Jay Sethuraman Mechanism Design for House Allocation Problems : A Short

March 16, 2010. You should recently have received a letter concerning a possible change of name for MPS, to “Mathematical Optimization Society”. This issue has been discussed in earnest since ISMP 2009, where it was raised at the Council and Business meetings. Some of you were kind enough to send me your views following the mention in my column in Optima 80. Many (including me) believe that the term “optimization” is more widely recognized and better understood as an appellation for our field than the current name, both among those working in the area and our colleagues in other disciplines. Others believe that the current name should be retained, as it has the important benefits of tradition, branding, and name recognition. To ensure archival continuity in the literature, the main titles of our journals Mathematical Programming, Series A and B and Mathematical Programming Computation would not be affected by the proposed change; only their subtitles would change. As the letter explains, there will be a final period for comment on the proposed change, during which you are encouraged to write to me, to incoming chair Philippe Toint, or to other Council or Executive Committee members to express your views. Following discussion of membership feedback, Council will vote on a motion to put the name change (which involves a constitutional change) to a vote of the full membership. If Council approves, you will then be asked to vote on the proposal in the same manner as in the last election for officers – that is, by online ballot, with an option for a paper ballot if you prefer. The proposal will pass if votes in favor exceed votes against on the membership ballot. We anticipate that the matter will be settled by May. Results will be announced by mail and on the web site www.mathprog.org. We have been greatly saddened by the loss of life in earthquakes around the world in these early months of 2010. Fortunately, our colleagues in Chile were not affected severely by the earthquake of February 27 in that country. The MPS-organized conference ICCOPT 2010 will take place as planned in Santiago, Chile during July 26–29, preceded by a School for graduate students and young researchers on July 24–25. Conference facilities were left unscathed by the earthquake, and the airport and local transportation networks are operating normally. The local organizing committee (headed by Alejandro Jofre) is making a great effort to ensure a successful conference. I urge you to attend and contribute, and help add another chapter to the short but illustrious history of ICCOPT. Many of us will be making plans for other mid-year conferences, and there are many to choose from in 2010. Our web site lists upcoming meetings at http://www.mathprog.org/?nav=meetings, including the MPS-organized IPCO 2010 (Lausanne, June 9–11) and other MPS-sponsored meetings: the International Conference on Stochastic Programming (ICSP) XII (Halifax, August 14–20), the International Conference on Engineering Optimization (Lisbon, September 6–9), and the IMA Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization (Birmingham, September 13–15).