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Hugo Sconlik is regarded as one of the pioneers of Informatics in Argentina. In 1985 he created the Computer Science Department, of which he is currently Full Professor, at the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). Cryptography is Hugo's focal area of research, gaining him recognition as a leading figure in this field. He is the co-author of the Argentine Electronic Signature Law enacted in 2001. That said, his research interests are not limited to cryptography and comprise other areas such as numerical analysis, mathematical models and even robotics. Hugo has published about 50 scientific papers and two books. He was awarded the 2003 Konex Platinum prize for the best trajectory in Science and Technology in Argentina of the decade 1993-2003 and in 2005 the Sadosky prize for the best trajectory in Informatics. He was twice elected Vice President at Large of IFORS (International Federation for Operations Research Societies). Hugo has also been quite active besides academia, both in the private (corporate) sector and as consultant to multiple public and international organizations, and frequently appears in the media. He was a Founding Partner of two leading firms that develop products and solutions for SET and identity protection. Hugo holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Zurich and a PhD (Honoris Causa) from the University of Cuyo in Argentina.

Karen Aardal is a Full Professor at TU Delft, in the Netherlands, specializing in integer and combinatorial optimization, with a focus on algebraic methods for solving integer optimization problems. Her research also includes algorithm analysis and practical applications in health and logistics. Karen has been actively involved in professional societies, serving as Chair of the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and as a member of its Publications and Executive Committees. She has also been a board member of the INFORMS Computing Society for three terms. Her editorial contributions include roles as Area Editor for “Design and Analysis of Algorithms” at the INFORMS Journal on Computing and as Associate Editor for journals such as Mathematical Programming Series B, Networks, Operations Research Letters, and the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization. In addition, she co-edited the Handbook on Discrete Optimization, as well as volumes of Mathematical Programming Series B, and she chaired the Program Committee of IPCO 2023. Karen's service extends to national and international scientific organizations. She was a member of the Dutch Mathematics Council (2016–2021) and currently serves on the advisory committee of CWI Amsterdam, and the board of ENW at the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Recognized for her significant contributions to the field, Karen was named an INFORMS Fellow in 2019.

Artur Pessoa is an Associate Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from PUC-Rio and master’s and doctoral degrees in Informatics from the same institution. His research interests focus on developing insightful approaches to solving optimization problems in general. Artur has contributed to designing solution methods based on integer programming, column generation, dynamic programming, branch-and-bound, and related techniques to tackle combinatorial, bilevel, robust, and other optimization problems. He is one of the key figures behind several state-of-the-art exact algorithms for vehicle routing, scheduling, and generalized quadratic assignment problems. He has published papers in prestigious journals like Mathematical Programming, Operations Research, Theoretical Computer Science, SIAM Journal on Computing, Mathematical Programming Computation, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Transportation Science, European Journal of Operational Research, among others. Artur was honored with the best doctoral dissertation award from the Brazilian Computer Society and has twice won the best paper award at the Brazilian OR Symposium. In addition, he received the 2017 Best Paper Prize from the journal Mathematical Programming Computation, and the 2022 Transportation Science Meritorious Service Award from INFORMS. Artur is one of the developers of the VRPSolver package and the Coluna branch-cut-and-price framework. He is also a co-author of the recent book “Optimizing with Column Generation”, written in collaboration with Eduardo Uchoa and Lorenza Moreno.

Alexander Rinnooy Kan (1949) grew up in The Hague. He graduated in Mathematics from the University of Leiden in 1972. In the same year, he acquired a Candidate’s degree in Econometrics at the University of Amsterdam. From 1973 to 1977 he taught mathematics and statistics at Delft University of Technology. During that period, in 1976, he obtained his PhD in Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. Between 1977 and 1991 Rinnooy Kan held senior academic positions at Erasmus University Rotterdam and other European and American universities. He was rector magnificus of Erasmus University from 1986 to 1989, has published widely in professional journals and holds a number of honorary degrees. As Chairman of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW), a post he held from 1991 to 1996, Rinnooy Kan was one of the main representatives of Dutch business. He was member of the ING Group Executive Board from 1996 to 2006. Rinnooy Kan has been Chairman of the Netherlands Social and Economic Council from 2006 to 2012. In 2012, he was appointed as Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam. In June 2015, he was elected to the Dutch Senate. He sits on a variety of boards and has advised the Dutch government on numerous occasions.

