Title: Tabu Search at The University of Texas at Austin – Applications & Research 

Speaker:  J. Wesley Barnes, Graduate Program in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Date/Time: Monday, April 2, 2007, 9:30 – 10:30 am

Location: CSRI Building, Room 90 (Sandia NM)

Brief Abstract: This presentation provides an overview of the activities at The University of Texas at Austin associated with the application and theoretical developments of the metaheuristic, tabu search (TS).

Following a discussion of why TS is a required tool for attacking large nonlinear combinatorial optimization problems, a brief description of the basics of TS is given followed by a review of the research that Dr. Barnes, his students and his faculty colleagues have jointly performed over the last 2 decades.  Special emphasis is given to the work performed on the “end-to-end strategic mobility problem” under auspices of The Consortium for Advanced Air Mobility Command Analyses Using Tabu Search, funded for the last 8 years by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and staffed by representatives from the USAF Air Mobility Command, The University of Texas at Austin, and the Air Force Institute of Technology.  This research has clearly shown the potential for dramatic improvements over current mobility and logistics practices with potential to yield annual economic savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The presentation will also contain a brief overview of seminal theoretical work of the Consortium in the domain of “landscape theory.”  Research results show that a careful and knowledgeable neighborhood selection strategy for a tabu search is essential to the success of the search.

CSRI POC: Jean-Paul Watson, (505) 845-8887