2026 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference National Harbor, MD, USA

Events

Marion Technical Writer February 17, 2026

Hexaly is delighted to be the sponsor of the 2026 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference. The event will take place at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, located in National Harbor, MD, USA, from April 12 to 14, 2026. The INFORMS Analytics+ Conference program is available for access here.

Meet Fred Gardi, founder & CEO of Hexaly, and discover the new release, Hexaly 14.5, and its dramatic performance improvements for solving Routing, Scheduling, Packing, and also Nonlinear and Black-Box Optimization problems.

Below are the abstracts for Fred’s talks at the 2026 INFORMS Analytics+ conference:

Hexaly, Hybrid Optimization Solver, by Fred Gardi, Founder & CEO

Hexaly is a new type of global optimization solver. Its modeling interface, accessible in Python, Java, C#, and C++, is hybrid, unifying concepts from mixed-integer programming, nonlinear programming, constraint programming, and black-box optimization. As a result, it is nonlinear, set-oriented, and supports user-coded functions, enabling seamless integration of simulation with optimization or machine learning with optimization. Under the hood, Hexaly combines exact and heuristic optimization methods: spatial branch-and-bound, simplex methods, interior-point methods, constraint propagation, automatic branch-cut-price, local search, surrogate modeling, among others.

Hexaly stands out from traditional solvers by delivering super-fast solutions to discrete optimization problems such as routing, scheduling, sequencing, packing, picking, clustering, matching, assignment, balancing, and location problems. For example, Hexaly provides solutions close to the best-known results in the literature for vehicle routing problems with thousands of points and job shop scheduling problems with millions of tasks, in just 1 minute of runtime on a basic laptop.

In addition to the Optimizer, Hexaly offers an innovative platform called Hexaly Studio, designed to prototype, develop, and deploy optimization applications quickly in a low-code fashion. This web-based platform is also well-suited for educational purposes; like all other Hexaly products, it is free for faculty and students.

Nonlinear Programming with Hexaly, by Fred Gardi, Founder & CEO

Hexaly 14.5 is a hybrid optimization solver that combines exact and heuristic methods in a model-and-run framework. This work presents its approaches for continuous nonlinear problems min f(x) s.t. g_i(x) ≤ 0, h_j(x) = 0, bounds on x, with analytical functions modeled via an expression graph. New features in 14.5 version include: automatic structure detection and convexity classification by propagating properties through the graph to select suitable algorithms; a modular interior-point solver offering predictor-corrector, trust-region, and filter methods (chosen dynamically, with parallel multi-solve runs), falling back to derivative-free search or augmented Lagrangian when Hessians are unavailable; and an exact MINLP solver that uses model reformulation, RLT cuts, branch-and-reduce for tight bounds, and subproblem solves for primal solutions. In 60-second benchmarks, Hexaly 14.5 finds more feasible solutions and proves optimality more often than SCIP 9.2 and Ipopt 3.14 on convex QP portfolio instances, nonconvex QCQP pooling, and CUTEst nonlinear problems.Building an optimal 11-player squad in a popular football video game is a highly combinatorial challenge. It requires satisfying multiple complex constraints including nationality, chemistry, formation, and overall rating, while minimizing the total cost, all within a few seconds.

Hexaly is also the presenting sponsor of the 2026 Edelman Gala, taking place on Monday, April 13, 7-10 PM. This prestigious evening celebrates the world’s most impactful applications of advanced analytics and operations research and includes the announcement of the Franz Edelman Award.

We look forward to connecting with the American Operations Research community at the 2026 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference in National Harbor, MD.

If you’d like to discover the latest news from Hexaly at INFORMS, don’t miss Fred Gardi’s interview with Kara Tucker, editor of OR/MS Today:

Feel free to explore our upcoming conferences, events, and webinars.