IFORS Board of Representatives Meeting
MINUTES
Tuesday, July 12, 2011  4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Meeting Room 1 – Melbourne Exhibition Centre
Melbourne Australia

Welcome to our New Members
President Dominique de Werra welcomed the members of the Board of Representatives and announced our newest members of IFORS: Iran, 2009; Uruguay, 2009; Peru, 2010; and Estonia, 2011.  He announced that the results of the ballot on the membership application of the Operational Research Society of Nepal will be announced in November 2011.

President’s Report – Dominique de Werra
D, de Werra reminded the representatives that the 2009 and 2010 Annual Reports are contained in the IFORS News available on-line. The 2010 Annual Report is in their conference bags. After the representatives introduced themselves, D. de Werra presented the IFORS priorities which included Education, Scholarships, Developing Countries, Publications, and Conferences.

The members of the Administrative Committee were introduced along with their areas of responsibilities. New volunteer appointments were announced as follows:  Elise del Rosario replaced Hans Ittmann as IFORS News Editor; IFORS VP representing EURO Elena Fernández replaced Martine Labbé, who resigned to devote her time to her new role as Editor of a new EURO journal; and Preston White replaced David Smith as Editor of International Abstracts in Operations Research.

Administrative Committee Reports  
A)    Treasurer’s Report – Peter Bell
P. Bell reported on the publication revenues representing the past 20 years for both IAOR and ITOR. He reported that strong publication revenues and spending shortfall resulted in a 2010 surplus of nearly $50,000. The core revenues have resulted in net gains for the majority of the past years. He presented the major expense items of Publications, Developing Countries Committee Programs and the IFORS office. IFORS closed 2010 with a $1.4 million balance.

B)    Conferences – Karla Hoffman
i)    2011 Melbourne Conference
After citing the 1000 attendees, wonderful tours, a great banquet, and three fabulous plenary speakers, K. Hoffman thanked General Chair Patrick Tobin, Conference Secretary Kaye Marion, and Program Chair Janny Leung for their hard work and dedication in making the Melbourne conference a great success.

ii)    2014 Barcelona Conference
K. Hoffman announced Barcelona Spain as the location of the 2014 triennial conference and introduced the IFORS 2014 General Chair Elena Fernández and announced the Program Chair Stefan Nickel. The venue will be the new convention center, which is close to the beach with easy access to city center. She asked the representatives to go back and spread the word and to get involved early with the program by organizing a session or giving a talk.

iii)    2017 Call for Host Society
K. Hoffman announced the call for proposals to host the 2017 triennial conference and mentioned the desire to rotate the conference among the four regional groups. As such, IFORS prefers proposals from North and South America since the last two conferences were in Australia and Africa. Expressions of intent should be sent to the IFORS Secretary by September 30, 2011.
It was mentioned that the conference registration fee has climbed too high especially for students. This led to a discussion about the tour day and banquet provided to all registrants with the result that the conference is not making a large profit even with the higher fees.

C)    Publications – Elena Fernández  
i)    International Abstracts In Operations Research (IAOR) – Preston White, Editor
After discussing the editorial transition from David Smith, P. White presented the new look of the publication cover, layout improvements and the push to get back on schedule before the end of 2011.  He requested support from the representatives to help with the development of metrics that demonstrate the additional lift OR professionals experience by using IAOR as their search engine instead of Google Scholar.

ii)    International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR) – Celso Ribeiro
C. Ribeiro discussed the special issues that were published and those currently scheduled, the number of submissions, and publication schedule. Acceptance rate of articles submitted is at 27% with all 2010 issues published on time. Results of the application for indexing by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) are expected in September 2011.

D)    Distinguished Lecturers (IDL) & Invited Tutorials (IIT) – Karla Hoffman
K . Hoffman reviewed the list of distinguished lecturers for 2010 and encouraged all regional conference organizers to host distinguished lectures. She announced the newly-launched IFORS Invited Tutorials (IIT) program which provides $2000 honorarium for tutorials by outstanding scholars on the fundamentals of emerging OR technologies, application areas or teaching approaches. This program is ready for implementation this year, 2011.

E)    Education  Program – Horacio Yanasse
Standing in for Nair Abreu, H. Yanasse announced the appointment of Marcela Araya  as Chair of the Education Website Editorial Board. Current activity involves uploading and providing pointers to materials useful for teaching OR in various languages in the IFORS website. In addition, he discussed the Crash Course on OR – one of which has been held in Brazil in 2010 and another two is planned in 2011. He encouraged that more such courses be held, as they have been useful for people teaching math in high schools and those in their  early years of graduation.

