Optimisation-Events

Last Updated on Tuesday, 09 March 2010 14:22

2nd LANCS Workshop on Discrete and Non-Linear Optimisation

This meeting will take place Wednesday 24th to Friday 26th March 2010, at the University of Southampton. The purpose of the workshop is to enable the discrete and non-linear optimisation communities to meet together and to share ideas.

There will be a single stream of talks, a poster session for doctoral students, and an open discussion on the future of the field.

Confirmed participants to date:

Prof Wolfgang Achtziger (Dortmund), Dr Iskander Aliev (Cardiff), Dr Claudia D'Ambrosio (Bologna), Fei Fang (Southampton), Prof Jörg Fliege (Southampton), Dr Laura Galli (Bologna), Dr Monia Giandomenico (L'Aquila), Prof Jacek Gondzio (Edinburgh), Pablo González (Edinburgh), Dr Konstantinos Kaparis (Southampton), Prof Michal Kočvara (Birmingham), Prof Adam Letchford (Lancaster), Claudia López Soto (Brunel), Jakub Mareček (Nottingham), Prof Gautam Mitra (Brunel), Dr Sándor Németh (Birmingham), Dr Andrew Parkes (Nottingham), Dr Houduo Qi (Southampton), Eggert Rose (Birmingham), Dr Jan Rückmann (Birmingham), Prof Cole Smith (Florida), Michalis Smyrnakis (Bristol), Prof Vitaly Strusevich (Greenwich), Dr Ralf Werner (Munich), Dr Huifu Xu (Southampton).

Provisional schedule:

Wednesday 24th March

13:15-15:15: Session I

• I. Aliev: Feasibility of integer knapsacks: a geometric approach
• W. Achtziger: Global optimization of truss topology with discrete bar areas
• S. Németh: Rapid heuristic projection on simplicial cones

15:15-15:45: Coffee break

15:45-17:45: Session II

• C. D'Ambrosio: A feasibility pump for non-convex MINLPs
• L. Galli: Zero-one quadratically-constrained quadratic programmes: relaxation versus reformulation
• V. Strusevich: The symmetric quadratic knapsack problem: relaxation, approximation and scheduling applications

Thursday 25th March

09:15-11:15: Session I

• K. Kaparis: Using eigenvectors to generate cutting planes for the max-cut problem
• M. Giandomenico: Cutting planes for the stable set problem by semidefinite programming
• J. Gondzio: Interior point methods can warmstart

11:15-12:15: poster session (+ coffee)

• P. González: A stochastic programming approach to minimization of power consumption in wireless telecommunication
• M. Smyrnakis: Sequentially updated probability collectives

12:15-13:30: Lunch

13:30-15:30: Session II

• M. Kočvara: Solving the sensor network localization problem by PENNON
• A. Letchford: Some convex sets associated with non-convex quadratic optimisation problems
• H. Qi: The nearest low-rank correlation matrix problem and max-cut

15:30-16:00: Coffee break

16:00-17:20: Session III

• J. Rückmann: Mathematical programs with complementarity constraints: critical point theory
• C. Smith: A mixed-integer nonlinear programming algorithm for insuring critical paths

Friday 26th March

09:15-11:15: Session I

• R. Werner: Generating conditional distributions via (integer?) linear programming
• H. Xu: Stochastic Nash equilibrium models
• G. Mitra: Optimisation models for decision making under uncertainty: their application to financial analytics

11:15-11:45: Coffee break

11:45-12:30: Open discussion [chaired by J. Fliege].

Practical information:

Attendees will have to pay their own travel and accommodation expenses.  We recommend that speakers stay at the Highfield House Hotel, which is close to the campus.  To make a booking, please telephone them on +44 (0)2380 554223 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , quoting "Lancs workshop". The room rate is £65 per night including breakfast and VAT. Rooms are being held until 14th March.

Convenient airports for people coming from abroad are Southampton and Gatwick.  There are good rail links from Gatwick airport and a regular bus service from Southampton airport. For maps and travel details, see here.

There is no conference fee, but there will be a small catering charge of £20 for the workshop.  Payment can be made by cheque or credit card.  Cheques should be made payable to "University of Southampton" and send to Yvonne Richardson, School of Mathematics, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ.  Credit card payments can be made by telephoning the Income Office on +44 (0)2380 594702.  Please cite subproject code 503527105 and account code 7410, and state that the tax code is "sales exempt". The office is open 9am - 4pm GMT.

For more information, contact the organizers: Jörg Fliege (Southampton), Adam Letchford (Lancaster).

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Seminar by George Nemhauser

Professor George Nemhauser (Georgia Tech) gave a seminar on "Scheduling on-demand air transportation" at Lancaster University Management School on 18th September 2009.

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Optimisation Stream at OR51

Adam Letchford organised a stream on optimisation at the 51st Operational Research Society conference, which took place 8th-10th September 2009 in Warwick.

See the OR51 web site for more information.

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Optimisation Session at EURO XXIII

Adam Letchford organised a session on "non-linear combinatorial optimisation problems" at the 23rd European Conference on Operational Research, which took place 5th-8th July 2009 in Bonn.

See the EURO XXIII web site for more information.

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Seminar by Sanjeeb Dash

Dr Sanjeeb Dash (IBM New York) gave a seminar on "Two applications of OR at IBM" at Lancaster University Management School on 22nd May 2009.

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1st LANCS Workshop on Discrete and Nonlinear Optimisation

Jörg Fliege and Adam Letchford organised this workshop, which was held on 19th-20th February 2009 in Southampton.  A pdf file of the proceedings can be found here.

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