The Lehigh University Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) brought together the optimization community for an exceptional series of events on campus, hosting the inaugural Future Optimization Graduate Student Workshop (GradOpt) on August 17, MOPTA 2026 on August 18–19, and the inaugural Optimization Junior Faculty Colloquium (ColOpt) on August 20.
The three events were organized under the umbrella of the Lehigh ISE Optimization Science (LIOS) program, a key component of our department endowment program. The resources provided through the endowment have enabled ISE to expand its investment in optimization science and create new initiatives with national and international reach. In particular, the inaugural editions of GradOpt and ColOpt were made possible by the support of the endowment program. Together with the established MOPTA conference, these new initiatives created a unique week spanning the optimization academic pipeline—from students considering doctoral study, to established researchers from academia and industry, to junior faculty shaping the future of the field.
GradOpt 2026 opened the week by welcoming 15 undergraduate and master's students selected from a highly competitive pool of approximately 90 applicants interested in pursuing PhD studies in optimization. Participants learned about research directions and open problems, interacted directly with Lehigh ISE faculty and PhD students, and heard from our alumni about careers in academia and industry.
The following two days featured MOPTA 2026 (Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications), the 26th edition of Lehigh’s longstanding international optimization conference. This year’s edition was the largest in the conference’s history, attracting more than 160 participants and featuring seven plenary talks and more than 110 technical presentations spanning a broad spectrum of optimization, from theory and algorithms to applications. This success was due in part to ColOpt, which encouraged junior faculty participants to also attend MOPTA and contributed several excellent technical sessions to the program.
The 18th AIMMS–MOPTA Optimization Modeling Competition challenged 17 teams to solve a dedicated truck-routing problem proposed by Interfor. Team “Woodchucks” from the University of Bern—Miriam Keller, Deborah Stritt, and Loris Trotter, advised by Nicklas Klein—won the competition. Team “Éliane” from Université Laval, represented by Éliane Nguemaleu and advised by Nadia Lehoux, placed second, while “OptiRoute” from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi—Chanchal Kumar Salode and Satadru Banerjee, advised by Prasanna Ramamoorthy—finished third.
The week concluded with the inaugural ColOpt 2026, which gathered nearly 50 junior faculty and researchers from leading universities in the United States. ColOpt was designed around both scientific exchange and the particular opportunities and challenges of building an academic career in optimization. In addition to research presentations and networking, the program featured dedicated sessions connecting participants with leaders from industry and research funding organizations. Speakers from NVIDIA and Gurobi discussed AI and its connections with mathematical optimization, while representatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and WISE Investigator provided perspectives on research funding opportunities and the funding landscape for early-career researchers.
Together, GradOpt, MOPTA, and ColOpt brought multiple generations of the optimization community to Lehigh, reflecting the broader mission of LIOS: to advance optimization as a scientific discipline while strengthening connections among education, research, professional development, industry, and community building. The events were co-chaired by Lehigh ISE PhD student Zhara Khatti and the department chair Luis Nunes Vicente, with contributions from faculty across the department. MOPTA 2026 also benefited from the involvement of its founder and honorary chair, Lehigh ISE Professor Tamás Terlaky.
The success of this inaugural LIOS week also demonstrates the impact of the Lehigh ISE endowment program in enabling ambitious new initiatives that would otherwise not have been possible. By supporting programs such as GradOpt and ColOpt and complementing the long-running MOPTA conference, the endowment is helping Lehigh ISE strengthen its role as a national and international hub for optimization science.