The first INFORMS Simulation Society Research Workshop will be held July 5-7, 2007 at the Fontainebleau, France campus of INSEAD. The theme is Simulation for better decisions in an uncertain world". The goal of the workshop is to bring together leading researchers working in a variety of theoretical, empirical, application and implementation domains in order to reflect on a central question: how can simulation most effectively support better decisions?
More specifically, the topics include the following. What are the strengths and limitations of existing simulation optimization techniques for both continuous and discrete optimization? Can we exploit links with closely related disciplines, such as stochastic programming and robust optimization? What role do sensitivity analysis, uncertainty analysis, the robustness of decisions to modelling assumptions, implementation issues, and special considerations that arise in specific applications have to play in the choice of algorithm and performance thereof? What demands are placed on existing simulation tools that are used in a variety of applications? Where are the gaps in existing simulation optimization theory? Extended abstracts will be made available openly on the WWW and the conference organizers will serve as guest editors in a special issue of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation that will feature selected articles from the workshop.
