ORB Issue 12, December 2003

POP will launch Pacific Journal of Optimization (PJO). -------------- Masao Fukushima

POP will launch its official publication called Pacific Journal of Optimization (PJO). The first issue of the journal will be published in January 2005. PJO will contain original articles that deal with theory, algorithms, software, and applications of optimization. Liqun Qi, Alex Rubinov, Yinyu Ye and I will serve as Editors-in-Chief of the journal, in collaboration with 26 editorial board members. Detailed information containing the editorial board, instructions for authors and the method of subscription can be found in

http://www.ybook.co.jp/pjo.html

We look forward to contributions from the POP members.

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Personal interview with Jong-Shi Pang---------------- Danny Ralph

**********************************
Interviewee: Jong-Shi Pang
Interviewer: Danny Ralph
Interview Date: December 2003
**********************************

To view this interview see here as a Word file.

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Seven POP Members Have Been Named Most Highly Cited Mathematicians in 1981-1999 --------------------------- Yuzhong Zhang

Seven POP Members,

• Jonathan M. Borwein,
• Jong-Shi Pang,
• Liqun Qi,
• Masakazu Kojima,
• R. Tyrell Rockafellar,
• Roger J.B. Wets
• Yinyu Ye

have recently been named most highly cited mathematicians during the period of 1981 to 1999, according to the authoritative citation database ISIHighlyCited.com.

The ISIHighlyCited.com is a latest feature prepared by ISI Web of Knowledge. With an aim of identifying individuals that have made fundamental contributions to the advancement of science and technology in the past two decades, the ISIHighlyCited.com recognizes top-notch scientists around the world and put them into 21 subject categories, ranging from molecular biology and genetics to space sciences. Each subject category will include no more than 250 researchers who have demonstrated great influence in their field as measured by the number of citations to their work.

Until now, a total of 234 researchers are listed in mathematics.

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Complete Search in Continuous Global Optimization and Constraint Satisfaction---------------- A. Neumaier.

Abstract.

This survey covers the state of the art of techniques for solving general purpose constrained global optimization problems and continuous constraint satisfaction problems, with emphasis on complete techniques that probably find all solutions (if there are finitely many).

The core of the material is presented in sufficient detail that the survey may serve as a text for teaching constrained global optimization.

After giving motivations for and important examples of applications of global optimization, a precise problem definition is given, and a general form of the traditional first order necessary conditions for a solution. Then more than a dozen software packages for complete global search are described.

A quick review of incomplete methods for bound constrained problems and recipes for their use in the constrained case follows, an explicit example is discussed, introducing the main techniques used within branch and bound techniques. Sections on interval arithmetic, constrained propagation and local optimization are followed by a discussion of how to avoid the cluster problem. Then a discussion of important problem transformations follows, in particular of linear, convex, and semilinear (= mixed integer linear) relaxations that are important for handling larger problems.

Next, reliability issues - centering around rounding error handling and testing methodology - are discussed, and the COCONUT framework for the integration of the different techniques is introduced. A list of challenges facing the field in the near future concludes the survey.

The paper can be found here:

http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/papers.html#glopt03 [Note: ~ is a tilde]

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Information on highly discounted individual subscription of the journal "Optimization Methods and Software" ---------------------------- O. Burdakov and A. Griewank

Dear Colleague,

We would like to inform you that Taylor & Francis, the new publisher of the journal "Optimization Methods and Software" (OMS), is now offering individual electronic subscriptions of OMS at an annual price of 100 Dollars.

For details see the leaflet:

This price refers to all individual subscribers, not only to the AMS or SIAM members as mentioned in the leaflet. Online sample copy is available on the journal home page:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10556788.html

Oleg Burdakov and Andreas Griewank,
Co-Editors of OMS

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Information on SIGOPT/Opt-Net.----------------- Hubertus Th. Jongen, Ruediger Schultz

Dear members of POP:

We would like to draw your attention to SIGOPT. SIGOPT (= Special Interest Group in Optimization) was founded in 1993 in Berlin.

