XVIII Summer School on Operations Research, Data, and Decision Making,ORA 2026

Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod,  Rodionova street 136

The Summer School on Operational Research, Data and Decision Making will take place on May 2026 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. The school is organized by the Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Networks Analysis and Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics and Computer Science of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod.

THIS YEAR THE SCHOOL WILL BE ORGANIZED MAY 15-16, 2026 in mixed format ONSITE and ONLINE.

Interested participants have to register (see below) and we will send you the link for participation.

The main topics of the school are related to practical algorithms in logistics, transportation and traffic management, scheduling, decision science, and stochastic programming. The school follows the traditions of previous summer schools on operational research and applications 2009, 2010, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.

The school is organized for bachelor, master and PhD students. To attend the school as a participant you must register before May 10, 2026. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: vkalyagin@hse.ru

Important Dates and Schedule:
Registration:  February 10 - May 10, 2026
Notification acceptance: Ad hoc
Summer School: May 15-16, 2026.

School schedule
Friday, May 15: 14:00 – 18:00. Room 401, Rodionova 136.
Saturday, May 16: 10:00 – 14:00. Room 401, Rodionova 136.

Program
 Program 

Presentations

School lecturers
Internationally recognized expert in operations research, data analysis and decision making will present their research fields emphasizing new theoretical approaches and practical applications as well.

Dmitrii Khizbullin, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia.
Lecture 1. LLM Agents with Structured Thinking
Lecture 2. Agentic-level Optimization and Semantic Gradient

Yury Kochetov, Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Novosibirsk, Russia.
Column generation method for NP-hard problems

Dmitry Malyshev, lab LATNA, HSE University, Nizhny Novgorod
Vector search algorithms: a survey and recent advances

Nikita Morozov, AI and Digital Science Institute, Centre of Deep Learning and Bayesian Methods, HSE University, Moscow.
Lecture 1. Generating Objects with Discrete Structure via Generative Flow Networks.
Lecture 2. Learning Shortest Paths with Generative Flow Networks.

Angelo Sifaleras, Department of Applied Informatics, School of Information Sciences, of the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Lecture 1: Variable Neighborhood Search: Foundations, Variants, and Practical Implementation
Lecture 2: Variable Neighborhood Search in Practice: Real-World Applications

Co-Chairs of the school
Panos M. Pardalos University of Florida and LATNA, HSE University
Natalia Aseeva, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Program Committee 

Fuad Aleskerov, NRU HSE

Mikhail Batsyn, NRU HSE

Dmitry Gribanov,  NRU HSE and MIPT 

Valery Kalyagin, NRU HSE

Yury Kochetov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk

Alexander Koldanov, NRU HSE

Dmitriy Malyshev, NRU HSE

Oleg Prokopyev, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Andrey Raigorodskii, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University.

Sergey Sidorov, Saratov State University

Nikolay Zolotykh, Lobachevsky State University, Nizhny Novgorod

Andrey Savchenko, NRU HSE  and SBER AI

Organizing Committee

Natalia Aseeva, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Grigory Dakhno, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Valery Kalyagin, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Nikita Kasyanov, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Ilya Kostylev, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Khaidar Abdullin, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Timur Medvedev, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Gleb Neshchetkin, HSE, Nizhny Novgorod

Maksim Tolmachev, HSE University, Russia