PROGRAM

Program Overview

Plenary Program for IFAC MIM 2025 is now available!

Keynotes

Pascal Van Hentenryck

A. Russell Chandler III Chair Professor at H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering – Georgia Tech

Bio: Pascal Van Hentenryck is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor at Georgia Tech., the director of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT), and the director of Tech-AI, the AI hub at Georgia Tech. Van Hentenryck’s research focuses on artificial intelligence for engineering and science and, in particular, energy,  supply chains and manufacturing, transportation, and health care. Earlier in his career, Van Hentenryck designed and implemented several widely used optimization systems, including the constraint programming language CHIP (the foundation of modern constraint-programming systems) and the modeling language OPL (now an IBM product). He is a fellow of AAAI and INFORMS, and the recipient of two honorary degrees and numerous teaching and best-paper awards.

AI For Engineering and Societal Impact

Short Abstract: The fusion of AI with optimization and control has the potential to deliver outcomes that are beyond the realm of these technologies when applied independently on complex engineering applications.  This talk reviews the theoretical foundations underlying this fusion, including the concepts of primal and dual optimization proxies, predict then optimize, self-supervised learning, and deep multi-stage policies.
The presentation also highlights these methodological developments in a variety of engineering areas, with a focus on supply chains and manufacturing.

Laura Albert

Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bio: Dr. Laura Albert is a Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a recognized thought leader in operations research and analytics. Her research focuses on mitigating risks in the public sector through optimization and operations research methodologies, with applications in critical infrastructure protection, public safety, and emergency response. Dr. Albert served as the 2023 President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). She is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). Her work has been recognized with numerous accolades, including the INFORMS Impact Prize, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Fulbright Award. An advocate for public engagement, Dr. Albert has penned several op-eds for national news outlets and authors the engineering blogs “Punk Rock Operations Research” and “Badger Bracketology.”

Industrial Engineering with Impact: Shaping a Better Future

Short Abstract: Industrial engineering plays a pivotal role in solving some of our most complex challenges and boosting the global economy. In this keynote, we will embark on a journey to explore the boundless possibilities of industrial engineering, manufacturing, and logistics as well as the latest trends shaping the future of the field. Advancing industrial engineering and operations research through societally relevant applications has been a central theme of Dr. Laura Albert’s academic research career. In this talk, she will overview her research that studies how to design and operate public sector systems in applications ranging from public safety, critical infrastructure protection, and election resilience. Using stories from her research, she will offer insight into identifying problems worthy of study, overcoming modeling challenges, creating data-driven modeling frameworks, and influencing policy. Attendees will gain insights into how academic research in engineering can translate into tangible benefits for society and make a positive impact on our world.

Nikolay Osadchiy

Associate Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at Emory University Goizueta Business School

Bio: Nikolay Osadchiy is an Associate Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. His research interests are in supply chain management, where he studies productivity, risk, and resiliency in supply networks, and in revenue management where he studies the impact of behavioral regularities on pricing. He has published in the leading academic journals including Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management. He serves as a Senior Editor at Production and Operations Management. Nikolay’s practice-focused work has been published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. He regularly contributes to the media commenting on the current issues and developments in supply chains.

Making More Resilient Manufacturing Networks

Short Abstract: We show how the network perspective can be used to understand and mitigate risks faced by manufacturers and their partners. We will discuss three key research areas: the propagation of idiosyncratic shocks and the bullwhip effect in supply networks, correlated shocks and systematic risks in networks, and the role of community structure in shock propagation. We will discuss implications for supplier and customer diversification strategies and the financial performance of firms.

Alexandra Brintrup

Professor of Digital Manufacturing and Head of Supply Chain AI Lab at University of Cambridge

Bio: Prof. Alexandra Brintrup is Professor of Digital Manufacturing and head of the Supply Chain AI Lab at the University of Cambridge. She is a fellow of Alan Turing Institute. Prof. Brintrup focusses on the intersection of Supply Networks, Complex Systems and Artificial Intelligence. She was the first researcher to empirically study large-scale supply chains as complex adaptive networks, examine their emergent properties, and take a data-driven perspective to characterise their resilience, which led to understanding of universal patterns that govern them. She was also the first to develop algorithms to predict supply chain dependencies and disruptions. She is a member of the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Groups in Artificial Intelligence, and advises policy development in supply chain risk, economic performance and resilience.  Her current research includes: predictive methods for automated detection of supply chain dependencies, collective learning paradigms, complex system approaches to model supply network dynamics, autonomous and scalable optimisation and distributed decision making, particularly with multi-agent Systems.

Beyond mere efficiency: Artificial Intelligence for better Supply Chains

Short abstract:  Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on Supply Chains (SC) has become a popular topic prone to hype, hope and fear. Will AI help us “make supply chains better” or will we just use it to do what we have always been doing – just more efficiently? In this talk we will delve into “unorthodox” supply chain AI research, including digital supply chain surveillance, collective model building, and agent-based automation. We will discuss how AI, if developed and adopted in the right way, has the potential to help prevent a range of endemic supply chain issues, from modern slavery to emergence of bullwhip effects. We will conceptualise SC-AI through the lens of a human-mimicking Intelligent Agent to discuss how practitioners could collaborate with AI agents – and what risk factors should researchers pay attention to in the coming years.