Like POP it serves as a forum for discussing recent and future developments in a broad variety of disciplines associated with optimization, and it actively supports interdisciplinary research and applications to industry. The electronic forum Opt-Net facilitates communication among members and it provides a weekly electronic digest.

In order to join SIGOPT/Opt-Net, you may visit the "Call for Membership"-site:

http://optnet.itwm.fhg.de/sigopt/call.html

Looking forward to welcome you as a new member, we remain,

with best regards,

Hubertus Th. Jongen (former chairman of SIGOPT)

Ruediger Schultz (chairman of SIGOPT)

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Optimization in India -- The Current Scenario ----------------- J.Dutta

In the last article we discussed about the growth of Optimization and Operation Research in India. In this article we are going to concentrate on the current scenario regarding the practice of optimization in India.

The main center for theoretical optimization in India is in Delhi where researchers in various colleges under Delhi University and also the University teachers themselves have formed a group called the Mathematical Programming Group. Their main research is however centered on duality theory of the Wolfe and Mond-Wier type. The Mathematical Programming Group, Delhi has been organizing a seminar on Optimization Theory, every Wednesday for the last 30 years. This is one of the main hallmarks of the group and it appears that such a characteristic is absent in any other mathematical research group in India. However it seems that the most group members are not aligning themselves to the modern developments in Optimization theory though some of the researchers are very dedicated and working on important areas. Dr. A. Mehra of the Delhi group has recently joined the the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

The Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi is also one of the important centers for optimization theory in India. Though the Indian Statistical Institute has a separate division called SQC and OR but most people in that division are in fact doing industrial consultancy and thus spend very less time in fundamental research. However Professor S. R. Mohan of the SQC and OR Unit along with Professor T. Parthasarathy of the Mathematics and Statistics Unit and Professor S. K. Neogy of the SQC and OR Unit have made fundamental contributions in the area of linear complementarity problems and game theory.

Moving more eastward the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur is also an important center for optimization theory and application. Research in optimization theory in IIT Kanpur is mainly carried out in the mathematics department. Dr. Joydeep Dutta works in the area of Abstract Convexity and Nonsmooth Optimization and Dr. P. Shunmugharaj works in the area of abstract optimization and approximation theory and their relations with the geometry of Banach spaces. Professor P. Sharma works in the area of scheduling and heuristics. Professor A. Mittal in the Industrial Engineering department also actively works in the area of operational research and network optimization. In the department of mechanical engineering Professor Kalyanmoy Deb is one of the leading international authority on the application of Genetic Algorithm to solve mathematical programming problems with special emphasis on vector optimization. He has established a Genetic Alorithm lab at IIT Kanpur called KANGAL--Kanpur Genetic Algorithm lab. Starting from Jaunary 2004 a joint course has been floated by Professor Deb and Dr. J. Dutta titled -- Multiobjective Optimization-- Theory, Methods and Application. Professor Deb will teach the applications while Dr. Dutta will teach the theory. This is the first ever course solely on vector optimization in India. A separate article on Professor Deb and his work will also appear in ORB. However there are many other researchers in various engineering streams who are applying optimization theory to their work.

N. Karmarkar of the Karmarkar algorithm fame is now back in India and has been heading a one-man center at the Pune campus of the Tata Institute of Fundamental research. However nothing is known about his present work.

There is also a group in IIT Bombay who are working in collaboration with Professor G. Mitra of Brunel University in U. K. in the area of application of optimization to risk modelling. Though the number of researchers in optimization in Indian is pretty less compared to many other Asian countries but still one can remain optimistic about the future of optimization on India. The APORS 2003 conference is a pointer in the direction.

