Kenneth Sörensen obtained his PhD entitled "A framework for robust and flexible optimization using metaheuristics" from the University of Antwerp in 2003 and continued as a post-doctoral researcher at the UAntwerp. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a postdoc researcher of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) at the Faculty of Engineering of the KULeuven. In 2009, Kenneth Sörensen was appointed as a Research Professor of the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Antwerp, a position he holds to date.Within this Faculty, he founded the ANT/OR research group, which focuses on applications of operations research and currently consists of three professors and about ten PhD students. Under his supervision, over twenty PhD's were obtained. Kenneth Sörensen has published a large number of articles in international refereed journals and has presented his work at numerous scientific conferences. He is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the field of metaheuristics. Hismain research interest lies in the application of advanced (metaheuristic) optimization methods and in the development and study of optimization methods. Kenneth Sörensen is the founder and current coordinator of EU/ME – the EURO working group on metaheuristics, the largest online platform for researchers in metaheuristics worldwide.

Yoshiko Wakabayashi is a retired professor at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil. She holds a degree in Mathematics Education and a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from USP, as well as a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Augsburg. Her research interests include combinatorial optimization, graph theory, algorithms, packing problems, and polyhedral combinatorics. She has published more than 50 papers in journals such as Mathematical Programming, Theoretical Computer Science, Journal of Combinatorial Theory: Series B, Discrete Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Computing, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Computers & Operations Research, and Discrete Applied Mathematics. Yoshiko supervised 16 doctoral and 20 master’s students, as well as 7 postdocs. In 2010, she was named a commander of the National Order of Scientific Merit. She was later elected to the Academy of Sciences of the State of São Paulo in 2012 and to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in 2019. In 2020, she was awarded the prize for scientific merit by the Brazilian Computer Society.

Erling D. Andersen is co-founder and CEO of the Danish company MOSEK ApS which is the vendor of the Mosek optimization software package. In 1993 Erling received a PhD in Economics from Odense University (Denmark). The main research interests of Erling are computational linear and convex optimization. In particular, he has focused on conic optimization and is one of the leading developers of software for that class of optimization problems. Erling has co-authored several articles published in major optimization journals such as Mathematical Programming, Informs Journal on Computing, and SIAM Journal on Optimization. Since 2024, Erling has been an honorary member of the Danish OR society.

Louis-Martin Rousseau is a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, where he has been a faculty member since 2003. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Healthcare Analytics and Logistics, and is known for his applied research at the intersection of operations research, artificial intelligence, and healthcare systems. His early work focused on logistics and workforce scheduling, both in industrial and healthcare settings. Over the years, his research has evolved toward developing decision-support tools with real-world impact, particularly in the planning and optimization of health services. Outside academia, Louis-Martin has co-founded and advised several mission-driven organizations, including Gray Oncology Solutions, IVADO Labs, Kaster, and PemPem. He serves on multiple boards and is an active member of Anges Québec and Creative-Destructive Labs, where he supports science-based ventures focused on societal impact.

