Upcoming Events: Opportunities to Engage, Learn, and Connect

We are pleased to share a series of upcoming events designed to inform, engage, and connect our community. Whether you are seeking professional development, academic enrichment, or opportunities to network, the events ahead offer a range of valuable experiences. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the calendar in the Operations Research community.

Be sure to not miss out on our first SIG: Policy Event on 13 May both in-person (in both CPT and Joburg) and online. Jared Norman from UCT will be presenting on the topic "Creating a Resurgence Analysis Dashboard during the COVID-19 pandemic | ORSSA

Facilitating evidence-based decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic". This event will be in collaboration with the Cape Town & Joburg R user Groups and the ORSSA SIG in Public Policy. RSVP for details here.

Our previous SIG: History of OR event took place on 26 March, presented by Hans Ittman, if you missed it you can read about his life in the blog post here.

Outside of ORSSA, there are so many opportunities - from conferences to workshops - where you can expand your skillset and network! Here are quite a few for you to look into.

There will be The Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) Workshop taking place at the University of Minnesota. This workshop will be a single-track highlighting the latest trends in integer programming and discrete optimization. The summer school is on June 2, 2025 and the regular workshop is June 3-6, 2025. Find out more here.

Slightly later in June, the Workshop on Optimization, Dynamics, and Convex Analysis (WODCA 2025) will be hosted in Portugal from 11 to 14 June, link. They hope to have experts in Optimization, Optimal mass transport, Convex Geometry, Calculus of Variations, Applications of Mathematics in Mechanics, Dynamical Systems, Optimal Control, Mathematical Modelling, Mathematical Programming, Convex analysis, Semi-Infinite and Semidefinite Programming, Linear and Integer Programming, the Kakeya needle problem, and more!

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) is hosting a training school from 16 to 20 June. It will be dedicated to “Computational Modelling of Combinatorial Optimisation Problems,” the Training School consists of a combination of lectures, problem-solving group projects, poster presentations by the Trainees, and team-building activities. Give it a look here.

Here's another reminder about the 34th Conference of the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO), is taking place in Leeds, UK, from 22 to 25 June. This year there is a special session entitled 'OR for Better Africa' which is calling for abstracts. This session will explore how OR can drive impactful solutions for Africa’s development, tackling key challenges across industries, policy-making, and society. Find out more here.

In a similar light, the 51st annual conference of the EURO Working Group on Operational Research Applied to Health Services (ORAHS 2025) will take place in Trondheim (NO) from 6 to 11 July, organised by Henrik Andersson and Anders Gullhav from the NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The ORAHS 2025 theme is "Enabling Healthcare Innovation through Operations Research" will be explored through plenary, regular talk, discussion talk and poster sessions. Find out more here.

Bringing it back local, from 7 to 11 July, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), in partnership with the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) South Africa, is launching the “Mega Maths Festival” under the theme: Mathematics: Our 13th National Language. This will take place at the University of the Western Cape and is the first-of-its-kind, so is not to be missed! Find out more here.

The University of Cape Town will be hosting a Vendor EXP0 on 9 September 2025. The poster below gives more details.

Lastly, the 8th Edition of AI Expo Africa will be hosting the 1st UN ITU AI4Good Impact Africa Summit. The combined event will be a G20 side event and will attract local and global AI thought leaders, global vendors, startups and delegates seeking to learn more about the cutting edge application of AI over a 3 day event at Sandton Convention Centre, JHB, South Africa from 29 to 31 October 2025. Learn more here.

Be sure not to miss out— Stay informed, get involved, and make the most of what’s ahead.