Jim Luedtke

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For $5/month or $60/yr you get access to PBS Passport and the entire Masterpiece library plus Great Performances, etc. Defunded but not defeated. www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

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:

👉 1. Donate to help keep journalists on the ground: n.pr/458sOhq
👉 2. Share this post to rally friends and family behind this essential service.

Every dollar counts.

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!

I'm proud to host the first European MIP Workshop today. 17 exciting talks about all aspects of mixed integer programming #EuroMIP25

Not a sin! The methods are terrible, or at least, none of them are different from genetic algorithms. But the names are so bad they are funny: cuckoo search, whale optimization, pigeon-inspired, grasshopper, mayfly, slime mould, glow worm, manta ray foraging…

You just have to join the fun- it’s hilarious once you realize there is no analogy so outlandish that it hasn’t already been used as inspiration for a “new” heuristic

"We are devastated and heartbroken at the loss of our parents, Melissa and Mark. They were the bright lights at the center of our lives, and we can't believe they are gone. Their love for us was boundless. We miss them so much. "We want everyone to know that we are both safe and with loved ones. We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support we have received, and we appreciate your respect for our family's privacy as we grieve. "Our family would like to thank law enforcement for their swift action that saved others and for the coordination across communities that led to the arrest of the man who murdered our parents. We especially would like to thank the officers who were first on the scene to our parents' home and their heroic attempts to rescue our mom and dad. "Our parents touched so many lives, and they leave behind an incredible legacy of dedication to their community that will live on in us, their friends, their colleagues and co-workers, and every single person who knew and loved them. "If you would like to honor the memory of Mark and Melissa, please consider the following: • Plant a tree. • Visit a local park and make use of their amenities, especially a bike trail. • Pet a dog. A golden retriever is ideal, but any will do. • Tell your loved ones a cheesy dad joke and laugh about it. • Bake something — bread for Mark or a cake for Melissa, and share it with someone. • Try a new hobby and enjoy learning something. • Stand up for what you believe in, especially if that thing is justice and peace. "Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear. Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect. The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else."

Please read and share this statement from Sophie and Colin Hortman, children of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

(via WCCO reporter Caroline Cummings on X)

With #mip2025, the MIP Workshop returned to the University of Minnesota after a twenty-year hiatus. Can you spot any commonalities with the group photo from #mip2005?

It was an honor and a pleasure to chair the 2025 Mixed Integer Programming Workshop from June 2 to 6 in Minneapolis, MN. For everyone that missed it, we missed you too but you may catch up on the talk/poster details and competition winners via mixedinteger.org/2025 and the #mip2025 workshop program.

FICO Xpress Optimization Surpasses AlphaEvolve’s Achievements FICO’s global optimization solver outperforms Gemini AI-powered AlphaEvolve coding agent by improving solutions for complex, constrained math problems

Timo Berthold has a post called “FICO Xpress Optimization Surpasses AlphaEvolve’s Achievements” www.fico.com/blogs/best-g... #orms

Industrial and Systems Engineering Day logo

I am thrilled to announce the establishment of Industrial and Systems Engineering Day (#ISEday), a new initiative dedicated to increasing awareness of #ISE and inspiring future generations. The first #ISEday will be celebrated on September 15, 2025. For email updates sign up here: lnkd.in/ghWXWQYm

Our paper, A Unified Framework for Analyzing and Optimizing a Class of Convex Fairness Measures, has been accepted in Operations Research.This paper, joint work w Dr.Tsang, presents a new step toward mulating and solving fairness-promoting optimization problems
shorturl.at/hmMq4 @informs.bsky.social

Don't get misled by the media coverage -
ICE has escalated civil nonviolent protests with the constant use of flash bangs (on people just standing around), teargassing entire neighborhoods, itching to use LLs on crowds. Don't give into their narrative of disorder

See you all in Connecticut for #mip2026!

Meanwhile, you can play the new version of the cutting plane game here: gonzalomunoz.org/the-cutting-...

… or you can start thinking about GPU algorithms for MIP to enter the next Land–Doig Competition!

If you want to fight fascism, go & practice law

If you want to fight fascism, go & teach

If you want to fight fascism, go & be a journalist

If you want to fight fascism, go & be an engaged citizen

If you want to fight fascism, just do it

And tell these condescending people to go touch grass

Mixed integer programming workshop, keeping the tradition alive for @jefflinderoth.bsky.social

Amélie Lambert talked about solving unconstrained polynomial optimization problems involving binary variables along with continuous 0–1 variables using quadratization-based methods.

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Claudia D’Ambrosio talked at the #mip2025 workshop about approximating complex functions in mixed-integer nonlinear optimization models by a hybrid of the knowledge-based and the data-driven approaches for producing surrogate functions.

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Andres Gomez is giving a lecture on approaching structured mixed integer nonlinear optimization problems at the #mip2025 summer school, starting by drawing a parallel with the better-understood linear case.

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Philipp Christophel is giving a lecture on implementing numerical optimization algorithms at the #mip2025 summer school, making the case for empirical research to validate algorithmic ideas and discussing how conduct it properly.

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Fun day of racing at Camrock today. I'm finding the comp level much more challenging than sport for certain, but it's Type II fun which makes it much more enjoyable to remember while sharing a beer with a fellow racer. Cheers @optimizer.bsky.social!

DualSchool: How Reliable are LLMs for Optimization Education? Consider the following task taught in introductory optimization courses which addresses challenges articulated by the community at the intersection of (generative) AI and OR: generate the dual of a li...

If you teach an introduction to optimization, or are a student in such a course, you may wonder how LLMs will change the class. Check this paper on Dual School, which provides some answers. @ai4opt.bsky.social @georgiatechai.bsky.social
arxiv.org/abs/2505.21775

International students add $44 billion to the US economy, annually.

www.aau.edu/newsroom/lea...