Laureano Escudero received his PhD Degree in Economic Sciences from Universidad Comercial de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain, 1974, and a degree in Computer Sciences from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, 1972. ORCID: 0000-0002-1196-7124. He has taught Mathematical Statistics and Decision Theory at the Computer Science School, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 1974-1977, and Mathematical Optimization at the Mathematical Sciences School, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1992-2000. He has been full professor of Operations Research at the Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche (Alicante, Spain), 2000-2007 and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), Móstoles (Madrid), Spain, 2007-2013. Currently, he is a Research Fellow ad honorem on Statistics & Operations Research and a retired Full Professor in URJC. He has been a Scholar Visitor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh (PA, USA), 2014, and at Northeastern University (NEU), Shenyang (China), 2018. He has worked at IBM Research, Scientific and Development Centers in Madrid (Spain), Palo Alto (California), Sindelfingen (Germany) and T.J. Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, NY), 1972-1991. He has work in the IBERDROLA group (one of the biggest electric power generation and distribution company in Europe), 1994-99. In 1987 he was appointed member of the New York Academy of Sciences. In the period 2003-4 he was the President of EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies). He is the author of 5 books and a co-author of another one. He has published over 160 peer- reviewed scientific papers in leading journals. In 1986 he has been awarded the "Cruz al Mérito Aeronáutico con Distintivo Blanco, Primera Clase" by the Spanish Ministry of Defense for his work on Mathematical Optimization for the Spanish MoD. He is a holder of a 2020 medal by the Spanish SEIO and a 2024 medal by ALIO (Asociación Iberoamricanana de Investigación-Operativa). In 2024, SEIO jointly with Fundación BBVA awarded a prize to the "mejor contribución metodológica en el campo de la Investigación-Operativa" to the European Journal of Operational Research EJOR 2023 paper "On solving large-scale multistage stochastic optimization problems with a new specialized interior-point approach", jointly co-authored with J. Castro and J.F. Monge.

Héctor Cancela holds a PhD. degree in Computer Science from the University of Rennes 1, INRIA Rennes, France (1996), and a Computer Systems Engineer degree from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay (1990). He is a Full Professor at the Computing Institute at the Engineering School of the Universidad de la República (Uruguay), which he lead in two periods: 2006-2010 and 2017-2023. He was Dean of the Engineering School of the Universidad de la República (2010-2015). He is a Researcher at the National Program for the Development of Basic Sciences (PEDECIBA), Uruguay. His research interests are centered in network models and stochastic models, applied jointly with optimization methods for solving problems in different areas (reliability, communications, transport, production, biological applications, agricultural applications, etc). He has published more than 100 full papers in international journals, indexed conference proceedings and book chapters. He has supervised more than 20 Ph.D. and M.Sc. thesis. He has been General Chair and Program Chair of several international events, and a member of the Program Committee of more than 50 international conferences. He participated in the development of accreditation standards for MERCOSUR engineering programs. He was member of the task force which prepared the ACM/IEEE Computing Curricula 2020 report (ACM/IEEE CC 2020). He is associate editor of the journals International Transactions in Operations Research (ITOR), RAIRO Operations Research (RAIRO-OR), Mathematical Methods of Operations Research (MMOR), Computational and Applied Mathematics (COAM), and member of the editorial board of the journals Pesquisa Operacional (Brazil) and Ingenieria de Sistemas (Chile). Between 2010 and 2019 he was editor-in-chief of CLEIej, the electronic journal of the CLEI association. He is an IEEE Senior Member, also a member of ACM. He is a former President of CLEI (Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios en Informática – 2016-2020), and a former president of ALIO (Asociación Latino Ibero Americana de Investigación Operativa – 2006-2010. He is currently president of IFORS (International Federation of Operational Research Societies, 2025-2027).