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New book: "Generalized Semi-Infinite Optimization and Related Topics" by G. W. Weber-------- N. Heldermann

The author is concerned with a very general class of nonlinear programming problems, which became of increasing interest in the last years. He motivates his interest in these so-called generalized semi-infinite optimization problems, studies basic properties and unfolds iterative concepts for approximatively solving them.

The book appeared in the book series "Research and Exposition in Mathematics" as Volume 29. You find a detailed description of the book at http://www.heldermann.de/R&E/raecont.htm#vol29

(386 p., soft cover, ISBN 3-88538-229-6, EUR 40.00, shipment inclusive). You may order this book by email heldermann@gmx.net or fax: +49-5261-15264.

For extend abstract see here

Table of contents see here

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New book: Lagrange-type functions in constrained non-convex optimization by Alex Rubinov and Xiaoqi Yang

The book is published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Book Series "Applied Optimization" No 85

http://www.wkap.nl/prod/b/1-4020-7627-4

Abstract.

This volume provides a systematic examination of Lagrange-type functions and augmented Lagrangians. Weak duality, zero duality gap property and the existence of an exact penalty parameter are examined. Weak duality allows one to estimate a global minimum. The zero duality gap property allows one to reduce the constrained optimization problem to a sequence of unconstrained problems, and the existence of an exact penalty parameter allows one to solve only one unconstrained problem.

By applying Lagrange-type functions, the zero duality gap property for nonconvex constrained optimization problems is established under a coercive condition. It is shown that the zero duality gap property is equivalent to the lower semi-continuity of the perturbation function.

In particular, for a type of kth power penalty functions, this book obtains an analytic expression of the least exact penalty parameter and establishes that a fairly small exact penalty parameter can be achieved. As shown by numerical experiments, this property is very important for some global methods of Lipschitz programming, otherwise ill conditioning may occur.

Audience:

The book is suitable for researchers in mathematical programming and optimization and postgraduate students in applied mathematics.

For the Preface of this book see here.

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CALL for PAPERS by YOUNG RESEARCHERS in CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION--------------------------------John E. Mitchell

Inaugural Mathematical Programming Society INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION (ICCOPT) I held on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, U.S.A., August 2-4, 2004

http://www.math.rpi.edu/iccopt/

Submissions are invited for a special session at ICCOPT I dedicated to papers authored by young researchers.

The submitted papers should be in the area of continuous optimization that satisfies one of the following three criteria:

• a) passed the first round of normal refereeing process in an open journal;
• b) published in the year of 2002 or after (including forthcoming);
• c) certified by a thesis advisor or postdoctoral mentor as a well-polished paper that is ready for submission to an open journal.

Papers can be single-authored or multi-authored, subject to the following criterion:

d) Each paper must have at least one principal author who was under age 30 on January 1st 2000 and has not earned a Ph.D before that date. In case of joint authorship involving senior researchers (i.e., those who fail both the age test and the Ph.D. test), one senior author must certify the pivotal role and the principal contribution of the qualifying author in the work. The Selection Committee will decide on questions on eligibility in exceptional cases.

The selection criteria will be based solely on the quality of the paper that includes originality of results and their potential impact.

• The following items are required for submission:
• A) the paper for consideration;
• B) a brief description of the contribution (limited to 2 pages)
• C) a statement about the status of the paper: not submitted, under review, accepted, or published (when) in a journal;
• D) a certification of the principal author's eligibility in terms of age and Ph.D. (by the first author's advisor or department chair);
• E) in case of joint authorship involving a senior researcher, a certification by the latter individual about the qualifying author's pivotal role and principal contribution.

The deadline for submission is April 5, 2004. Submission should be sent electronically in Adobe Acrobat pdf format, to the Chair of the Selection Committee, Professor Adrian S. Lewis,

email address: aslewis@cecm.sfu.ca.

