iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Selvaprabu (Selva) Nadarajah is visiting the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business and giving a Business Analytics seminar on solving real options problems for energy options, which concerns trading on energy investments, using Markov Decision Process models.

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Paper Skygest Team @paper-feed.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

**Please repost** If you're enjoying Paper Skygest -- our personalized feed of academic content on Bluesky -- we'd appreciate you reposting this! We’ve found that the most effective way for us to reach new users and communities is through users sharing it with their network

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I am endorsing this declaration about the misalignment between AI and mathematics: mathandai.org

mathandai.org

Declaration — Math and AI

Read the declaration and add your name.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

One missing post from last week’s #FutureBAProf workshop: Violet (Xinying) Chen talking about surviving the tenure track. Chen talked first about understanding expectations, building a balanced publication portfolio, networking for visibility, and knowing when to change plans.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Wrapping up #FutureBAProf, Gilbert Laporte and Ahmed Abbasi discussed the future of Business Analytics. They both emphasized the importance of students to read as much as they can to become better scholars.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Today we have a special session at the #FutureBAProf workshop in memory of Warren Boe, a long time member and benefactor of the Business Analytics Department at The University of Iowa Tippie College of Business.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Qi Luo did such an amazing job last year at #FutureBAProf workshop that he is back again to talk about the academic job market from the applicant perspective

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Wrapping up the first day of talks at #FutureBAProf, Qi Feng talked about the on campus interview: what schools are looking for, what proxies they use to assess the candidates, and how the candidates can demonstrate their potential

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Qihang Lin and Violet (Xinying) Chen talked at #FutureBAProf about academic job applications and conference interviews.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Gilbert Laporte talked about how to structure a paper at #FutureBAProf Among many pearls and some jokes, the advice on how to write the introduction was very interesting: it should answer the “what?” and “why?”

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Continuing the Research in Business Schools session at #FutureBAProf, Ahmed Abbasi talks about the fast-pace of change in scholarship on human-centered computational design with the emergence of inferential, generative, and agentic models.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Starting the Research in Business Schools session at #FutureBAProf, Annabelle Feng talks about the importance of thinking of your long-term research agenda: trends come and go, along with editorial priorities of journals, but the important questions remain, and they center on how we make decisions.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We are kicking off the 5th edition of the #FutureBAProf workshop with Ann Melissa Campbell’s opening and Sam Burer’s introduction to business analytics.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I am happy to share a new paper on optimization for combinatorial testing with Changkun Guan, Hunter Gehman, Sumit Dhar, Mikey Ferguson, John Hooker, and Marcel Schoppers. Link in the comments. This is one of the most fun optimization problems that I have worked on!

youtu.be

Optimal Combinatorial Testing with Constraints: The Balancing Act

YouTube video by Thiago Serra

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I wrote a piece for ORMS Tomorrow called "PhD: My mistakes, my lucky breaks, and what I tell my students now". This article draws from my own experience as a student & from what I have learned by advising PhD students so far. Thank you Dan Ni Lin for the invitation! www.informs.org/content/down...

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Reposted by Thiago Serra

Sophie Huiberts @sophie.huiberts.me · 25/06/2026

MIP Europe 2026 will feature a poster session. If you wish to participate, make sure to register by July 10th. www.mixedinteger.org/EUROMIP/2026... (Poster submission deadline itself is August 31, July 10 is deadline to register)

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

But if I were to stay here for longer than 4 hours, would Google Scholar notice it?

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Wrapping up #cors2026, Justin Dumouchelle talked about our joint work (along with Shunyu Yao and Beste Basciftci) on decoupling optimization from feasibility when solving chance-constrained optimization models. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Carlos Zetina talked at #cors2026 about the benefits of GPU acceleration in solving linear programs using the FICO Xpress solver. Their solver has the two most popular methods implemented: - PDHG is faster in the problems that it can solve - cuPDLP+ solves more problems 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

One use case of machine learning in optimization is circumventing the cost of optimization algorithms. Jerry Sun presented such a case at #cors2026 by predicting Farkas multipliers to prove that a solution is infeasible with respect to the linear relaxation without solving the linear relaxation.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Seyedeh Parisa Moosavi talked at #cors2026 about relaxations for weakly-coupled Markov decision processes. She considered an example of managing fatigue in crew scheduling: teams need a break to recharge, but their breaks need to be coordinated with the breaks of other teams. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

This Tuesday I am giving a tutorial on constraint learning at #cors2026 When: Tuesday, June 9, 10:45 AM Where: Walter Light Hall 205

