This year’s INFORMS Annual Meeting in Indianapolis was a great experience. Logan went with Steve and Atharv for GAMS to the conference to have a technical talk about GAMS Engine, GAMS Connect and GAMS Transfer. Besides interesting talks and meetings with old friends, we were very happy with the GAMS sponsored basketball hoop. There was fierce competition every day between all the attendees for the prized GAMS leatherman multi-tool. Through this mini game, we had a steady stream of visitors, which helped us network with new colleagues.
Energy system optimization modeling has become a key ingredient in transitioning to decarbonized energy supply systems based mostly on renewables. Yet, these systems reveal a growing complexity, e.g., due to the decentralization of infrastructures or an increasing variety of potential technologies capable of balancing energy demand and supply. This renders a reliable application of traditional optimization modeling techniques impossible.
GAMS offices are geographically distributed between different cities in the US (GAMS Development Corp.) and Germany (GAMS Software GmbH). The teams try to meet regularly - this time we enjoyed our Christmas party at Henk Mulder’s cooking school, where we could try our hands at preparing our own Christmas dinner. Not everyone was there, but fortunately it still worked a treat - have a look at the pictures.