2016 Global Culture Photo Contest

If you are a UF student, faculty, staff, or alumni traveling abroad, or if you are an UF international student or scholar, you are eligible to enter the 2016 Global Culture Photography Competition.

 

1. Study Abroad & Service Learning Students (UF sponsored): Open to all current students who have taken part in a UF Study Abroad program in 2015 or 2016, as well as students who participated in a UF sponsored service learning program abroad. Photographs must have been taken during a trip abroad and reflect the competition theme of "Global Culture."
2. International Students, Scholars & Employees (F-1, J-1, H-1B, TN, E-3, O-1): Open to all current UF international students, scholars, faculty and employees on Visas listed above. Photographs must have been taken anywhere in the United States in 2015 or 2016, meeting the theme of "Global Culture."
3. Faculty, Staff & Alumni: Open to all current or retired University of Florida faculty and staff, as well as UF alumni. Photographs must have been taken abroad in 2015 or 2016 and reflect the theme of "Global Culture."

Awards: Judges will award a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in each of four categories. 1st prize winners will each receive $100, 2nd prize winners will receive $50 and 3rd prize winners will receive $25. Total prizes to be awarded: $525.

  

The submission period opens Aug. 8, 2016. Entries must be received no later than Oct. 7, 2016. More info at http://ufic.ufl.edu.

Fall 2016-SWS 6932: Scientific Writing for Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Students

This course focuses on capacity building to improve the skills of graduate students within the agriculture, environmental and natural resource management areas to prepare dissertation proposals, theses/dissertations, research papers, and conference presentations.

Seminar 7/25 - Water, Food and Energy Nexus. ABE Alumni Nicholas Kiggundu

AEC 5541: Instructional and Communication Technologies in Agricultural and Life Sciences

Continuum Event: Saturday Soiree - July 16th

The Continuum's next Saturday Soiree event is this weekend. On July 16th, we are doing an open house event that we’re calling our Saturday Soiree. This month is Wine and Cheese night! It’s especially for any graduate students, faculty, or staff of the University and we will be providing special leasing offers only for those in attendance. It’ll be a great event featuring wine and cheese, music, and giveaways. It’s a great way for anyone to get familiar with The Continuum and what we have to offer.

Fall 2016 Graduate School Doctoral Research Travel Award

The Graduate School is requesting your assistance in announcing our Fall 2016 Graduate School Doctoral Research Travel Award to your students. You can find more information at the following website:
http://www.graduateschool.ufl.edu/prospective-students/funding/travel/graduate-school-doctoral-research-travel-award-/

The application deadline is Friday, July 15, 2016. If you have questions concerning these funding opportunities contact the Graduate School at gradawards@aa.ufl.edu.

Fall EDGE Course Announcement: ESI 6341 - Introduction to Stochastic Optimization

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

EDGE course available both for on-campus and off-campus students

Recorded lectures can be downloaded from CANVAS course site

Introduction to Stochastic Optimization ESI 6341

M W F period 4 (10:40 - 11:30) at CSE E122

Professor: Stan Uryasev

446 Weil Hall

Tel: 352-294-7723

e-mail: uryasev@ufl.edu

Purpose of Course. Introduction to Stochastic Optimization is intended as a first introductory course for graduate students in such fields as engineering, operations research, statistics, mathematics, and business administration (in particular, finance or management science). The objective of the course is to help students build knowledge and intuition in decision making under the presence of uncertainties, including: 1) modeling of uncertainties; 2) changes which uncertainties bring to the decision process; 3) difficulties related to incorporation of uncertainties to optimization models; and 4) identifying of solvable problems.

The aim of stochastic programming techniques is to find an optimal decision in problems involving uncertainties and risks. The field, also known as optimization under uncertainty, is developing  rapidly with contributions from many disciplines such as operations research, economics, statistics, and finance. Stochastic programming approaches have been successfully used in a number of areas 

such as energy and production planning, telecommunications, forest and fishery harvest management, engineering, agriculture, and transportation. Recently, it was realized that practical experience accumulated in stochastic programming can be expanded to much larger spectrum of applications including financial modeling, risk management, and probabilistic risk analysis.

Topics to be covered:

1. Various application examples: Capacity Expansion, Design for Manufacturing Quality, Rocket Design, Farming Planning, Financial Planning and Control, and Probabilistic Risk Analysis.
2. Uncertainty and modeling issues (decisions and stages, two-stage programs, probabilistic programming, relationships to other decision-making models).
3. Solution methods.
4. Sensitivity analysis of stochastic systems (derivatives of expectations and probabilistic functions).
5. Case studies.

Prerequisites: Some basic knowledge of calculus, statistics, and linear programming.

Text: John R. Birge and Francois Louveaux. "Introduction to Stochastic Programming". Springer, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4614-0236-7

This course is included in the list of required courses for the Ph.D. Program with Concentration in Quantitative Finance.​