Over the past 135 years, Atlanta has grown from a transportation hub to the capital of the new South to a major international city. It is the home of many Fortune 500 businesses including UPS, The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot Inc. and Delta Airlines, as well as media pioneer CNN. It is also the home of many important social and community-based programs. Atlanta is the city of our nation's most important civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Carter Center, committed to human rights, conflict resolution, democracy and health. It is also the location of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of people, and many charitable organizations including Hands On Atlanta and Habitat for Humanity.

Amidst these organizations with a social and community focus, the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2003 will be held Oct. 19-22. The theme of the program is OR/MS in the Community, and the goal is to introduce OR/MS professionals to this promising area by highlighting some of the current important problems and ongoing research efforts, as well as providing some direction for future critical research needs.

There will be a wealth of exciting events. Planned technical presentations include:

• The Omega Rho Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Judith Liebman, professor Emerita of the University of Illinois.
• A plenary presentation by Dr. Ed Kaplan, Yale University.
• The IFORS Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Jan Karel Lenstra, Georgia Institute of Technology.
• A reprise of the presentation by Canadian Pacific Railway, the winning team from the 2003 Edelman Prize competition.
• A tutorial by Dr. Fred Glover on "Surrogate Constraint Branching Methods."
• A tutorial by Edwin Romeijn on "Optimization for Intensity Modulation Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning."
• A tutorial by John Boudreau, Wallace Hopp, John O. McClain and L. Joseph Thomas on "The Human Dimension in Operations Management Models: Theory and Practice."
• New topics for invited clusters including sessions on OR/MS in the arts, health economics and public health.
• Invited clusters on auctions, new product development, data mining, financial engineering and optimization.
• Sponsored sessions organized by more than 20 subdivisions of INFORMS on topics ranging from applied probability to decision analysis to aviation application.
• A Conference-within-a-Conference: the 8th Annual INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST) with the theme of "IT: A Platform for Agility." Meeting attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in a variety of special events, including:
• The Sunday evening welcome reception in the exhibit hall — a great opportunity to meet your colleagues.
• The general reception on Monday evening at the World of Coca-Cola and nearby Georgia Freight Depot, one of the oldest buildings in downtown Atlanta. Sample different flavors of Coca-Cola and see the world's largest collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia.
• A special Academic-Practitioner Interface luncheon on Tuesday. Atlanta hospitality and mild October days will provide a prefect setting for the 2003 INFORMS Annual Meeting.