Up to 4 papers will be selected; the selected papers will befeatured in a dedicated session in ICCOPT I; travel expenses of the first authors of the selected papers will be partially paid for by the Conference. If a selected paper has not been published nor submitted for publication, the author(s) will be invited to submit the paper for publication in the special Mathematical Programming, Series B issue of ICCOPT papers, which will be subject to the usual review of a Mathematical Programming paper.

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OCA 2004 -------------------------------------------- Xinmin Yang

OCA 2004 --- The Third International Conference on Optimization and Control with Applications, will be held in Chongqing-Chengdu-Jiuzhaigou, Chongqing City and Sichuan Province, China, during July 25-31, 2004.

More than 30 researchers in optimization and control have accepted invitation to participate in OCA 2004 as invited speakers.

The website of OCA 2004 is

http://www.polyu.edu.hk/~ama/events/conference/OCA2003/an1.html

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The 6th International conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications--------------------- Alex Rubinov

The ICOTA6 will be held in Ballarat, Australia, on December 9-11, 2004. The first announcement for ICOTA 6 can be found in

http://www.ballarat.edu.au/icota

The refereed Procedings of the conference will be published.

Submission deadline is June 15. THe extended versions of selected papers will be published is special issues of some international journals.

The list of invited speakers currently include

• Prof. H-F Chen,
• Prof. V.F. Demyanov,
• Prof. J-S. Pang,
• Prof. T. Rockafellar,
• Prof. M. Thera.

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12th French-German-Spanish Conference on Optimization------- A. Sieger

PLACE: Avignon, France

DATE: September 20-24, 2004

GENERAL PRESENTATION: The French-German-Spanish Conference on Optimization in 2004 is organized by the "Group of Nonlinear Analysis and Optimization" of the University of Avignon. It will be held in Avignon, France, in September 2004. This Conference is the 12th of the series of French-German meetings which started in Oberwolfach in 1980 and was continued in Confolant (1981), Luminy (1984), Irsee (1986), Varetz (1988), Lambrecht (1991), Dijon (1994), Trier (1996), Namur (1998), Montpellier (2000), and Cottbus (2002). Since 1998, the conference has been organized under the participation of a third European country. In 2004, the guest country will be Spain. The conference will in particular promote the contacts between researchers of the three involved countries and provide a forum for sharing recent results in theory and applications of optimization. However, scientists from other countries are also encouraged to participate.

TOPICS: Smooth and nonsmooth continuous optimization problems, numerical methods for mathematical programming, optimal control and calculus of variations, differential inclusions and set-valued analysis, stochastic optimization, multicriteria optimization,game theory and equilibrium concepts, optimization models in finance and mathematical economics, optimization techniques for industrial applications. Contributions on other issues related to optimization are also welcome.

PLENARY SPEAKERS: A.Ben-Tal (Israel), E.Carrizosa (Spain), E.Casas (Spain), Lachand-Robert (France), J-B.Lasserre (France), Y.Nesterov (Belgium), U.Rieder (Germany), R.Tichatschke (Germany), S.Tijs (The Netherlands), F.Troeltzsch (Germany), E.Zuazua (Spain)

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE: F. Bonnans (France), J.-B. Hiriart-Urruty (France), F. Jarre (Germany), M. Lopez (Spain), J.E. Martinez-Legaz (Spain), H. Maurer (Germany), S. Pickenhain (Germany), A. Seeger (France), M. Thera (France)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Contributions are solicited for presentation at the conference. Each accepted paper will be allotted a 30-minute talk (including discussion). The conference language is English. Besides the title of the proposed contribution, a short abstract (of at most 200 words) is also required. Deadline to propose a contribution is March 25 , 2004. Acceptance or refusal notice to authors will be given by April 1, 2004.

