The Pacific Optimization Research Activity Group

Pacific Optimization Research Activity Group (POP for short) is an Internet-based group of researchers, aiming at promoting optimization research activities in the Pacific Region.
Founded in October, 2000, during the First Sino-Japanese Optimization Meeting in Hong Kong, initiated by a call of Masao Fukushima, Masakazu Kojima, Liqun Qi, Jie Sun, Kok Lay Teo, and Alex Rubinov , this group has now about 560 members from more than 40 countries and regions, ranging from Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America.
POP maintains a website at https://bschool.nus.edu.sg/pop/ and publishes an electronic newsletter– Optimization Research Bridge (ORB), which is started in March 2001 and is issued every three months. It has an official journal — Pacific Journal of Optimization (PJO). PJO launched in 2005 and has published three issues a year. It has become quarterly from 2012. In March 2004, the POP Working Committee endorses Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization (JIMO). In addition to the journal, POP also sponsors three international conferences series — International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA), Sino-Japanese Optimization Meeting (SJOM), and Optimization and Control with Applications (OCA). The First ICOTA was held in 1987, which means that ICOTA is older than POP. The past ICOTA conferences were held in various places in the Pacific Region, such as Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Japan. The most recent one (ICOTA9) was held in Taipei, Taiwan, in December 2013. The 10th ICOTA will be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in July 2016. SJOM has been held five times, since the First SJOM in Hong Kong, 2000. Since the Second SJOM in 2002, it has been held regularly every three years. The most recent SJOM was held in Beijing in September 2011. During that meeting, the steering committee of SJOM made a decision to change the name of SJOM to Pacific Optimization Conference (POC) in reflection to the wide geographical distribution of their participants of the conference series. Subsequently, the first POC was held in Wuxi, China in October 2014. For OCA, it becomes a POP conference series in 2013. The first OCA was held in Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture, International School of Mathematics “G. Stampacchia”, Erice, Italy, in July 2001. The subsequent past OCA conferences were held in Tunxi City, Anhui, China, in August 2002 ; Chongqing-Chengdu, Chongqing City and Sichuan Province, China, in July 2004; Harbin, China, in June 2009; and Beijing, China in December 2012. The 6th International Conference on Optimization and Control with Applications (OCA2015) will be held on 12-14 December, 2015 in Changsha, China. It is organised by Changsha University of Science and Technology (China) and Curtin University (Australia).

In general, POP endorses international optimization conferences and meetings held in this region, or held not in this region but organized by POP members. The international conferences or meetings endorsed by POP can distribute their announcements to the POP mailing list.

POP is governed by its working committee of 7 members, under the supervision of the POP board of 15 members. The past chairs of working committee were Professor Liqun Qi (2000-05), Professor Alex Rubinov (2005-06), Professor Masao Fukushima (2006-09), and Professor Jie Sun (2010-2014). The current chair of working committee is Professor Kok Lay Teo from Curtin University (Australia). Those interested in joining POP can fill up the form in POP’s website.
Register to POP.

Please send any inquiries to Miss Lee Chwee Ming, at chweeming_Lee@nus.edu.sg .