EURO Forum

Dear colleagues,
the XIII stochastic programming conference -- ICSP2013 -- to be held in Bergamo (Italy) from July 8 to July 12, 2013 will be structured over the five days with six plenary talks, several parallel sessions and a set of mini symposia.

We have formed an advisory program committee (APC) to coordinate the conference overall scientific organisation and to make sure we have a well-balanced and complete scientific program. The APC includes Giorgio Consigli and Marida Bertocchi from UniBG, Jitka Dupacova, Michael Dempster, Asgeir Tomasgard and John Birge. We will be receiving the MS proposals and collectively review and select 16 to include in the program.

This message aims at attracting proposals for the mini symposia (MS).
The organization of MS comes in two steps:
a) first, following the enclosed template, a proposal should be submitted to icsp2013.apc@unibg.it, ref: ICSP2013 mini symposia proposal, then
b) upon selection in the program, the MS proponents will include the other speakers and communicate the list to the organisers.

Eventually each MS proposal will have a specific title, include an initial semi-plenary talk (40 minutes) and subsequently 4 regular
25-minute talks.

MS are expected to differ from classical parallel sections due to:
- The explicit focus on one theoretical topic or applied subject
- MS may be regarded as topic workshops organized by a group of colleagues,
- their structure with a semi-plenary and shorter talks
- The possibility for young researchers to present open problems and ongoing research efforts, still not supported by a publication record.

The deadline for proposals under a) above is September 30, 2012.

The list of MS included in the conference program will be communicated at the latest by mid October 2012. The proponents will then finalise the mini symposium organization and communicate the included speakers by November 30, 2012.

The following criteria will be adopted by the APC to define the program:
a) scientific content and clear and direct relation with the stochastic programming field
b) quality of the proposal and well-delimited focus
c) state-of-the-art introductory semi-plenary talk
d) proponents cooperative and bridging effort (across research groups, academia and industry, across neighbour scientific areas)

The following general topics may serve as reference areas for the MS proposals:
- Optimality and Duality in stochastic programming
- Mixed integer and stochastic combinatorial optimization
- Multistage stochastic programming: algorithms and applications
- Scenario generation
- Approximation in stochastic programming
- Stochastic variational inequalities and stochastic equilibria
- Stochastic dominance
- Stochastic dynamic programming and optimal control
- Solution methods and algorithms
- Decision support systems and software developments
- Applications (Economics, Insurance and Finance, Energy, Telecommunications, Logistics, Supply Chain management,
Production planning, Transportation, Biomedical and health, others)

We intend with this initiative to attract the community in a cooperative organization effort that should ensure a satisfactory spanning of the SP state-of-the-art.

To avoid overlap and guide the potential MS proponents, we anticipate that the plenary speakers who have been invited to next year's conference and their tentative topics will be:

Antonio Conejo:- Risk-Constrained Multi-Stage Wind Power Investment
Michael Dempster:- Reflections on Dynamic Stochastic Programming: Theory and Applications
Jacek Gondzio:- Recent computational advances in solving very large stochastic programs
Rene Henrion:- Stochastic programming with probabilistic constraints
Daniel Kuhn:- The decision rule approach to stochastic optimization
Huseyin Topaloglu:- The role of stochastic programming in revenue management

Dear all, we are looking forward to cooperate with you for a successful and forward-looking SP conference.

Best, Marida and Giorgio

PS: if you have any query do not hesitate to write to icsp2013.apc@unibg.it or to giorgio.consigli@unibg.it