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Kimia Ghobadi talked at #cors2026 about inverse optimization challenges: - solution of the problem (the closest cost vector making a solution optimal) may not be unique - solving it becomes expensive with more observations - it is difficult to establish confidence on the retrieved parameters 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Danielle Ripsman talked at #cors2026 about how to combine inverse optimization and generative models in healthcare applications, proposing a generative inverse optimization model.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Rana Shiravi talks at #cors2026 about using inverse optimization to understand dosage tradeoffs in radiotherapy treatments. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Mahya Hemmati talks at #cors2026 about solving multistage stochastic optimization problems by approaching them as a two-stage rolling horizon stochastic problem and using decision-focused learning with a diffusion model to learn the distribution of scenarios.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Utsav Sadana talks at #cors2026 about how to avoid underestimating entropic risk by using parametric bootstrapping.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Gabriel Fortin-Leblanc talked at #cors2026 about a more tractable approach for solving optimization problems with decision-dependent uncertainty.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

El Mehdi Er Raqabi talked at #cors2026 about how to use an optimization proxy approach to solver Benders subproblems: - Predict the dual multipliers (this is where ML replaces optimization) - Project the solution (to ensure feasibility) - Complete (a closed-form step to strengthen the cut)

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Mahsa Hajamini talks at #cors2026 about how to retrieve a tree of scenarios for a multistage stochastic program to obtain the true optimal first-stage decision. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Ahmed Mohammed talks at #cors2026 about how to circumvent the weakness of Benders cuts in the classical Benders decomposition. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Timo Berthold strikes again at #cpaior2026 by talking about how to beat DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve geometric packing algorithms with off-the-shelf MINLP solvers. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Beste Basciftci gives the best paper award talk at #cpaior2026 on designing transit networks. This work expands her #cpaior2020 paper by distinguishing between core riders (who will use the system regardless) and latent riders (who will evaluate the new system and may decide to use it). 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Yingqian Zhang gives the last keynote of #cpaior2026 on end-to-end deep reinforcement learning for solving combinatorial optimization problems. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Congratulations to my colleague Beste Basciftci and coauthors on winning the best paper award at #cpaior2026. Go Hawks!

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Anna Münz talked at #cpaior2026 about a bilevel optimization model to verify the quality of the solutions obtained with predict-and-optimize models.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Timo Berthold talked at #cpaior2026 about how to use machine learning in branching decisions to solve mixed-integer nonlinear programs. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Yudong Will Xu talked at #cpaior2026 about how to use iterative neural heuristics to perform large neighborhood search, bridging the methodological gap between OR and ML approaches.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Bryan Alvarado-Ulloa talks at #cpaior2026 about a new approach to solve pseudo-Boolean optimization problems (aka, binary linear programs) using predict and search. The novelty of their approach is learning from the assignments shared by all optimal solutions instead of those of a single one. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Axel Parmentier is giving today’s keynote at #cpaior2026 on decision-focused learning, stressing the importance of not treating prediction and optimization as strictly separate tasks: slightly inaccurate predictions may trickle down to infeasible or suboptimal solutions. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Rahul Patel talked at #cpaior2026 about solving multi objective optimization problems using relaxed decision diagrams. This is motivated by the fact that the number of nodes associated with solutions at the Pareto frontier can be considerably small. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Laurent Michel talked at #cpaior2026 about how to use GPUs to accelerate the construction of exact decision diagrams by expanding the nodes in each layer in parallel.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Wenjie Xiao talked at #cpaior2026 about how mixed-integer convex optimization is advantageous to solve the graph isomorphism problem on many classes of graphs.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Frédéric Berthiaume talks at #cpaior2026 about new theory on Lagrangian relaxation to explain when the use of local alterations (leading to suboptimal Lagrangian multipliers) is helpful because it triggers domain filtering. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Sachin Kumar Rajendran talked at #cpaior2026 about how to automatically derive valid inequalities from subproblems in logic-based Benders decompositions using the SCIP solver.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Benjamin Hudson talked at #cpaior2026 about learning preference distribution in contextual stochastic optimization, using the example of drivers not following the routes recommended by ridesharing services.

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Max Bourgeat talks at #cpaior2026 about how to support railway decisions with reinforcement learning when there is information uncertainty and latency. 1/2

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Ambros Gleixner gives the first keynote of #cpaior2026 on the numerical correctness of MILP solvers. By solving LP relaxations, MILP solvers may need variables with long representations. That is at odds with the use of floating-point arithmetic, which begets the use of tolerance parameters. 1/N

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Thiago Serra @thserra.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Wrapping up the lectures of the #cpaior2026 master class, Serdar Kadioglu talked about a sequence of contributions aimed at producing better text-to-model translations as part of modeling copilot framework. 1/N

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