Jim Luedtke

Researchers Discover the Optimal Way To Optimize | Quanta Magazine The leading approach to the simplex method, a widely used technique for balancing complex logistical constraints, can’t get any better.

@sophie.huiberts.me is featured in a Quanta magazine article about the simplex method.

www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Screenshot of Figure 7 from "Route Planning in Transportation Networks" by Bast et al. (2016). It is a graph comparing various route-planning algorithms on the road network of Western Europe. The X axis is the preprocessing time of the graph, and the Y axis is the time taken by an individual path query after that. Both axes span several orders of magnitude along the Pareto frontier between fast queries and fast preprocessing.

Periodic appreciation post for this gem of a review by Hannah Bast and coauthors. If you think you know how to compute shortest paths... trust me, you don't. I can give you one spoiler though: preprocessing the graph helps A LOT.
doi.org/10.1007/978-...

@jannisku.bsky.social is giving a very interesting talk on explainable (integer) optimization at the @euroorml.bsky.social seminar, highlighting counterfactual explanations before diving on new work with Coherent Local Explanations for Mathematical Optimization (CLEMO): arxiv.org/abs/2502.04840

Assistant/Associate/Full Professor in Industrial & Systems Engineering (RISE AI) - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

We are hiring two faculty positions in ISyE at UW-Madison
Please come and join us!

jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Congratulations!!!

What an opportunity! Where can an applicant learn more about it and submit their application?

"Republicans run the entire government but can't keep it open"

That's it. That's the whole story.

Winter 2025 / 2026 schools on artificial intelligence, data science, machine learning, optimization, and other relevant topics in operations research Following up on a recent post about Summer 2025 schools, here is a new list. The purpose of organizing this is to help graduate students find a summer school to gain skills related to operations re…

Here is a list of Winter / Summer schools on AI, data science, optimization, and related topics in operations research happening between October of 2025 and February of 2026:

thiagoserra.com/2025/09/22/w...

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

📢 New in JMLR (w @rajivsambharya.bsky.social)! 🎉 Data-driven guarantees for classical & learned optimizers via sample bounds + PAC-Bayes theory.

📄 jmlr.org/papers/v26/2...
💻 github.com/stellatogrp/...

GitHub - thserra/discreet: What is the Best Way to Do Something? A Discreet Tour of Discrete Optimization What is the Best Way to Do Something? A Discreet Tour of Discrete Optimization - thserra/discreet

I wrote a tutorial inspired by my experience conducting research with undergraduate students who knew how to code, but were yet to learn about optimization.

What is the Best Way to Do Something? A Discreet Tour of Discrete Optimization: github.com/thserra/disc...

The Banal Evil of AI Safety Chatbot companies are harmful and dishonest. How can we hold them accountable?

I wrote about the tragic death of Adam Raine and the venal negligence of "AI Safety." www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-...

Nobody covers Wisconsin politics better than @danshafer.bsky.social & you should take advantage of this great deal

Israel had every right to respond to Hamas' 7 Oct 2023 attacks.

But this has NOT been a proportionate response: it has been an escalating campaign of war crimes, crimes against humanity & genocide as the world just watches.

It is fair to hold Israel to a higher standard than Hamas terrorists. 5/5

The #FutureBAProf workshop continues with Tallys Yunes, the 22-time winner of University of Miami Herbert Business School Excellence in Teaching award, sharing about teaching in business schools.

1/2

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without…

A new study led by Prof. Cathy Wu and colleagues reveals that eco-driving measures, such as dynamically adjusting vehicle speeds to reduce stopping and excessive acceleration, can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

Fascinating video about the history of linear programming

Screenshot of paper abstract, with text: "A core ethos of the Economics and Computation (EconCS) community is that people have complex private preferences and information of which the central planner is unaware, but which an appropriately designed mechanism can uncover to improve collective decisionmaking. This ethos underlies the community’s largest deployed success stories, from stable matching systems to participatory budgeting. I ask: is this choice and information aggregation “worth it”? In particular, I discuss how such systems induce heterogeneous participation: those already relatively advantaged are, empirically, more able to pay time costs and navigate administrative burdens imposed by the mechanisms. I draw on three case studies, including my own work – complex democratic mechanisms, resident crowdsourcing, and school matching. I end with lessons for practice and research, challenging the community to help reduce participation heterogeneity and design and deploy mechanisms that meet a “best of both worlds” north star: use preferences and information from those who choose to participate, but provide a “sufficient” quality of service to those who do not."

New piece, out in the Sigecom Exchanges! It's my first solo-author piece, and the closest thing I've written to being my "manifesto." #econsky #ecsky
arxiv.org/abs/2507.03600

“Staying sane on the tenure track” by Shane Henderson. Written in 2008 but still good advice for junior faculty. people.orie.cornell.edu/shane/pubs/S... #orms

Yesterday I posted a maths puzzle that AIs all failed at (thanks for running the premium versions @xy-han.bsky.social and Ernest Ryu). The puzzle just needs elementary reasoning about p-norm balls (third row on my shelf below).

This thread gives the puzzle, solution, and a 3D printed demo :)

The Irrational Decision How the computer revolution shaped our conception of rationality—and why human problems require solutions rooted in human intuition, morality, and judgment

I’m excited to announce that my new book, _The Irrational Decision_, is now available for pre-order from Princeton University Press.

Screenshot of Washington Post homepage. Lead headline is: "Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise." Lead image is of a woman in Gaza holding an almost impossibly emaciated child

Harrowing lead story and image on the Washington Post homepage right now. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Congratulations to Dr. Ashley Peper for successfully defending her PhD dissertation today. Ashley will be joining the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point as an assistant professor this fall

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THANK YOU to our supporters who've stepped up during this critical moment. If you haven't given, here's how you can help:

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Gaza doctors ‘becoming too weak to treat patients’ as hunger crisis deepens Malnourished medical staff say they are struggling to provide care to injured civilians, while recovery rates are also hit by

Gaza doctors ‘becoming too weak to treat patients’ as hunger crisis deepens

1.5 million Gazans is 75% of the population, half of whom are children.

This is *deliberate* starvation. Just one agency - UNRWA - has stated today it has enough food stockpiled outside the border to feed the population for months.

The Israeli govt must let food and water in & stop the killing.

Prachi Shah, Santanu S. Dey
Improving Full Strong Branching Decisions by Incorporating Additional Information
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09455

Bar graph showing the change in percentage of calls answered after FEMA laid off contractors on July 5th (over 99% on July 5, about 36% on July 6 and 16% of calls answered on July 7)

Two days after deadly Texas floods, the agency struggled to answer calls from survivors because of call center contracts that weren’t extended.

This is so horrifying I made a bar graph www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/c...

Congratulations to Ramsey Rossmann from @uwisye.bsky.social on successfully defending his dissertation on models for improving power grid resilience today!