The competition is organized by the conference organizers of MOPTA and AIMMS. ISE Lehigh Assistant Professor, Karmel S. Shehadeh is MOPTA Competition Chair.
The first phase's submission deadline is May 21, 2021, 23:59 Eastern Time. Finalists are expected to attend and present their results at the 2021 MOPTA Conference to be held on August 2-4, 2021, at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
The goal of the competition this year is to solve a Home Service Assignment, Routing, and Appointment Scheduling (H-SARA) problem under three key random factors: service duration, travel time, and customer cancellation.
The problem description is posted on the competition webpage.
Information on eligibility, registration, submission, and competition format are posted on the competition webpage. Teams of at most three students can participate and should list a faculty advisor. The team leader must be a graduate student, though the other team members can be advanced undergraduate students. Each team member must be registered as a full-time student at a recognized educational institution during the Spring term of the 2020-2021 Academic Year. Students with any background are eligible. Collaboration between students from different departments is strongly encouraged. We ask teams to register as soon as they start working on the problem.
Each finalist team will receive free registration for the conference for up to two team members. In addition, a $600 cash prize will be awarded to the team that wins the overall competition.
As the conference is international, so is the competition. Teams from all over the world can participate, as long as at least one team member can come to the conference, should the team make it to the final round. The official language of the competition is English.
Conference Format:
- Virtual (VIRT), as meetings have been held during the pandemic (via Zoom). VIRT participants and speakers will actually not be able to tell that there is another mode.
- In-Person Virtual-Sharing (IPVS), as on-campus meetings were held before the pandemic with the single exception that all speakers will present remotely. IPVS participants will be able to attend talks together in rooms equipped with large screens and room sound system. Questions are asked via personal laptops and/or cell phones in the Zoom chat. IPVS participants will share an in-person social program (coffee breaks, lunches, dinners, etc.). IPVS speakers will be assigned a room/office to deliver their talks remotely using their laptops, and can then interact in-person with IPVS participants after their virtual talks.
