Reminiscing on social events: ORSSA 2026

4 hours ago

3 min read

Written by Bowen Heinrich

Rob Bennetto wrote a great blog post reflecting on the papers presented at the 54th Annual Conference of the Operations Research Society of South Africa, hosted by the Department of Logistics at Stellenbosch University and held at the Devon Valley Hotel in Stellenbosch. While not quite as important as the talks, I think the social events are also worth remembering.

Day 0: Sunday

The conference began on Sunday afternoon with the tutorial, hosted by Andries Heyns, a two-time recipient of ORSSA's Tom Rozwadowski Medal for his facility location research. Tutorial attendees learnt about geographic accessibility to healthcare facilities, road-network criticality and population-flow analysis, before exploring multi-objective facility location optimisation using the NSGA-II algorithm. The tutorial highlighted how optimisation techniques can support humanitarian decision-making by balancing competing objectives, accounting for backup coverage, and incorporating practical constraints when locating new facilities or expanding existing service networks. Participants also worked through an integrated workflow combining automated data acquisition, network analysis and optimisation, with code provided to facilitate further application to their own research and decision-making problems.

The conference tutorial was followed by the welcoming function on the Vineyard Terrace at Devon Valley Hotel. Gorgeous views of the mountains paired well with a delicious selection of canapés and drinks.

The highlight of the evening was the caricature artist Martinus van Tee whose humorous attention to detail gave attendees a unique and memorable keepsake from the conference (and perhaps some new insecurities).

Day 1: Monday

Monday was the start of the formal conference programme. LOC chair Gavin le Roux welcomed us all to the conference, followed by an insightful presidential address from ORSSA president Linke Potgieter about the value of operations research as a tool for navigating uncertainty and making decisions that have a meaningful, positive impact. For more on the talks presented, see Rob's blog post.

The conference social mixer was held at Thirsty Scarecrow, a lively farm-style pub on the R44 overlooking the strawberry fields of Mooiberge Farm. The night was started with wonderful charcuterie boards and incredible local wines, followed by a burger bar with an astonishingly wide selection of toppings (that the photographer, who also wrote this blog post, unfortunately failed to photograph).

Some delegates enjoyed an exhilarating game of Qork, while others were content to just spend the evening networking and socialising. The evening ended with dessert, ice cream accompanied by fresh local strawberries.

Day 2: Tuesday

The main social event of the conference took place on Tuesday evening: the gala dinner and awards ceremony. Delegates dressed to the nines for a full three-course buffet.

The main event, of course, was the awards ceremony, where the Gerhard Geldenhuys and Theodor Stewart medals were awarded to the winners of the annual National Student Competitions. Also awarded was the Tom Rozwadowski medal, the Society's premier award for the best written contribution to Operations Research made by a member of the Society during the previous year.

Butch Strasheim was awarded the Gerhard Geldenhuys medal for his fourth-year project on building a decision support system for allocating solar panels and batteries.

Tinus Cloete was awarded the Theodor Stewart medal for his Masters thesis on building predictive models for computing clusters.

The 2025 and 2026 Tom Rozwadowski medals were both presented at this event, due to the fact that there was no conference in 2025 at which to award these medals. Jan van Vuuren and Günther Hüsselmann received the 2025 Tom Rozwadowski medal for their paper An improved solution methodology for the urban transit routing problem.

ORSSA President Linke Potgieter and Head of Communications Hannah Callaghan received the 2026 Tom Rozwadowski medal for their paper Mobile clinics routing and scheduling in the

Witzenberg region of South Africa.

Congratulations to all the recipients of these awards. Their contributions to the field of Operations Research are valuable examples of the innovative research and practical problem-solving that continue to advance the field.

Day 3: Wednesday

The last day of conference featured no social events, but in his closing recap of the conference, Robert Bennetto announced the location of next years conference. For ORSSA 2027, we will be returning to the Kruger National Park.

The full gallery of photos from the conference is available here. We can't wait to see you in the Kruger next year for the 55th Annual ORSSA Conference!