WEB SITE: http://www.fgs2004.univ-avignon.fr

CONTACT: Professor A. Seeger (alberto.seeger@univ-avignon.fr)

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Conference on "Data Mining Technologies in Biomedicine"-----------P. Pardalos

Conference on "Data Mining Techniques in Biomedicine"
February 16-18, 2004
University of Florida, Gainesville FL 32611

http://www.ise.ufl.edu/cao/biomedicine/

In recent years, experimental methods in biomedicine have resulted in massive amounts of data. The urgent need for efficient methods of processing and understanding this data has resulted in the rapid development of a new exciting interdisciplinary research area - applying data mining techniques to the analysis of datasets arising in biomedical applications. Application areas include genome studies, cardiology, cancer diagnosis, neurology, etc.

Among the examples of considered datasets one can mention genome sequences, gene expression data, protein structural data, protein-protein interaction data, protein-DNA interaction data, as well as radiological data, and EEG data.

Data mining techniques play a crucial role in analyzing and integrating these large datasets, as well as in discovering the biological processes underlying these data.

The purpose of this conference is to bring together theoreticians and practitioners representing different fields - biomedicine, engineering, computer science - in attempt to share knowledge, ideas, and techniques.

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Workshop " Large Scale Nonlinear Optimization"" ------------ F. Giannessi and G. Di Pillo

Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture

International School of Mathematics "G. Stampacchia"

40th Workshop

LARGE SCALE NONLINEAR OPTIMIZATION

June 22 - July 1, 2004

Erice, Italy

OBJECTIVES

The Workshop aims to review and discuss recent advances in the development of methods and algorithms for Nonlinear Optimization and its Applications, with a main interest in the large dimensional case, the current forefront of the research effort.

TOPICS

Topics include, but are not limited to,

• constrained and unconstrained optimization,
• large scale optimization,
• global optimization,
• derivative-free methods,
• interior point techniques for nonlinear programming,
• linear and nonlinear complementarity problems,
• variational inequalities,
• nonsmooth optimization,
• neural networks and optimization,
• applications of nonlinear optimization.

LECTURES

The workshop will consist of invited lectures and contributed lectures. Invited lecturers who have confirmed the participation are:

• D.P. Bertsekas, MIT, Boston, USA
• F. Bonnans, INRIA, Paris, France
• O. Burdakov, Link(A”ping University, Sweden
• Y. Evtushenko, Computing Center of the Academy of Science, Moskow, Russia
• F. Facchinei, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy
• J. Gondzio, University of Edinburgh, UK
• N. Gould, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, UK
• A. Griewank, Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany
• L. Grippo, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy
• S. Leyffer, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
• L. Luksan, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, Praha
• J. More', Argonne National Laboratory, USA
• J. Nocedal, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
• J.S. Pang, The Johns Hopkins Univesrity, Baltimore, USA
• P. Pardalos, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
• M.J.D. Powell, University of Cambridge, UK
• L. Qi, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
• E.W. Sachs, University of Triers, Germany
• S. Scholtes, University of Cambridge, UK
• J.P. Vial, University of Geneva, Switzerland
• H. Wolkowicz, University of Waterloo, Canada
• M.H. Wright, Courant Institute, New York University, USA
• J. Zhang, City University of Hong Kong, China.

PROCEEDINGS

An agreement with Kluwer Academic Publishers is pending to publish Proceedings of the Workshop including the invited lectures and a selection of contributed talks.

LOCATION

The workshop will be held in Erice, Sicily, Italy at the "E. Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture. The Centre is located in the pre-mediaeval city of Erice and the lecture halls are located in two restored monasteries and the ancient Palazzo Ventimiglia - former residence of Viceroys of Sicily.

PARTICIPATION

Persons wishing to attend the Workshop should apply sending by e-mail the application form available at the URL reported below, before April 30, 2004. If they wish to contribute a lecture (30 min.), they should also include title and abstract of the proposed lecture.