Weiwei Chen

Professor in Department of Supply Chain Management at Rutgers University

Bio: Weiwei Chen is a Professor in the Department of Supply Chain Management at Rutgers University. His research interests include supply chain optimization, service operations, as well as simulation and global optimization methodologies. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He then worked as a Lead Scientist at GE Global Research Center in New York before joining Rutgers in 2014. He is an Associate Editor for INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, Service Science, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and a Guest Editor for IISE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, among other editorial roles. He was Chair of the INFORMS Service Science Section from 2020 to 2023.

Shaping Better Service Systems through Data-Driven Optimization

Short Abstract: Over the past few decades, the global economy has experienced rapid growth in the service sector, which now plays a crucial role across diverse industries such as retail, healthcare, and manufacturing. Unlike traditional optimization problems that rely on predefined information and fixed parameters—whether deterministic or based on well-defined distributions—optimizing service systems in real-world scenarios often involves ill-defined parameters, requires robust predictive models, and is influenced by endogenous factors and the optimization outcomes themselves. In this talk, we will delve into these complexities in optimizing the design and operations of various service systems, including e-commerce platforms, recommender systems, and bike-sharing systems. We will demonstrate how harnessing vast amounts of data and employing advanced analytical methods can significantly improve the design and operational efficiency of service systems.

Jen Pazour

Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Bio: Jen Pazour, a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), develops and uses mathematical models to guide decision making for logistics and supply chain challenges. Jen is the recipient of a numerous awards, including a NSF CAREER Award, Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholars Award, Rensselaer Alumni Teaching Award, IISE Logistics and Supply Chain Teaching Award, and IISE Dr. Hamed K. Eldin Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia Award. She is an Associate Editor of IISE Transactions, OMEGA, and Transportation Science and is the current president of INFORMS Transportations Science and Logistics (TSL). More information can be found http://jenpazour.wordpress.com/

Resource Exchange Platforms: from warehouses to non-profits

Short Abstract: Underutilized resources exist all around us.  When at a stoplight, notice the empty seats and cargo spaces in the vehicles around you.  Think about the monolithic distribution centers that are a mismatch for most businesses’ seasonal and fluctuating space and throughput requirements. To harness these and other underutilized resources, organizations need to think differently about how resources are acquired, managed, and allocated to fulfill requests. We will provide an overview of research into the design of resource exchange platforms to harness underutilized resources.  By accessing resources with lower marginal costs, supplemental resources can be deployed when and where they are needed.  Promising use cases include on-demand warehousing platforms, and SWAP, a platform that enables resource sharing among nonprofits.

Oleg Gusikhin

Senior Director, Supply Chain Analytics at Ford Global Data Insight & Analytics

Bio: Oleg Gusikhin is a Senior Director, Supply Chain Analytics at Ford Global Data Insight & Analytics. Dr. Gusikhin is a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of INFORMS. For over 20 years, he has been working at Ford Motor Company in different functional areas. During his tenure at Ford, he has created numerous high-impact long-lasting applications for Ford manufacturing, supply chain and connected vehicles, and holds over 100 patents. He is a recipient of three Henry Ford Technology Awards in the Manufacturing, Research, and Product Development categories and the 2014 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in the Practice of Advanced Analytics and Operations Research. In addition, Dr. Gusikhin is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan Industrial & Operations Engineering and engineering faculty advisor at the Tauber Institute for Global Operations.

Impacting Supply Chain Excellence through Digital Innovation and Analytics

Short Abstract: In recent years global supply chains faced unprecedented challenges. In addressing these challenges, the criticality of digitalization and data-driven approaches came to the forefront of the attention of supply chain theory and practice. The presentation overviews Ford’s supply chain digital transformation journey from individual data-driven decision support to supply chain digital twin. The presentation highlights the need for the integration of data, models, and AI/ML technology to provide end-to-end supply chain visibility and optimization, sourcing decision support, and supply chain stress test along the product lifecycle.

Workshops

MIM 2025 will host a number of interactive workshops during the conference.

Those workshops will range from publishing/reviewing, funding opportunities, science communication, data analytics, to mental fitness. See below for a detailed list:

  • 2nd Doctoral Workshop on Advances in Manufacturing and Logistics management and control problem, by IFAC TC5.1 and IFAC TC5.2
  • Meet the editors: how to be a great researcher, by several editors participating to IFAC MIM2025
  • Meet the publishers, by several top publishers who will be present with their booths and desks
  • Share your science. Be the impact, by Julius Wesche, NTNU
  • Data Challenge. How to impact with data, by Supply Chain AI Lab, University of Cambridge
  • Be YOUR Impact! Making a better researcher through mental fitness! by Elizabeth Sturdy, Sturdy Coaching
  • More to be announced…

For the doctoral workshop you check it’s own page here: PhD workshop

Instructions for speakers

To Be Announced

Social Program

To Be Announced

IFAC Conference App

You can find and download the app from here: IFAC Conference App

Please take note that at this time IFAC MIM 2025 is not on the app yet!