Fernando Ordoñez (Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California)

Robust Optimization
Robust optimization has become in the past few years a realistic alternative to modeling the uncertainty present in optimization problems. In this presentation we present the fundamentals of the robust optimization methodology, its assumptions, and discuss its benefits and limitations. We illustrate this discussion with examples in planning, network flows, and portfolio optimization.

Victor F. Araman (Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University)

Operations Decisions and Spot Markets
In many industries (semiconductor, chemicals, automotive, media to name few) so-called spot markets are gaining importance and are continuously capturing a bigger fraction of the exchange occurring among various businesses. Companies have often the option of choosing between a long-term channel and a spot market to exchange goods. A major challenge is then how to incorporate such highly volatile system in a business. Although, this new procurement and sales channel could be quite effective, many operations decisions need to be adjusted. Depending on the context, we study in this tutorial different ways of modeling a spot market. We identify the parameters that need to be considered and we obtain in some settings new inventory and capacity management policies that optimize such systems.

Gustavo Vulcano (Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University)

Auctions: An Operational Perspective
In this tutorial, we will review the basics of single period auctions under the so-called private value model, where each bidder has his own reservation price, which is the maximum amount he is willing to pay for the object(s) being auctioned. We will also introduce the mechanism design approach, where we try to analyze the auction game and outcome independently of a particular format (like first-price or second-price).Then, we will embed this type of game theoretic analysis in few operational and revenue management problems, where the seller wants to maximize revenue or profit.

Nicolás Stier (Columbia Business School, Columbia University)

Price of Anarchy
A common assumption in optimization models is that a centralized coordinator controls the whole system. However, in several applications users are independent, and assuming that they will follow directions given by this coordinator is not realistic. Individuals will only accept directives if they are in their own interest or if there are incentives that encourage them to do so. Actually, it would be easier to let users make their own decisions hoping that the outcome will be close to the coordinator's goals. A central question about this situation is to determine how much is lost by letting users decide by themselves. In this talk, we will attempt to answer that question by reviewing some of the recent results that measure the lost performance in a system when individuals make decisions independently and selfishly. The study of the efficiency of equilibria of a class of games, which became known as `The Price of Anarchy', beautifully combines ideas and techniques from Economics, Computer Science and Operations Research and has applications in many domains, making it a fertile ground for new contributions.