It's the start of a new academic year, full of fresh opportunities to learn, build new skills, and tackle real-world optimization problems.
Whether you're a student gearing up for your first optimization course, back on campus for another semester, or faculty finalizing a syllabus, there's a lot to dig into this year, including a few new additions we're excited to share.
Every semester, this community shows us something new: instructors find fresh ways to teach these concepts, students surprise us with their projects, and researchers keep pushing what's possible with Gurobi. Here's what's new for the year ahead.
For Students: Build Confidence Through Hands-on Problem Solving
New to optimization? Welcome! Returning? It’s the perfect time to brush up before classes ramp up.
Gamification: A favorite new addition is Gurobean: The Coffee Optimization Game. Get put in charge of a coffee shop, working through pricing, staffing, inventory, and queueing while exploring nonlinear optimization, simulation, and decision-making under uncertainty. Like its predecessor, the Burrito Optimization Game, you experience the trade-offs first, then learn the math behind them. Full companion learning resources are available if you're using it in a course.
GenAI + Optimization: We're also excited about the continued growth of the Gurobi Intelligence Hub, home to our AI-powered optimization tools. Whether you're trying to formulate your first optimization model, better understand an existing one, or troubleshoot a tricky constraint, the Intelligence Hub is designed to help you learn more efficiently and build confidence along the way. It includes Gurobot, our Modeler, our Explainer, and MCP integrations (all free to use) to help you interact with optimization models in entirely new ways.
Community: Remember, you're never learning alone. The Gurobi Community is a favorite resource to recommend: ask your toughest questions, connect with other learners, and talk directly with Gurobi experts.
Interested in exploring all of our open education resources?
Check out: https://www.gurobi.com/academics/learn
For Faculty: Make the Most of a New Semester with New Tools
Prepping a course is a lot of work. Here's what can save you some of it.
Over the years, we've built a growing collection of free, open educational resources designed specifically for academics at every stage of teaching optimization. Whether you're introducing optimization to undergraduates or teaching advanced graduate courses, you'll find materials that can help bring optimization concepts to life while saving valuable preparation time.
Open Education Resources: Our Academic Learning Hub is a free library built to support teaching and learning at every level, including modeling examples, Jupyter notebooks, an online course co-developed with a top professor (130+ downloadable examples), recorded webinars, classroom-ready materials, and documentation. Explore it all and pick what fits your classroom, teaching style, and your students.
Gamification with Gurobi: Looking for something interactive? Do your students love games? Consider incorporating one of our educational games into your course. The Burrito Optimization Game has been played over 85,000 times by learners worldwide and continues to introduce students to optimization through facility location decisions, while our brand-new game, Gurobean: The Coffee Optimization Game, expands into richer topics like nonlinear optimization, simulation, and decision-making under uncertainty. Both include companion lesson plans, teaching guides, and classroom activities that make it easy to integrate them into your semester.
Gurobot and The New Intelligence Hub: Breaking Down Barriers for Students.
Faculty can also encourage students to explore the Gurobi Intelligence Hub as a learning companion to help them answer some of their toughest questions, start to formulate their models, and understand how to improve them. This is not your average LLM; it's been built and refined to make the most of Gurobi and give users results that improve modeling and fast-track learning (and it’s free to use).
You and your students can also participate in the online Gurobi Community forum throughout the semester. We love seeing the conversations that emerge as students work through challenging models, share ideas with peers, and connect with our team. Those interactions often become some of the most rewarding learning experiences, and they help build confidence that extends well beyond a single course.
Here's to a great semester. Keep sharing what you build and what you are interested in learning. It helps to shape what we build next.
Happy optimizing, and here's to a fantastic academic year ahead!
As a reminder, Gurobi is always free for Academics. Get your license today: https://www.gurobi.com/academics