Bissan Ghaddar is the John M. Thompson Chair in Engineering Leadership and Innovation and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Sustainability at the Ivey Business School working on problems at the intersection of machine learning and non-linear optimization. She is also affiliated with university of Waterloo and DTU. Bissan holds a PhD in Management Science from the University of Waterloo. Before joining academia, she worked on energy, water, and transportation network optimization at IBM Research and on inventory management problems at the Centre for Operational Research and Analysis, Department of National Defence Canada. Her work has been published in prestigious journals such as Mathematical Programming, INFORMS Journal on Computing, SIAM Journal on Optimization, among others. Her research has been supported by national and international grants including NSERC, OCE, Cisco, H2020, and Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. She serves as the Research Lead at the Ivey Energy Policy and Management Centre and is a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, engaged in the research cluster on AI, Global Governance, and International Public Policy. She is the Associate Editor for the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization. She was recently awarded the best survey paper award at the EURO conference in Copenhagen and the Distinguished International Associate by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Dominique de Werra is an emeritus professor of Operations Research at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. His research fields include Combinatorial Optimization, Graph Theory, Scheduling and Timetabling. After spending a few years as an assistant professor in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo (Canada) he joined the Math Department of EPFL. He conducted a collection of Operational Research projects (applied as well as theoretical) with a number of industrial partners. He is an associate editor of Discrete Applied Mathematics, Discrete Mathematics, Annals of Operations Research and a member of a dozen of editorial boards of international journals. From 1990 to 2000 Dominique de Werra was the Vice-President of EPFL; he was in charge of the international relations and represented his institution in many academy networks in Europe (like the CLUSTER network of excellence which he chaired). He was also in charge of all education programs of EPFL. He was President of IFORS (the International Federation of Operational Research Societies) from 2010 to 2012. In 1987-1988 he was President of EURO, the European Association of Operational Research Societies. In 1985–1986 he was President of ASRO, the Swiss Operations Research Society. In 1995 he was the laureate of the EURO Gold Medal. He has obtained Honorary Degrees from the University of Paris, the Technical University of Poznan (Poland) and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). In 2012 he was awarded the EURO Distinguished Service Medal. He published over 200 papers in international scientific journals. He also wrote and edited several books. He was member of many committees in various countries of Europe and America (evaluation of institutions, accreditation, strategic orientation, etc.).

Harilaos N. Psaraftis is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). His areas of interest are maritime logistics, intermodal logistics, port logistics, and green logistics. He has a PhD from MIT, where he was a faculty member from 1979 to 1989, receiving tenure in 1985. He was a Professor at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) from 1989 to 2013 and at DTU from 2013 to 2023. He also served as CEO of the port of Piraeus from 1996 to 2002. He has published extensively and has received several academic and industry awards. His latest book is entitled “Sustainable Shipping: A Cross-Disciplinary View”, Springer (2019).

Hugo Sconlik is regarded as one of the pioneers of Informatics in Argentina. In 1985 he created the Computer Science Department, of which he is currently Full Professor, at the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Cryptography is Hugo's focal area of research, gaining him recognition as a leading figure in this field. He is the co-author of the Argentine Electronic Signature Law enacted in 2001. That said, his research interests are not limited to cryptography and comprise other areas such as numerical analysis, mathematical models and even robotics. Hugo has published about 50 scientific papers and two books. He was awarded the 2003 Konex Platinum prize for the best trajectory in Science and Technology in Argentina of the decade 1993-2003 and in 2005 the Sadosky prize for the best trajectory in Informatics. He was twice elected Vice President at Large of IFORS (International Federation for Operations Research Societies). Hugo has also been quite active besides academia, both in the private (corporate) sector and as consultant to multiple public and international organizations, and frequently appears in the media. He was a Founding Partner of two leading firms that develop products and solutions for SET and identity protection. Hugo holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Zurich and a PhD (Honoris Causa) from the University of Cuyo in Argentina.

Karen Aardal is a Full Professor at TU Delft, in the Netherlands, specializing in integer and combinatorial optimization, with a focus on algebraic methods for solving integer optimization problems. Her research also includes algorithm analysis and practical applications in health and logistics. Karen has been actively involved in professional societies, serving as Chair of the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and as a member of its Publications and Executive Committees. She has also been a board member of the INFORMS Computing Society for three terms. Her editorial contributions include roles as Area Editor for “Design and Analysis of Algorithms” at the INFORMS Journal on Computing and as Associate Editor for journals such as Mathematical Programming Series B, Networks, Operations Research Letters, and the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization. In addition, she co-edited the Handbook on Discrete Optimization, as well as volumes of Mathematical Programming Series B, and she chaired the Program Committee of IPCO 2023. Karen's service extends to national and international scientific organizations. She was a member of the Dutch Mathematics Council (2016–2021) and currently serves on the advisory committee of CWI Amsterdam, and the board of ENW at the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Recognized for her significant contributions to the field, Karen was named an INFORMS Fellow in 2019.

