@lawlessopt.bsky.social and I are excited to present our #AAAI2026 tutorial on “LLMs for Optimization: Modeling, Solving, and Validating with Generative AI.” When: Tuesday, Jan 20, 2026, 8:30am–12:30pm SGT Where: Garnet 216 (Singapore EXPO) (Connor’s intro slides are shown here.) CC @aaai.org

It's been an absolute pleasure working with Ellen, Madeleine, and their amazing PhD students for the past year on making optimization more accessible with generative AI! I am on the job market this year - check out my website (conlaw.github.io) for more details on what I've been up to.

In our final session for the day, we're focused on a hot topic: machine learning and mixed integer programming. Connor Lawless will start the session and tells us how to use LLMs for cold-start cutting plane separator configuration. doi.org/10.1007/978-...

🔥 New workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social! DiffCoALG bridges the gap between classic algorithms & differentiable learning. Think: LLM reasoning, routing, SAT, MIP — neurally optimized. 📌 Submit by Aug 22! 🤖🧠 🔗 sites.google.com/view/diffcoa... #NeurIPS2025

There's been a lot of work using LLMs to formulate MILPs, but how do we know that the formulations are correct? Come chat with Haotian at poster W-515 to learn about our work on automatic equivalence checking for optimization models!

Excited to be chatting about our new paper "Understanding Fixed Predictions via Confined Regions" (joint work with @berkustun.bsky.social, Lily Weng, and Madeleine Udell) at #ICML2025! 🕐 Wed 16 Jul 4:30 p.m. PDT — 7 p.m. PDT 📍East Exhibition Hall A-B #E-1104 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2502.16380

Our ✨spotlight paper✨ "Primal-Dual Neural Algorithmic Reasoning" is coming to #ICML2025! We bring Neural Algorithmic Reasoning (NAR) to the NP-hard frontier 💥 🗓 Poster session: Tuesday 11:00–13:30 📍 East Exhibition Hall A-B, # E-3003 🔗 openreview.net/pdf?id=iBpkz... 🧵

Excited to be chatting about our ACM TIIS paper at IUI today: "I Want it That Way": Enabling Interactive Decision Support via Large Language Models and Constraint Programming 🔗: arxiv.org/abs/2312.06908

Super excited about this new work with Yingxi Li, Anders Wikun, @ellen-v.bsky.social, and Madeleine Udell forthcoming at CPAIOR2025: LLMs for Cold-Start Cutting Plane Separator Configuration 🔗: arxiv.org/abs/2412.12038

For decades, the US government has painstakingly kept American science #1 globally—and every facet of American life has improved because of it. The internet? Flu shot? Ozempic? All grew out of federally-funded research. Now all that's being dismantled. 1/ www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

"Not a step back" Possibly --- even a step _forward_? /s

Summer 2025 schools on algorithms, machine learning, mathematics, optimization, and other relevant topics in operations research #orms

Have you developed and/or implemented an optimization model to solve a real-world use case? We want to hear from you! We're extending our study on workflows in optimization modelling for a couple last interviews: tinyurl.com/3ejdr7su

Yesterday, I gave a @gurobioptimization.bsky.social webinar where I explored how to make #AI and #ML both #transparent and #fair without compromising on #accuracy. The recording of the talk is at www.brighttalk.com/webcast/1918.... Happy to hear about your feedback!

My department is looking for a postdoc. We have great (and nice!) folks working on theory and applications in data science, machine learning, mathematical optimization, and transportation. The university also has a lot going on in heathcare. See more below: jobs.uiowa.edu/postdoc/view...