José Mario Martínez was born in Cangas del Narcea, Asturias, Spain in 1948, but he moved to Argentina in 1951. He received the B. S. degree in Mathematics from the University of Buenos Aires in 1971 and the Ph. D. degree in Systems Engineering and Computation from the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1978. Since 1978 he is a Professor at the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Campinas, Brazil. Since 2020 he has been Emeritus Professor with the University of Campinas. He is the author of two books, around 200 papers and several software packages for Optimization. His research interests include Applied Mathematics, Optimization and Numerical Analysis. Currently, he is part of the Editorial Board of the journals Numerical Algorithms, Optimization Methods and Software and European Journal on Operations Research. Mario was a recipient of the Order of Scientific Merit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and SIAM Fellow. In 2023, he received the Su Buchin Prize from the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Dr. Martínez was a recipient of the Order of Scientific Merit of the Brazilian Ministry of Science. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and SIAM Fellow. In 2023 he received the Su Buchin Prize from the Institute of Computational and Industrial Mathematics, ICIAM.

Simge Küçükyavuz is Chair and David A. and Karen Richards Sachs Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences Department at Northwestern University. She is an expert in mixed-integer, large-scale, and stochastic optimization, with applications in complex computational problems across numerous domains, including social networks, computing and energy infrastructure, statistical learning, and logistics. Her research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). She is an INFORMS Fellow, and the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the INFORMS Computing Society (ICS) Prize. She is the past chair of ICS and serves on the editorial boards of Mathematics of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Operations Research, SIAM Journal on Optimization, and MOS-SIAM Optimization Book Series. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley.

Timo Berthold is a Director at FICO, leading the MIP research and development team of the FICO Xpress Solver. In additon, he is a lecturer at the Mathematical Optimization Department of TU Berlin, working of the intersection of academia and industry. Before joining FICO, Timo was a main developer of the open-source MIP and MINLP solver SCIP at Zuse Institue Berlin. Timo is an expert on all aspects of computational mixed-integer linear and nonlinear optimization, heuristic methods, and recently, the integration of ML methods into optimization solvers. He has published over 50 papers in this field, supervised many talented students and won multiple prestigious awards for his research. As a fun-fact, his PhD thesis won the 2014 GOR dissertation award and made the finals of the EURO dissertation award, while at the same time, an accompanying article on his PhD work received a science-communication prize for being the best "Math research explained to the general public" article of the year.

Marielle Christiansen is a professor of Operations Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She is head of the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management with more than 230 employees. Her primary research interests concern development and implementation of optimization models and methods for industry related planning problems as regards transportation, logistics, and production. She is particularly interested in applications where maritime transportation and supply chain challenges are considered and has been involved in a number of shipping industry – sponsored projects. Her research within maritime transportation has resulted in numerous papers in journals like Computers and Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Naval Research and Logistics, OMEGA, Networks, Transportation Research part C as well as Transportation Science. Furthermore, she has contributed with several surveys within maritime transport optimization in general and within combined inventory management and routing and fleet composition and routing in particular. She has been involved in the organization of several international conferences such as TRISTAN VII (Triennial symposium on transportation analysis), Tromsø, Norway, 2010, EURO-XXV, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012 (Programme Committee Chair), and VeRoLog (Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization), Oslo, Norway (2014).

Dr. Pedro Munari is an Associate Professor at the Production Engineering Department of the Federal University of São Carlos in São Paulo, Brazil. He holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics from the University of São Paulo. His Ph.D. Dissertation received the prestigious Doctoral Prize for the Best Dissertation from the Brazilian Society of Applied and Computational Mathematics. Dr. Munari has also held visiting scholar positions at the School of Mathematics of the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA), and at the Friedrich-Schiller Universitat Jena (Germany). He has led numerous successful research projects with grants from funding agencies and has developed applied projects with several companies in Brazil, with a specific focus on Operations Research and Logistics. His research interests include exact and heuristic methods, with emphasis on the column generation technique, branch-price-and-cut methods, and decomposition techniques for large-scale problems. Additionally, he has made contributions to the field by introducing formulations and solution methods for challenging deterministic, stochastic and robust combinatorial optimization problems, such as vehicle routing, lot sizing, and cutting/packing problems. He has published over fourty papers in prestigious journals, such as Transportation Science, EJOR, MPC, among several others. He is also on the editorial board of three journals, including MPC. He has a succesfull Youtube channel, called Munariflix, where he broadcasts videos with foundations of OR.

Michael "Mike" Florian is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and OR at the University of Montreal. He has more than 60 years of practical and academic experience working with OR problems related to the transportation of people and goods. Mike has published over 150 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings on transportation research and OR. He was an associate editor of several journals, including Operations Research, Transportation Science, INFOR, Transportation Research Part B, to name a few. He was the founder of a company called INRO, whose transportation planning software packages are used in many countries worldwide. In 1990, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2006, he was named a fellow of INFORMS. Mike is a recipient of numerous awards, such as the Merit Award of the Canadian OR Society and the Robert D. Herman Lifetime Achievement Award. Mike was also recognized as a “Pioneer of Computing in Canada” by the IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, and he was named “Honorary Professor” by Shanghai University of Science and Technology.