Michael Affenzeller, in his role as general chair of the 11th International Conference on Modeling and Applied Simulation (MAS 2012), is giving an opening talk tomorrow morning at the conference venue in Vienna, Austria. The MAS conference is, as in previous years, part of the I3M, the International Multidisciplinary Modeling & Simulation Multiconference.

A new HeuristicLab add-on for the job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is now available as zip-archive from our download page. Developer Joseph Helm plans to tackle 3D packing problems next, which will further expand the number of available standard problems. For details, head over to the blog.

Last week HEAL researcher Monika Kofler traveled to Smolenice, Slovakia to attend the 4th IEEE International Symposium on Logistics and Industrial Informatics (LINDI 2012) and present her work on the optimization of steel slab logistics. The first incarnation of LINDI took place in Wildau, Germany (2007) followed by Linz, Austria (2009) and Budapest, Hungary (2011). Once again, it was a stimulating and very international event with researchers from Europe, Thailand, Canada and the U.S., who we hope to see again in Wildau in 2013.