F)    Developing Countries Committee
i)    African School – Horacio Yanasse
Reporting for Hugo Scolnik, H. Yanasse reported on the African School in Operations Research, supported by IFORS and EURO, to be held in Porto-Novo, Benin in November 2011,

ii)    2011 IFORS Prize for OR in Development – Elise del Rosario
E. del Rosario reported that 24 highly-qualified papers were received for the competition.  The prize money was increased and the requirement that authors must be nationals of developing countries was removed. The winners will be announced during the conference banquet.

G)    Website and Newsletter – Elise del Rosario
E. del Rosario reported on the website and the new features since its launch in 2007.  The IFORS newsletters and tutorials have been integrated into the website and an easy to use online voting feature was added. In the Educational Resources area, links have been provided for resources useful for teaching OR. A wiki facility has been put in place to enable uploads of materials in several languages. She announced that development is underway for the Developing Countries Website.

E. del Rosario reported that the quarterly newsletter is published electronically through the IFORS website. The June issue contains the annual report from the Administrative Committee and the representatives are encouraged to disseminate this information to the members of their national societies. IFORS News correspondents have been appointed from the regional groupings and an ISSN has been secured for the electronic newsletter.

H)    Regional Reports:
ALIO – H. Yanasse, on behalf of N. Abreu,  reported that the ELAVIO 2012, the 16th Summer School of ALIO, will be held in  Bento Gonçalves, Brazil on February, 6-10, 2012, and will be chaired by Luciana Buriol, (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). He also announced that the regional ALIO meeting, the CLAIO 2012, will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from September 24 to 28, 2012 will commemorate the 70th birthday of Nelson Maculan, Andrés Weintraub, and Hugo Scolnik.

APORS – E. del Rosario, reporting for Xiang-Sun Zhang, reported that APORS has 11 member societies and its current President is Yaxiang Yuan of the ORSC (China). She reminded the representatives to cast their on-line votes on the application for IFORS membership of the Operational Research Society of Nepal due on November 5, 2011. The next APORS regional conference will be held in Xi’an China in 2012. The Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research is the official journal of APORS.

EURO – E. Fernández reported that EURO has 30 national member societies with Grazia Speranza as current President. EURO conference in 2012 will be held in Vilnius and EURO/INFORMS conference in 2013 will be held in Rome. She reported on the various working groups, workshops, and awards sponsored by EURO.  The next Summer/Winter Institute ESI 2012 will focus on Maritime Logistics and will be held in Bremen, Germany in June. The organizer is Christian Bierwirth. EURO also announced the launch of its three new journals.

NORAM – K. Hoffman reported on the activities of both the Canadian OR Society (CORS) and Institute for Operations Research/Management Science (INFORMS) which comprise the NORAM. CORS has a quarterly bulletin and a journal on Information Systems and OR. The 2011 annual CORS/SCRO meeting took place in St. John’s, the provincial capital of Newfoundland and Labrador last May 30 to June 1, 2011. In addition, CORS sponsored the INFORMS Healthcare conference in June 2011 in Montreal.  The 2012 CORS conference will be held in Niagara Falls, Ontario. CORS also presented several awards for merit, service, and practice for 2010.
INFORMS held several conferences: jointly with ALIO in Buenos Aires in June 2010 and the annual conference in Austin, Texas.  The 2012 INFORMS annual conference will be held in Charlotte, NC in November while in June, a joint conference with ORSC is planned in Beijing. She reported on the many awards, publications, and active communities within INFORMS.

I)    Proposal of the Nominating Committee – Elise del Rosario
E. del Rosario, reporting on behalf of the last three living IFORS Presidents, announced the Nominating Committee’s decision to put forth the following names for the 2013 – 2105 terms of office:
i)    IFORS President: Nelson Maculan, Brazil
ii)    IFORS Vice President at Large: Sue Merchant, United Kingdom

Open Forum
A question was raised regarding the IFORS activities to promote the practice of OR. It was suggested that at each conference, a practice stream be organized. It was also mentioned that a one-day conference fee for local practitioners only should be evaluated. Another suggestion included a special registration fee be available for delegates from developing countries and to set up an award program to provide a few young delegates from developing countries support to attend.

Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 6:30 pm.

ATTENDANCE: