| ---------------- | ORB Committee | |
| ---------------- | ORB Committee | |
| ---------------- | Wenyu Sun | |
| ---------------- | Liqun Qi | |
| ---------------- | Xinmin Yang | |
| ---------------- | Yuhong Dai | |
| ---------------- | Masao Fukushima | |
| ---------------- | Yuhong Dai | |
| ---------------- | Siegfried Schaible | |
| ---------------- | Liqun Qi | |
| ------------- | Xinmin Yang |
The Pacific Optimization Research Activity Group (POP) now has more than 200 members from 27 countries. Its webpage:
http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~ama/links/pop/an1.html
contains conference news and other links. It has endorsed four international conferences which will be held in the Pacific region. Some POP members suggest to establish an electronic newsletter for POP to strengthen the links among its members. We now launch the POP Newsletter - Optimization Research Bridge (ORB) and call for articles.
The ORB contents will include
*Research News: some research topic discussions, news about an optimization research group in an institution, a city, a country or a region, other optimization organizations, research questions, conjectures, special issue calls, special issue contents, conference news reports, positions (regular and visiting), new journals, etc.
*Member Opinions: POP members may raise their opinions, suggestions, comments, etc, to optimization activities in this region.
*Member personal academic career news: moving (permanent and temporary), awards, promotion, etc.
*Book Reviews: new books, book reviews, etc.
We hope that POP members support ORB and contribute short articles for ORB. They may submit their contributed articles to any of the ORB committee members. The ORB Committee now includes
Yuhong Dai (dyh@lsec.cc.ac.cn)
Andrew Eberhard (andrew.eberhard@ems.rmit.edu.au)
Masao Fukushima (fuku@amp.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp)
Liqun Qi (maqilq@polyu.edu.hk)
Siegfried Schaible (siegfried.schaible@ucr.edu)
Xinmin Yang - POP Member Short News
(xmyang@public.cta.cq.cn)
Akiko Yoshise - Book Review
(yoshise@shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp)
They may also submit the contributed articles to Eva Yiu, maevayiu@polyu.edu.hk. But please submit all book review articles to Prof. Akiko Yoshise, who is in charge of the book review section of ORB.
Instead of submitting articles, it is also welcome to submit very short (one or a few sentences) news of POP members, to Xinmin Yang to be included in the POP Member Short News article as the one in this issue.
ORB will announce its issue contents to all POP members in March, June, September and December. If a POP member finds the title of an ORB article is interesting, he or she can read that article on the ORB website:
http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~ama/links/orb/issue1.html
Book review requests or articles for ORB may be submitted to Professor Akiko Yoshise, yoshise@shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp.
The author(s) or editor(s) of a book of optimization or related with optimization may submit a book request to Prof. Yoshise. In that case, the author(s) or editor(s) of the book should recommend name(s) and e-mail address(es) of possible reviewer(s) to Prof. Yoshise. The author(s) or editor(s) of the book should also make sure that the book reviewer can access the book easily.
Otherwise, a POP member may submit a book review article to Prof. Yoshise for a book not authored or edited by him or her. The book reviewer can be the author of a paper or a chapter of that book.
In ORB issue 1, there is a new book article "New Book: Neural Networks in Optimization, by Xiang-Sun Zhang -------- Yuhong Dai". Other book reviews may follow this style. If it is just a description of a new book, it is "New Book: The title of the book, by the author(s) (editor(s)) ----------------- the reviewer". If it has some comments, it is "Book Review: The title of the book, by the author(s) (editor(s)) ----------------- the reviewer".
The Department of Computational Mathematics of Nanjing Normal University invites excellent applicants for several positions and visiting positions at associate professor or professor level in Optimization, Financial Mathematics and Computational Mathematics. Significant research accomplishment and evidence of excellent teaching ability are required. The salaries are competitive based on academic level and qualifications.
Please send a CV including publication list and three letters of recommendation sent to: Professor Wenyu Sun, Department of Computational Mathematics, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China.
Dr. Defeng Sun moved to Singapore recently. Defeng obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995. Then he went to School of Mathematics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, to join the Optimization group there. He has been a research associate. He was awarded an ARC (Australian Research Council) postdoctoral fellowship (1999-2001).
During this period he has written and published more than 20 research papers in international journals such as Mathematical Programming, SIAM Journal on Optimization, Mathematics of Computation, Numerische Mathematik, etc. His research work includes smoothing Newton methods, regularized methods, NCP functions and minimax problems. He has co-authored with Xiaojun Chen, Masao Fukushima, Jiye Han, Houyuan Jiang, Robert Mifflin, Lucien Polak, Liqun Qi, Rob Womersley and Guanglu Zhou. He is now joining the faculty of Department of Mathematics, National University of Singapore, as an assistant professor.
Professor Yinyu and his wife Daisun are visiting Hong Kong for about five months. Yinyu is the Henry B. Tippie Research Professor at Department of Management Sciences, The University of Iowa. His work in interior point algorithms is well-known in the optimization community in the world. He is visiting Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, as a visiting professor.
In the evening of February 16, Daisun and Yinyu held a party in their residence in Hong Kong, to host Hong Kong optimization and operations research people and their families. Optimization and Operations Research people and visitors in The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The City University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Baptist University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and their families, gathered in the residence of Daisun and Yinyu. Many of them are friends of Daisun and Yinyu for years. They include: Mao-Cheng Cai, Xiaoqiang Cai, Guangya Chen, Chuangyin Dang, Xiaotie Deng, Bingsheng He, Xuexiang Huang, Satoshi Ito, Duan Li, Jianpin Li, Shengjie Li, Lizhi Liao, Zeng-Hong Liu, Liqun Qi, Kok Lay Teo, Naihua Xiu, Houmin Yan, Xiaoqi Yang, Xinmin Yang, Wenci Yu, Jianzhong Zhang, Shuzhong Zhang, Yunbin Zhao, Guanglu Zhou and Xunyun Zhou, etc, and their families. Most of them are POP members.
Professor Jianzhong Zhang, Head of Department of Mathematics, The City University of Hong Kong, commented that several years ago there was almost only one optimization in Hong Kong, now the optimization community in Hong Kong grows fast. Starting from 1998, several large optimization conferences have been held in Hong Kong. These include the International Conference on Nonlinear Programming and Variational Inequalites (December, 1998), The International Workshop on Optimization with High Technology Applications (OHTA 2000) (October 2000), The First Sino-Japan Optimization Meeting (SJOM 2000) (October 2000), etc. In December this year, the Fifth International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA'2001) will also be held in Hong Kong. Optimization research groups are quite active in the above four universities. Yinyu's visit and the party in his residence quite reflect the growing strength of optimization activities in Hong Kong.
Daisun and Yinyu took photos in the party and put them on the webpage:
http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~yyye/OPT-Photos/
Friends in the world may take a look on these photos to share the fun.
The book consists of three parts. The first part introduces concepts and algorithms in optimization, which have been used in neural network research. The second part covers main neural network models and their theoretical analysis. The third part of the book introduces various neural network models for solving nonlinear programming problems and combinatorial optimization problems.
Contents : List of Figures. Preface. Part I : Concepts and Models of Optimization. 1. Preliminaries. 2. Introduction to Mathematical Programming. 3. Unconstrained Nonlinear Programming. 4. Constrained Nonlinear Programming. Part II : Basic Artificial Neural Network Models. 5. Introduction to Artificial Neural Network. 6. Feedforward Neural Networks. 7. Feedback Neural Networks. 8. Self-organized Neural Networks. Part III : Neural Algorithms for Optimization. 9. NN Models for Combinatorial Problems. 10. NN For Quadratic Programming Problems. 11. NN For General Nonlinear Programming. 12. NN For Linear Programming. 13. A Review on NN Continuous Optimization. References. Index.
Author address : Xiang-Sun Zhang, Academy of Mathematics
and Systems Sciences, Institute of Applied Mathematics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Email: zxs@amath8.amt.ac.cn
Kluwer Academic Publishers, October 2000, 384 pp.
Harbound, ISBN0-7923-6515-1, NLG300.00/USD 147.00/GBP
93.00
On December 9 - 14, 1998, sponsored by Liu Bie Ju Center for Mathematical Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, we organized the International Workshop "Nonsmooth and Smoothing Methods" at City University of Hong Kong. The workshop consisted of 9 sessions in which 18 invited participants from the world gave their talks. Topics discussed and reported in the workshop include nonsmooth methods, smoothing methods, regularization methods, continuation methods, constrained methods, merit functions, generalized complementarity problems and variational inequalities, mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints, and software. Based upon papers emitted from the workshop, we edited this peer reviewed special issue, which consists of 8 papers.
Among the eight papers, the four papers by Chen and Chen,
Hotta, Inaba and Yoshise, Li and Fukushima, and Qi and Liao
discuss convergence properties of smoothing methods for
complementarity problems and variational inequality
problems. Solodov and Tseng propose some methods for
monotone variatoinal inequality problems using the D-gap
function, Fischer and Jiang give a survey of merit functions
for complementarity problems. Tawhid and Gowda consider
applications of differentiable
functions in complementarity problems. Auslender and Correa
study stability of solution sets of variational inequality
problems with respect to data perturbations.
The table of Contents of the special issue is shown
below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Issue on Nonsmooth and Smoothing Methods,
Edited by Masao Fukushima and Liqun Qi,
Computational Optimization and Applications,
Vol. 17, Nos. 2/3, 2000
Table of Contents
Primal and dual stability results for variational
inequalities,
A. Auslender and R. Correa,
117--130
A Global linear and local quadratic continuation smoothing
method for variational inequalities with box constraints,
B. Chen and X. Chen,
131--158
Merit functions for complementarity and related problems:
A survey,
A. Fischer and H. Jiang,
159--182
A complexity analysis of a smoothing method using
CHKS-functions for monotone linear complementarity
problems,
K. Hotta, M. Inaba and A. Yoshise,
183--201
Smoothing Newton and quasi-Newton methods for mixed
complementarity problems,
D. Li and M. Fukushima,
203--230
A smoothing Newton method for general nonlinear
complementarity problems,
H.D. Qi and L.Z. Liao,
231--253
Some methods based on the D-gap function for solving
monotone variational inequalities,
M.V. Solodov and P. Tseng,
255--277
On two applications of $H$-differentiability to
optimization and complementarity problems,
M.A. Tawhid and M.S. Gowda,
279--299
The chairman of Mathematics Department at Iowa State University, the editor-in-chief of the journal "SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis", Prof. Max Gunzburger will visit School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, during March 11-24.
Prof. Gunzburger has done a great deal of work in the field of computational hydro mechanics, and his interests also in many other fields, such as optimization and control.
Prof. Gunzburger will give three talks during his stay at
Peking University, the detailed information is in the
following:
(1) Algorithms and analysis for flow control and
optimization problems (March 12, 2:00pm-4:00pm)
(2) Least-squares finite element methods (March 14,
2:00pm-4:00pm)
(3) Algorithms and applications for centroidal Voronoi
diagrams (March 16, 2:00pm-4:00pm)
Address : Room 1114, Science Building No. 1, Peking
University
Welcome to these Colloquiums!
On the POP webpage Prof. Alex Rubinov has established a link to various research groups, including the Working Group on Generalized Convexity (WGGC). It is with pleasure that I introduce WGGC to the readers of this newsletter. In Part II, I will say more about some recent WGGC-sponsored activities in the Asia/Pacific region. But please read on first.
WGGC was founded in 1994 during the 15th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is a growing, interdisciplinary group of researchers from mathematical programming, management science, economics, engineering, applied sciences, mathematics, stochastics, among others, with an interest in generalizations of the classical concept of convexity. More recently, generalizations of monotonicity have been studied as well, especially in the context of variational inequalities and equilibrium problems arising in various disciplines. The purpose of this kind of research is to extend the range of applicability of classical models to nonconvex and nonmonotone problems.
WGGC research activities build on earlier studies in various disciplines during the last fifty years. More traditional topics such as fractional programming as well as more recent topics like abstract convexity are all included. Contributions range from theoretical and algorithmic to computational and applied research.
WGGC seeks interaction with researchers working in neighboring areas; for instance stochastic programming, multiobjective programming, nonsmooth analysis, global optimization, variational inequalities and game theory.
WGGC holds triennial international symposia as well as regional workshops. Furthermore it is represented through session clusters at major international conferences including ISMP (1994, 1997, 2000). Proceedings of the international symposia Generalized Convexity 1 through 6 in Vancouver/Canada (1980), Canton (USA) (1986), Pisa/Italy (1988), Pecs/Hungary (1992), Luminy/France (1996) and Samos/Greece (1999) appeared with Academic Press, Analytic Publishing, Kluwer Academic Publishers and Springer Verlag (three times). In 1988 Plenum Press published the monograph "Generalized Concavity" co-authored by Avriel, M., Diewert, W.E., Schaible, S. and I. Zang. Generalized Convexity 7 is scheduled for August 2002 to take place in Hanoi/Vietnam, the first time in the Asia/Pacific region.
WGGC-sponsored activities are guided by its International
Scientific Committee. During the current term (2000-2003) it
consists of
Prof. J.E.Martinez-Legaz (Barcelona, Spain), Chair
Prof. S.Komlosi (Pecs, Hungary) Past Chair
(1997-2000)
Prof. S.Schaible (Riverside, California, USA), Past Chair
(1994-1997)
Prof. R.Cambini (Pisa,Italy) (web master)
Prof. J.P.Crouzeix (Clermont-Ferrand, France)
Prof. N.Hadjisavvas (Samos, Greece)
Prof. D.T.Luc (Hanoi, Vietnam).
WGGC has currently about 200 members in 30 countries. Its web page is located at URL http://genconv.ec.unipi.it/. Membership is free. Anyone interested in joining WGGC can do so on the web page or may otherwise contact Prof. J.E.Martinez-Legaz, Departament d'Economia i d'Historia Economica, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain (juanenrique.martinez@uab.es).
In this follow-up article I will show how in recent years WGGC has intensified its activities in the Asia/Pacific region. You will notice that already a good number of WGGC members have joined POP.
In 1996 WGGC organized its first major cluster in the Far East, namely in Guilin/China at ISORA'96, the Second International Symposium for Operations Research and its Applications. At that memorable conference I had the privilege of meeting some of the colleagues in the Far East who started POP last year. In 1998 Prof. Alex Rubinov organized a cluster on generalized convexity at the international conference on Nonlinear Programming and Variational Inequalities in Hong Kong.
In 2000 WGGC sponsored two clusters in the region with speakers from Asia, Australia, North America and Europe. The first one was part of APORS'00 in Singapore, the 5th international conference of the Asian-Pacific Operations Research Societies. The second one, co-chaired by Prof. Xiao Qi Yang and myself, was an integral part of SJOM'00 in Hong Kong, the First Sino-Japan Optimization Meeting. Here many of us heard first about POP.
In June 2001 WGGC will have a cluster at ICOOC'01 in Tainan, Taiwan, the International Conference on Optimization and Optimal Control. The cluster is co-chaired by Prof. Jen-Chi Yao and myself. Also several WGGC members will serve as plenary speakers. The conference is sponsored by POP. Links to this and other conferences which have WGGC clusters in 2001 and beyond can be found on the WGGC web page (see Part I).
In August 2002 WGGC will hold its next triennial international symposium Generalized Convexity 7. The Hanoi Institute of Mathematics in Hanoi, Vietnam has graciously agreed to host this major event. This will be the first international symposium in our research area outside North America and Europe where currently the majority of WGGC members reside.
Several researchers in generalized convexity/generalized monotonicity in different centers of the Asia/Pacific region will be available to provide information on Generalized Convexity 7 as its preparation progresses. For details please wait for the First Announcement of GC7 which all WGGC members will receive soon. Also look out for more news on this 5-day conference in future issues of the newsletter ORB.
Photos of OHTA 2000 and SJOM 2000 are available on their webpages. One may come to the webpage
http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~ama/even_frm.htm,
click "conferences" then the names of these two conferences and then "photo" to see these photos.
The editing and refreeing processes of the three special issues of these two conferences are going on smoothly.
The lecture notes of 32 speakers of OHTA 2000 have been edited as a book by Xiaoqi Yang, Liqun Qi and Kok Lay Teo. Each speaker will obtain a copy of that book. Other persons who are interested in obtaining a copy may send an e-mail to Dr. Xiaoqi Yang, mayangxq@polyu.edu.hk.
The next optimization conference in Hong Kong is the 5th International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA'2001), which will be held in Hong Kong during December 15-17, 2001. Its first announcement will be distributed soon.
The Second Japan-Sino Optimization Meeting (JSOM 2002) will be held in Kyoto, September 2002. It will be organized by Professors Fukushima and Kojima.
Last updated on 20 March 2001