Artur Pessoa is an Associate Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from PUC-Rio and master’s and doctoral degrees in Informatics from the same institution. His research interests focus on developing insightful approaches to solving optimization problems in general. Artur has contributed to designing solution methods based on integer programming, column generation, dynamic programming, branch-and-bound, and related techniques to tackle combinatorial, bilevel, robust, and other optimization problems. He is one of the key figures behind several state-of-the-art exact algorithms for vehicle routing, scheduling, and generalized quadratic assignment problems. He has published papers in prestigious journals like Mathematical Programming, Operations Research, Theoretical Computer Science, SIAM Journal on Computing, Mathematical Programming Computation, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Transportation Science, European Journal of Operational Research, among others. Artur was honored with the best doctoral dissertation award from the Brazilian Computer Society and has twice won the best paper award at the Brazilian OR Symposium. In addition, he received the 2017 Best Paper Prize from the journal Mathematical Programming Computation, and the 2022 Transportation Science Meritorious Service Award from INFORMS. Artur is one of the developers of the VRPSolver package and the Coluna branch-cut-and-price framework. He is also a co-author of the recent book “Optimizing with Column Generation”, written in collaboration with Eduardo Uchoa and Lorenza Moreno.

Alexander Rinnooy Kan (1949) grew up in The Hague. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Leiden in 1972. In the same year, he acquired a Candidate’s degree in Econometrics at the University of Amsterdam. From 1973 to 1977 he taught mathematics and statistics at Delft University of Technology. During that period, in 1976, he obtained his PhD in Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. Between 1977 and 1991 Rinnooy Kan held senior academic positions at Erasmus University Rotterdam and other European and American universities. He was rector magnificus of Erasmus University from 1986 to 1989, has published widely in professional journals and holds a number of honorary degrees. As Chairman of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW), a post he held from 1991 to 1996, Rinnooy Kan was one of the main representatives of Dutch business. He was member of the ING Group Executive Board from 1996 to 2006. Rinnooy Kan has been Chairman of the Netherlands Social and Economic Council from 2006 to 2012. In 2012, he was appointed as Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam. In June 2015, he was elected to the Dutch Senate. He sits on a variety of boards and has advised the Dutch government on numerous occasions.

José Mario Martínez was born in Cangas del Narcea, Asturias, Spain in 1948, but he moved to Argentina in 1951. He received the B. S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Buenos Aires in 1971 and the Ph. D. degree in Systems Engineering and Computation from the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1978. Since 1978 he is a Professor at the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Campinas, Brazil. Since 2020 he has been Emeritus Professor with the University of Campinas. He is the author of two books, around 200 papers and several software packages for Optimization. His research interests include Applied Mathematics, Optimization and Numerical Analysis. Currently, he is part of the Editorial Board of the journals Numerical Algorithms, Optimization Methods and Software and European Journal on Operations Research. Mario was a recipient of the Order of Scientific Merit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and SIAM Fellow. In 2023, he received the Su Buchin Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Martínez was a recipient of the Order of Scientific Merit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and SIAM Fellow. In 2023 he received the Su Buchin Prize from the Institute of Computational and Industrial Mathematics, ICIAM.

Simge Küçükyavuz is Chair and David A. and Karen Richards Sachs Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences Department at Northwestern University. She is an expert in mixed-integer, large-scale, and stochastic optimization, with applications in complex computational problems across numerous domains, including social networks, computing and energy infrastructure, statistical learning, and logistics. Her research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). She is an INFORMS Fellow, and the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) Prize. She is the past chair of ICS and serves on the editorial boards of Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Operations Research, SIAM Journal on Optimization, and MOS-SIAM Optimization Book Series. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley.

