Organizing Committee
- Mihai Anitescu
Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago - Güzin Bayraksan
Ohio State University - Jim Luedtke
University of Wisconsin-Madison - Jonathan Weare
Courant Institute, New York University
Abstract
Designing, planning, and operating many systems is challenging due to the possibility of high-impact rare events. A motivating application is the electricity power grid, whose operation can be significantly disrupted by rare weather events such as a severe storm or a polar vortex. This workshop will explore optimization and simulation approaches to designing, planning, and operating systems impacted by such events. Stochastic optimization is one approach for optimizing such systems, in which the uncertain outcomes are modeled with random variables. Rare and high-impact events provide a challenge for stochastic optimization because (1) it is difficult to estimate the likelihood of rare events, (2) estimates of expected values with outcomes that have very low probability but high cost are inherently unstable, and (3) the actual distribution of the random events is often not known. Alternatively, robust and distributionally robust optimization models attempt to identify a solution that is best in the worst-case over a given set of possible outcomes. While robust optimization may protect against the impact of rare events by including them in the set of possible outcomes, doing so may lead to overly conservative solutions. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers with different perspectives on optimization under uncertainty to encourage the investigation of new models and solution approaches that address these and related challenges.
This workshop is partially supported by the DOE-funded MACSER project.

Confirmed Speakers & Participants
Talks will be presented virtually or in-person as indicated in the schedule below.
- Speaker
- Poster Presenter
- Attendee
- Virtual Attendee
-
Mihai Anitescu
Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago
-
Manish Bansal
Virginia Tech
-
David Barajas-Solano
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
-
Güzin Bayraksan
Ohio State University
-
Getachew Befekadu
Morgan State University
-
Jeremiah Birrell
University of Massachusetts Amherst
-
Jose Blanchet
Columbia University and Stanford University
-
Esra Büyüktahtakin-Toy
New Jersey Institute of Technology
-
Thushara De Silva M.
Vanderbilt University
-
Laurel Dunn
University of California Berkeley
-
Paul Dupuis
Brown University
-
Bernardo Freitas Paulo da Costa
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
-
Harsha Gangammanavar
Southern Methodist University
-
Akshay Gupte
Clemson University
-
René Henrion
Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics
-
Ruiwei Jiang
University of Michigan
-
Rohit Kannan
University of Wisconsin-Madison
-
Markos Katsoulakis
University of Massachusetts Amherst
-
Ioanna Kavvada
University of California, Berkeley
-
Kibaek Kim
Argonne National Labratory
-
Colin Klaus
The Ohio State University
-
Simge Küçükyavuz
Northwestern University
-
Henry Lam
Columbia University
-
vincent leclere
Ecole des Ponts
-
Shu Lu
UNC Chapel Hill
-
Jim Luedtke
University of Wisconsin-Madison
-
Rahul Mazumder
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-
Merve Merakli
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
-
David Morton
Northwestern University
-
Linda Novak
Argonne National Lab
-
Nilay Noyan
SABANCI University
-
Lewis Ntaimo
Texas A & M University
-
Melkior Ornik
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-
Hamed Rahimian
Northwestern University
-
Line Roald
University of Wisconsin - Madison
-
Clement Royer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
-
Alexander Shapiro
Georgia Institute of Technology
-
Sara Shashaani
North Carolina State University
-
Bismark Singh
Sandia National Laboratories
-
Georg Stadler
CIMS NYU
-
Panos Stinis
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
-
Nazanin Takbiri
University of Massachusetts Amherst
-
Johannes Thürauf
Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
-
Shanyin Tong
New York University
-
Brian Van Koten
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
-
Phebe Vayanos
USC
-
Alexander Vladimirsky
Cornell University
-
Andreas Waechter
Northwestern University
-
Homer Walker
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
-
Jonathan Weare
Courant Institute, New York University
-
Weijun Xie
Virginia Tech
-
Hongxia Yin
Minnesota State University Mankato
-
Jin-Zhu Yu
Vanderbilt University
-
Victor Zavala
University of Wisconsin - Madison
-
Benjamin Zhang
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-
Lili Zhang
Kennesaw State University
-
Yu Zhang
UC Santa Cruz
-
Yiling Zhang
University of Minnesota