TWCCC Fall 2026 Meeting - In Person

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Travel Information [link]

Location for Talks: Pyle Center - Alumni Lounge [link]

Location for Poster Session and Dinner: Tripp Commons (Memorial Union) [link]

Recommended Parking Lots: State Street Campus Garage (5 min walk to event) [link] and State Street Capitol Parking Garage (15 min walk to event): [link]

Access to Files [link]

WiFi Access: UWNet (open to all, just register) or Eduroam (open to academics and students)

Final Program (All Times Central)

Monday September 14th

Breakfast on your own

8:45  Welcome and Introduction

9:00 - Steve Wright (UW-Madison): Recent Trends in AI/ML 

9:45 - Break

10:00 - Jim Rawlings (UC Santa Barbara): The impact of LLMs on our research programs

10:45 -  Ilias Mitrai (UT Austin): Data-driven discovery of iterative algorithms

11:30 - Lunch (on your own)

13:00 - Michael Baldea (UT Austin): Achievable performance for ML models

13:45 - Jay Lee  (University of Southern California): Learning-Guided Decomposition Methods for Multi-Stage Stochastic Capacity Planning

14:30 - Break 

14:45 - Styliana Avraamidou (UW-Madison): Uncovering the burden shifting of data center cooling: System-level water-energy-carbon optimization

15:20 - Joel Paulson (UW-Madison): How to globally optimize trained Gaussian process surrogates and when it matters

15:55 - Victor Zavala (UW-Madison): Advances in GrOptimization

16:30 -  Reception + Poster Presentations by Students/Postdocs 

18:00 -  Group Dinner (Provided) 

Tuesday September 15th

Breakfast on your own

8:00 - 9:00 - PIs + Industry Meeting (coffee+pastries provided) - Discussion on emerging trends and challenges.

9:00 - Curtis Barr (Amcor) - Perspect on Challenges and Opportunities of Automation in Manufacturing

9:45 - Break and Group Picture

10:00 - Student/Postdoc Talks

Zakariya Al Kharusi (Rawlings Group): "Economic MPC for Integrated Pricing and Inventory Management Under Volatile Demand" 

Natalia Cislo (Baldea Group): "Operational Strategies of an Electrically Heated Dividing-Wall Distillation Column – Theory and Experiments"

Parth Brahmbhatt (Avraamidou Group): "Autonomous Market Participation for Distributed Energy Resources: Maximizing Profit through Generalized Nash Equilibrium Peer Coalitions"

Ugo Ikegwu (Zavala Group): "Navigating Large Chemical Spaces using Graph Theory and Integer Programming"

Nathaniel Massa (Paulson Group): “Unlocking Surrogate Linearization: Tractable Global Optimization of Nonlinear Systems via Sparse ReLU Neural Network Surrogates"

12:05 - Concluding Remarks + Adjourn

Poster Titles

1. Zakariya Al Kharusi (Rawlings Group): "Economic MPC for Integrated Pricing and Inventory Management Under Volatile Demand" 

2. Natalia Cislo (Baldea Group): "Operational Strategies of an Electrically Heated Dividing-Wall Distillation Column – Theory and Experiments"

3. Madhav Muthyala (Paulson Group): "From Learned Neural ODE Dynamics to Compact Analytical Equations via Symbolic Regression”

4. Tianhong Tan (Paulson Group): “Human-in-the-Loop Microscopy Image Analysis using Vision Foundation Models"

5. Wei-Ting Tang (Paulson Group): “Advancing Bayesian Optimization: Global Acquisition Optimization, High-Dimensional Scaling, and Diversity-Driven Discovery”

6. Max Depperschmidt (Paulson Group): “An active machine learning framework for designing nanoprobes targeting chronic pain signaling"

7. Kiernan Jennings (Avraamidou/Zavala Group): "Multi-Scale Optimization for Capacity Planning and Operations of Electrolysis Systems"

8. Kang Qiu (Zavala Group - NTNU Visitor): "Dual Model Predictive Control: Fusing Stochastic MPC, Bayesian Optimization, and Closed-Loop Learning"

9. Angan Mukherjee (Zavala Group): "Topological Data Analysis for High-Dimensional Dynamic Multivariate Process Monitoring"

10. Joe Flory (Zavala Group): "Bayesian Optimization for Dynamic Catalysis"

11. Jukbin Kim (Zavala Group): "Accelerating Lagrangian Decomposition using Bayesian Optimization"

12. Manuel Gomez (Zavala Group): "Large Language Models for Optimization: A Case Study in Supply Chains"

13. Parth Brahmbhatt (Avraamidou Group): "Autonomous Market Participation for Distributed Energy Resources: Maximizing Profit through Generalized Nash Equilibrium Peer Coalitions"

14. Raj Wagh (Avraamidou Group): "A Digital Twin Architecture for Prognosis and Degradation-Aware MPC in Fuel Cell Vehicles"

15. Kenneth Martinez (Avraamidou Group): "Multiperiod Infrastructure and Fleet Planning for Decarbonizing Heavy-Duty Transportation Sector Based on Freight Service"

16. Javiera Vergara Zambrano (Avraamidou Group): "Closing the Loop In Energy Systems Planning: A Multi-Scale Capacity Expansion Model Integrating Decommissioning and End-of-Life Management"

17. Meng-Lin Tsai (Avraamidou Group): "Event-triggered Expansion of Multi-parametric solution space to solve Benders decomposition"

18. Luis Raul Barajas (Zavala Group - Visitor Mexico): "Optimal Control on Latent Spaces"

19. Nathaniel Massa (Paulson Group): “Unlocking Surrogate Linearization: Tractable Global Optimization of Nonlinear Systems via Sparse ReLU Neural Network Surrogates"

20. Ugo Ikegwu (Zavala Group): "Navigating Large Chemical Spaces using Graph Theory and Integer Programming"