Timo Berthold is a Director at FICO, leading the MIP research and development team of the FICO Xpress Solver. In additon, he is a lecturer at the Mathematical Optimization Department of TU Berlin, working of the intersection of academia and industry. Before joining FICO, Timo was a main developer of the open-source MIP and MINLP solver SCIP at Zuse Institue Berlin. Timo is an expert on all aspects of computational mixed-integer linear and nonlinear optimization, heuristic methods, and recently, the integration of ML methods into optimization solvers. He has published over 50 papers in this field, supervised many talented students and won multiple prestigious awards for his research. As a fun-fact, his PhD thesis won the 2014 GOR dissertation award and made the finals of the EURO dissertation award, while at the same time, an accompanying article on his PhD work received a science-communication prize for being the best "Math research explained to the general public" article of the year.

Marielle Christiansen is a professor of Operations Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is head of the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management with more than 230 employees. Her primary research interests concern development and implementation of optimization models and methods for industry related planning problems as regards transportation, logistics, and production. She is particularly interested in applications where maritime transportation and supply chain challenges are considered and has been involved in a number of shipping industry – sponsored projects. Her research within maritime transportation has resulted in numerous papers in journals like Computers and Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Naval Research and Logistics, OMEGA, Networks, Transportation Research part C as well as Transportation Science. Furthermore, she has contributed with several surveys within maritime transport optimization in general and within combined inventory management and routing and fleet composition and routing in particular. She has been involved in the organization of several international conferences such as TRISTAN VII (Triennial symposium on transportation analysis), Tromsø, Norway, 2010, EURO-XXV, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012 (Programme Committee Chair), and VeRoLog (Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization), Oslo, Norway (2014).

Dr. Pedro Munari is an Associate Professor at the Production Engineering Department of the Federal University of São Carlos in São Paulo, Brazil. He holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics from the University of São Paulo. His Ph.D. Dissertation received the prestigious Doctoral Prize for the Best Dissertation from the Brazilian Society of Applied and Computational Mathematics. Dr. Munari has also held visiting scholar positions at the School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA), and at the Friedrich-Schiller Universitat Jena (Germany). He has led numerous successful research projects with grants from funding agencies and has developed applied projects with several companies in Brazil, with a specific focus on Operations Research and Logistics. His research interests include exact and heuristic methods, with emphasis on the column generation technique, branch-price-and-cut methods, and decomposition techniques for large-scale problems. Additionally, he has made contributions to the field by introducing formulations and solution methods for challenging deterministic, stochastic and robust combinatorial optimization problems, such as vehicle routing, lot sizing, and cutting/packing problems. He has published over fourty papers in prestigious journals, such as Transportation Science, EJOR, MPC, among several others. He is also on the editorial board of three journals, including MPC. He has a succesfull Youtube channel, called Munariflix, where he broadcasts videos with foundations of OR.

Michael "Mike" Florian is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and OR at the University of Montreal. He has more than 60 years of practical and academic experience working with OR problems related to the transportation of people and goods. Mike has published over 150 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings on transportation research and OR. He was an associate editor of several journals, including Operations Research, Transportation Science, INFOR, Transportation Research Part B, to name a few. He was the founder of a company called INRO, whose transportation planning software packages are used in many countries worldwide. In 1990, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2006, he was named a fellow of INFORMS. Mike is a recipient of numerous awards, such as the Merit Award of the Canadian OR Society and the Robert D. Herman Lifetime Achievement Award. Mike was also recognized as a “Pioneer of Computing in Canada” by the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, and he was named “Honorary Professor” by Shanghai University of Science and Technology.

Alain Zemkoho is an associate professor in operational research at the School of Mathematical Sciences within the University of Southampton where he is affiliated to the OR Group and CORMSIS. Prior to joining Southampton, he was a research fellow at the University of Birmingham (UK) and had previously worked as a research associate at the Technical University of Freiberg (Germany). He is an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Fellow for 2024-2026, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics & Its Applications, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and had been a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence for 2019-2023. Alain’s research interests revolve around continuous optimization with specific focus on bilevel optimization, stability analysis for parametric optimization, and machine learning modelling, theory, and numerical methods. He has published 40 papers around these topics and has secured grants totalling close to £2M in full economic cost (as PI or Co-I) to fund some of his research. Alain also serves as a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and of the OR Society Research Committee.