, 2019, members' meeting, a resolution to highlight Hugues Delmaire's important contribution to GERAD was adopted. Through this initiative, the members wanted to thank Hugues for his efforts and success in bringing researchers and entrepreneurs together. Hugues joined GERAD in May 2018 as a research coordinator seconded to GERAD by IVADO. Its main mission is to forge links between GERAD researchers and industry.

Title: Dynamique de l'évolution du couvert végétal forestier des agrosystèmes sahéliens du nord du Burkina Faso après les sécheresses des années 1970-1980: implication des pratiques d'aménagement des terres

Title: Contribution méthodologique à l'évaluation environnementale stratégique de l'aménagement des ports minéraliers en zone côtière tropicale: cas de la Guinée