The summer school in Operational Research in Agriculture and Agrifood Industry will be held in Lleida, Spain from July 19th to August 1st 2014.

Aim and Scope

Many real-world-decision-making situations arise from agriculture and derived fresh products, involving part of the agrifood industry. Models and decision support systems to be used in agriculture are often present in OR research projects. Moreover the new perspective of supply chain management is relevant when agriculture production is concentrated in bigger production units involving several farms and/or companies. This evolution seems crucial to reach consumers and benefit of the added value of fresh and organic products among others.

As a consequence of the EURO Summer Institute held in Lleida in 2009, the aim of this ESI is to bring together again the opportunity for young scientists to acquaint themselves with academic experts in OR methods and applications in Agriculture and Forestry, to enter the scientific community, and to share their experience with young colleagues from all over Europe.

Interdisciplinarity is a fact in our topic of interest and decisional problems are increasingly complex and of great incidence in the society (sustainable production, variability preservation, food supply and chain management, vertical integration, transport of goods, climate change and gas emissions…). The intensification of relationships among researchers and interested in Agriculture and agrifood industry is expected to be very fruitful. Researchers share the interest in OR even when their background is in economics, applied mathematics, agricultural or industrial engineering.

Invited Speakers

The list of speakers will be issued soon.

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). The city of Lleida is the capital of one of the most extensive area in Agriculture and Forestry industries .

Committee

The ESI organising committee consist of Marcela Gonzalez (Chile), Carles Capdevila Marques (Spain), Silvia Miquel Fernandez (Spain), Xavier Ezcurra (Spain), Lluis M. Plà Aragonès (Spain).

Participation

Participation is limited to a group of about 20 students, normally aged 25-35, who have significant experience in the field, and are authors of at least one high-quality paper which has not yet been published, nor submitted for publication. During ESI all participants are invited to give a talk of 30 minutes on their submitted paper.

Each national OR Society is entitled to send at least one participant (possibly up to three) to the ESI. The costs of the ESI are met by EURO and other organisations, excluding the participants’ travel expenses which are normally met by the corresponding national OR Societies.

Students interested in participating in ESI 2014 should send their application, together with their curriculum vitae, their list of publications and an unpublished paper corresponding to this year’s theme, to their national OR Society.

Deadline

The deadline for application at the national OR Societies is 15th February, 2014.

Publication

A special issue of an ISI journal will be produced dedicated to the papers presented at the ESI. Therefore the submitted papers should be suitable for publication and meet selected journal’s standards as described in corresponding “notes for Authors”.

Further Information

For further information send an email to lmpla [Email address: lmpla #AT# matematica.udl.cat - replace #AT# with @ ]. More information and updates about the ESI 2014 will be issued soon.