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Webinar Summary

As we know, Santa Claus faces some major optimization problems. First, he must fit billions of presents into a single sleigh. Then, he needs to solve a TSP (Traveling Santa Problem)—visiting billions of houses on a whirlwind roundtrip journey. And then there’s the diet problem for the reindeer, who must have the sustained strength to pull the sleigh at top speeds. Santa’s backbreaking problems may be fictional, but they got us thinking about some unusual applications, particularly in the world of puzzles, games, and art (that could also take some burden from Santa through digitalization of games and puzzles).

Get a closer look at some of these applications and how they connect to real-world industrial applications and business challenges. This fun and festive event is a great opportunity to explain mathematical optimization to those unfamiliar with it.

Presented Materials

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Meet the Experts

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Dr. Kostja Siefen

Senior Director of Technical Account Management
Gurobi Optimization

Dr. Kostja Siefen

Senior Director of Technical Account Management
Gurobi Optimization

Dr. Kostja Siefen leads the global Technical Account Management team at Gurobi Optimization. Kostja holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Paderborn (Germany). He joined Gurobi in 2015 after many years of experience in the development and design of decision support systems using mathematical optimization. Before joining Gurobi he worked at Daimler Research & Development and as a lecturer at the University of Paderborn. Since 1998, before focusing on optimization and during his studies he continuously worked as system administrator, software developer and support engineer for an IT service company. Kostja has been active in academic teaching and customer training since 2009. Beyond Gurobi, Kostja enjoys spending time with his family, working as a Les Mills group fitness instructor, traveling and good food.

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Dr. Ed Klotz

Senior Mathematical Optimization Specialist
Gurobi Optimization

Dr. Ed Klotz

Senior Mathematical Optimization Specialist
Gurobi Optimization

Dr. Ed Klotz has over 30 years of experience in the mathematical optimization software industry. He is a technical expert who, over the course of his career, has worked with a wide array of customers to help them solve some of world’s most challenging mathematical optimization problems. In his role as a Senior Mathematical Optimization Specialist on the Gurobi R&D team, Dr. Klotz works closely with our customers to support them in implementing and utilizing mathematical optimization in their organizations. He also interacts heavily with the R&D team based on his experiences with the customers.

Prior to joining Gurobi, Dr. Klotz was a member of the CPLEX development team of IBM. He was involved in product development, customer training, product documentation, and numerous other tasks, with a primary focus on delivering CPLEX customer support and leveraging his experiences with customers to help inform the R&D team about customer needs and product improvements. Dr. Klotz has extensive knowledge in linear programming, integer programming, and numerical linear algebra for finite precision computing. Using this knowledge, he was able to investigate customer support issues at the source code level and identify potential improvements in CPLEX, both in terms of performance and accuracy of computation.

Before joining IBM, Dr. Klotz was a principal technical support engineer at ILOG, Inc., and a mathematical programming specialist at CPLEX Optimization, Inc.

Dr. Klotz has presented at numerous conferences, workshops, and web seminars and published numerous papers on mathematical optimization. His interests are in all aspects of mathematical programming, with a primary interest in research that can impact mathematical programming software. He obtained a BA in Math and Economics from Oberlin College and a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University.

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Dr. Richard Oberdieck

Lead Data Scientist
Banking Circle

Dr. Richard Oberdieck

Lead Data Scientist
Banking Circle

Richard Oberdieck obtained his BSc and MSc degrees from ETH Zurich in Switzerland (2009-2013), before pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, UK, which he completed in 2017. In his PhD, he worked on a special class of optimization problems called multi-parametric programming problems, where he discovered fundamental new properties related to these problems, as well as implemented them in a software toolbox. After using his knowledge in mathematical modeling and optimization in the space of renewable energies at the world leader in offshore wind energy, Ørsted A/S, he is now helping companies around the world unlock business value through mathematical optimization as a Technical Account Manager for Gurobi Optimization, LLC. He has published 1 book, 21 papers and 2 book chapters, has an h-index of 11 and was awarded the FICO Decisions Award 2019 in Optimization, Machine Learning and AI.

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