Spring 2002

ME/IE 8773-8774

Optimization as an Internet Resource

by

Robert Fourer
Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
Northwestern University

Wednesday, April 03, 2002
3:30-4:30 p.m.
Room 108 ME
Broadcast on UNITE Channel A
Coffee and cookies will be available in 125 ME following the seminar

Few users of optimization techniques have more than a handful of solver packages installed on computers that they use regularly. Recent advances in network interfaces promise to encourage experimentation with a much greater variety of solvers, however. This presentation surveys diverse client and server interfaces for providing optimization services over the Internet, and suggests priorities for making such services more effective. Examples include the NEOS optimization server, which provides access to over 40 solvers via a variety of interfaces and formats, and the NEOS Kestrel client for access to remote solvers within local modeling environments. NEOS is a collaborative research effort of many researchers at the Optimization Technology Center of Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory and at a range of solver sites.

Robert Fourer is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. His interests include the study of optimization algorithms and the design of computer systems to support optimization, as well as varied large-scale applications. In collaboration with researchers at Bell Laboratories, he has designed the AMPL language and system for building optimization models, and is co-author of a popular book on modeling with AMPL.

Prof. Fourer received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from M.I.T., a M.S. degree in Statistics from Stanford, and both M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Operations Research from Stanford. He has been a member of the Northwestern faculty for 21 years, including a six-year term as chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences. His research is currently supported by a grant on "Advanced Application Service Provider Technologies for Large-Scale Optimization" from the Information Technology Research initiative of the National Science Foundation.

Informal Faculty Luncheon: Wednesday, April 03, 2002, 12:00 noon. Prof. Fourer will be able to attend.