The Optimisation Community Perth: Powered by Gurobi 

Empowering Better Decisions with Mathematical Optimisation

  • 📍 InterContinental Perth City Centre: 815 Hay St, Perth WA 6000
    • Event Location: Level 1 – Gallery Suite
  • 📅 Thursday, 7 August 2025
  • 🕒 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Arrival from 2:30 PM)

Tackle Tomorrow’s Challenges—Smarter, Faster, and Together

In an era defined by resource constraints, climate urgency, and rapid advances in AI, finding smarter ways to make complex decisions isn’t just a competitive edge—it’s a necessity.

The Optimisation Community: Perth Edition brings together a dynamic community of optimisation practitioners from industry and academia who are leveraging mathematical optimisation to tackle today’s toughest business and operational challenges—faster, at scale, and with precision.

Join us for an afternoon of cutting-edge insights, real-world use cases from Perth-based innovators, and meaningful connections with peers shaping the future of decision intelligence.

Seats are limited—register now to reserve your spot!

👉 Register below!


🗓️ Agenda

Time Session
2:30 PM Arrival & Registration
3:00 PM Welcome Remarks by Gurobi
3:10 PM From Complexity to Clarity: Solving Nonlinear Scheduling Challenges

  • This session explores how real-world scheduling problems often involve nonlinear elements that introduce significant complexity — especially when convexity, typically a desirable trait, becomes a bottleneck.
  • Drawing from recent research, Hoa Bui shares how Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) can be adapted to navigate these challenges by strategically de-convexifying models to enable faster convergence and practical performance.
  • The session highlights a mining-based case study where nonlinearity was turned from a hindrance into a modelling advantage — demonstrating how optimisation thinking, algorithm design, and careful decomposition can transform intricate scheduling problems into tractable solutions.

Presented by: Hoa Bui | Research Fellow | Curtin Centre for Optimisation and Decision Science & ARC Training Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science, Curtin University.

3:30 PM From Challenge to Solution: Optimising Strategic Open Pit Mining

  • Open pit mining involves some of the most complex optimisation challenges in the resources sector — from long-term production scheduling to balancing ore quality, haulage, and operating costs.

  • In this session, Karsten will explore what strategic open pit mining optimisation really involves, why it’s such a challenge, and the practical approaches used to address it.

Presented by: Karsten Lehmann | Principal Optimisation Specialist | Fortescue 

3:50 PM Modelling uncertainty in Mixed Integer Programs

  • While optimisation methods like stochastic programming are often used to manage uncertainty in decision-making, their practical application can be restricted by system complexity, problem scale, and the difficulty of clearly defining uncertainty.

  • This presentation showcases an alternative strategy developed for a complex scheduling challenge at Rio Tinto. Rather than relying on traditional uncertainty-modelling frameworks, robustness was embedded directly into a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model using custom constraints designed to align with specific robustness objectives.

  • This approach empowers end users to actively explore and balance trade-offs between operational performance and robustness, enabling more transparent and adaptable decision-making in dynamic, real-world environments.

Presented by: Irene Pivotto | Principal Advisor Optimisation | Rio Tinto

4:10 PM Gurobi on GPUs: Current State and Future Directions

  • Recent research applying Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient (PDHG) methods to linear programming has shown that first-order methods can be a useful part of the mathematical programming toolbox. These algorithms also lend themselves to GPU-based implementations, raising the prospect of exploiting the current surge in hardware development for optimisation applications.

  • This session will focus on the current state of Gurobi’s GPU capabilities and explore future directions for leveraging GPUs in optimisation. Attendees will gain insights into how GPU technology can enhance the performance of Gurobi’s solver and what advancements are on the horizon.

Presented by: Steven Edwards | Manager of Technical Account Managers | Gurobi

4:30 PM Fireside Chat: Beyond the Model – How Organisations Are Navigating Optimisation in 2025 and Beyond

Panellists include:

  • Ryan Loxton | Director | Curtin Centre for Optimisation and Decision Science​
  • Dr. Christina Burt | Principal Optimisation Specialist | Fortescue​
  • Gaurav Singh | Managing Director | Decisions 360
4:50 PM Networking Reception
6:00 PM
Event Concludes

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