The 2010 summer school on column generation is the second of its kind (after 2006 in Montréal) and aims at teaching the state-of-the-art in column generation and branch-and-price to advanced students and PhD students but also to practitioners and researchers interested. The lectures will be given by renowned scientists in the field, complemented by hands-on experience in a computer lab. The participants will have the opportunity to present their own research or application problems in order to foster discussions and create a "real workshop atmosphere".

Topics to be covered include: Basic theory (decompositions, reformulations, convexification, discretization, etc.), vehicle routing and crew scheduling applications, shortest path subproblems, column generation heuristics, master problem issues (stabilization, aggregation), branching and cutting, and hints on implementation issues.  In particular, on Thursday, we will spend a whole day with the SCIP framework and learn about implementing branch-price-and-cut.

Lectures are given by Guy Desaulniers, Jacques Desrosiers, and Marco Lübbecke; Timo Berthold and Stefan Heinz instruct us in SCIP and implementation details.

The program starts on Monday at 9.00 and ends on Friday around 17.00, so we will have five full days of summer school.

Program

We will have a morning (9-12) and an afternoon session (14-17). If needed, we take our time and have a little longer sessions. At the end of some sessions, we reserve some 15 minutes for participants to present their problems and questions they are currently working on, to stimulate a discussion.

On Monday (23) you are welcome to come to the lecture hall between 8.00 and 9.00 to collect your registration material.

On Monday, we will have a get together with a small drink after the sessions; on Thursday evening, there will be the conference dinner (which will take place at the Oberwaldhaus, a restaurant in the forrest - a nice walk will bring us there).

Registration

Registration ist closed.

Participation fees cover the lectures, coffee breaks, a dinner, and a booklet with presentations. They amount to

• 250€ : students (including PhD and postdocs)
• 400€ : professors and senior researchers
• 800€ : participants from industry (or other non-academia)

Please print the registration form and fax it to +49 6151 16-3954. We accept VISA and Mastercard, but prefer bank transfer (we provide you with details by email). Participation is limited to 50 persons.

Getting to Darmstadt

The nearest airport is Frankfurt (FRA) which is an international hub, reachable from everywhere in the world by all major airlines. From there, you take a bus (the "airliner") or a train to Darmstadt main station (Darmstadt Hauptbahnhof). This takes 30-60 minutes. Here is more detailed information. We post maps locating the hotels and the venue in August.

Venue

The school will take place in the optimization group's lecture hall at Dolivostraße 15 (how to get there).

List of Participants

Tarek Abdallah, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu-Dhabi
Christopher Alford, Alford Mining Systems
Charlotte Andersen, DTU Management
Henrik Andersson, NTNU, Trondheim
Andreas Bärmann, TU Darmstadt
Mattia Barbieri, U Padova
Torben Barth, Fraport AG
Martin Bergner, TU Darmstadt
Claudia Bode, U Mainz  
Daniele Catanzaro, U Libre de Bruxelles
Samuela Carosi, M.A.I.O.R. Srl
Tue Rauff Lind Christensen, Aarhus Business School  
Grit Claßen, RWTH Aachen
Alain Dallaire, Giro Inc.  
Sonja Friedrich, TU Darmstadt  
Fabio Furini, DEIS Bologna
Shahin Gelareh, TU Denmark  
Torsten Gellert, TU Berlin  
Timo Gschwind, U Mainz  
Vidar Gunnerud, NTNU Trondheim
Neele Hansen, ITWM Kaiserslautern
Renjie He, U Milano (Crema)
Vincent Ho, U Libre de Bruxelles
Miriam Kiessling, U Bayreuth
Sarah Kirchner, TU Darmstadt   
Niels Kjeldsen, U Southern Denmark
Tobias Kreisel, U Bayreuth
Rune Larsen, U Southern Denmark
Stephan Lemkens, RWTH Aachen
Berit Loefstedt, DTU Management Engineering  
Jakub Marecek, U Nottingham
Renaud Masson, École des mines de Nantes
Jannik Matuschke, TU Berlin
Olaf Maurer, TU Berlin
André Bergsten Mendes, U Sao Paulo
Carlos Montoya, École des mines de Nantes
Laurent  Muller, DTU Management
Pedro Munari, U Sao Paulo
Monemi Neamatian, LIMOS Laboratory
Urooi Pasha, Hogskolen-I-Molde
Bjørn Petersen, DTU Management
Christian Edinger Plum, DTU Management/Maersk
Michael Poss, U Libre de Bruxelles
Matias Sevel Rasmussen, DTU Management
Julia Rieck, TU Clausthal  
Roberto Roberti, U Bologna
David Sayah, U Mainz
Hanno Schülldorf, TU Darmstadt
Jens Schulz, TU Berlin  
Cornelius Schwarz, U Bayreuth
Michel Seixas, U Sao Paulo
Emiliano Traversi, DEIS Bologna
Bo Vaaben, DTU Management
Ilaria Vacca, EPFL
Theresia Van Essen, U Twente
Chiel Van Oosterom, TU Eindhoven
Lucas Petrus Veelenturf, Erasmus U Rotterdam
Jonas Christoffer Villumsen, DTU Management
Prem Kumar Viswanathan, EPFL
Pei Wang, U Heidelberg
Bernd Zey, TU Dortmund  

Hotels

There are a several hotels of all categories in the city center. We recommend two of them:

• Welcome Hotel (single 103€, double 127€). Please contact us for a reservation code.
• ETAP Hotel (single 43€, double 51€, breakfast 6€). Please book until August 7, 2010 using this reservation form: pdf, doc, odt.

Contact us if you wish to share a double room with another participant.

Contact: Marco Lübbecke