Further information can be found at the URL:

http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~erice2004

or requested to the e-mail address:

erice2004@dis.uniroma1.it

Franco Giannessi, Director of the School

Gianni Di Pillo, Director of the Workshop

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Computational Management Science Conference and Workshop on Computational Econometrics and Statistics -----------------P. Pardalos

Computational Management Science Conference and Workshop on Computational Econometrics and Statistics will be held on 2-5 April 2004 in Neuchatel, Switzerland.

http://www.unine.ch/iiun/matrix/seminars/CMS04/index.html

Organized in co-operation with the Society for Computational Economics.

Main sponsor: Citigroup

The Conference will cover all computational aspects of management science. It aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners to discuss recent developments in computational methods, models and empirical analysis for decision making in economics, finance, management, and related aspects of engineering. This is intended to include areas such as data mining, management science/operations research, econometrics, statistics, computer science, numerical methods, engineering decision and design problems such as control systems, process systems, power systems and energy production.

Papers are solicited that deal significantly with computational aspects of such topics as: linear and nonlinear systems, econometrics, statistics, stochastic control, automatic differentiation, nonlinear model solution methods, mathematical programming algorithms, variational inequality and other algorithms for computing equilibria, algorithmic models of decision making including genetic algorithms, auction modeling, neural networks, artificial intelligence, computability and complexity theory, parallel and supercomputing, qualitative reasoning and models including qualitative simulation.

The organization of sessions and minisymposia are encouraged.

Two days of tutorials will take place during the meeting.

• Computational Econometrics and Statistics
  
• High Performance Computing and Decision-Making

Publication

Special Issues will publish selected papers presented at the conference following a standard peer review procedure:

• Peer review papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of the journal Computational Management Science http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/10287/
• Papers containing a strong computational statistics component will be considered for publication in the journal Computational Statistics & Data Analysis (http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/csda).

Co-Chairs: E.J. Kontoghiorghes, G. Barone-Adesi, D. Belsley, M. Gilli, B. Rustem and P. Pardalos.

International Program Committee:

H. Amman (NL), M. Binder (GE), M. Broadie (USA), C. Charalambous (CY), C. Chiarella (AU), N. Christofides (UK), R. Coppi (IT), E.B. Dagum (IT), C. Deissenberg (FR), I. Demetriou (GR), M. Dempster (UK), G. Dickinson (UK), J. Doornik (UK), M: Dubois (CH), L.F. Escudero (SP), S.-C. Fang (USA), P. Foschi (IT), E. Gelenbe (USA), J. Gondzio (UK), M. Grauer (GE), N. Gulpinar (UK), M. Juillard (FR), M. La Rocca (IT), L. Lasdon (USA), S. Leyffer (USA), A. Luati (IT), A. Marazzi (CH), I. Maros (UK), J. Mayer (CH), B. Mirkin (UK), J.M. Mulvey (USA), A. Nagurney (USA), R. Neck (AT), D.S.G. Pollock (UK), S. Sayan (TR), S. Scholtes (UK), R. Siciliano (IT), S. Siokos (UK), G. Toraldo (IT), H.P. Williams(UK), V. Wieland (GE), P. Winker (GE), E. Xekalaki (GR), M. Zarin (CH), S. Zenios (CY).

Local organizing committee:
E.J. Kontoghiorghes, C. Gatu, M. Hofmann and P. Yanev (CH), C. Christodoulou (UK), S. Martzoukos (CY).

Important dates:

Submission of 1-page abstracts: 20 February 2004
Notification of acceptance: 27 February 2004
Tutorials: 2-3 April 2004
Conference: 3-5 April 2004
Submission of full papers: 30 June 2004
Notification of decision: 30 August 2004
Final papers: 30 October 2004

Single page plain text abstracts should be sent before the deadline by email to the workshop secretariat (group.matrix@unine.ch).

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EUROPT Workshop on Advances in Continuous Optimization ----------- G.W. Weber

To view this paper see here.

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Inaugural International Conference on Continuous Optimization --------------------------------John E. Mitchell

Inaugural Mathematical Programming Society INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION (ICCOPT) I held on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, U.S.A., August 2-4, 2004

http://www.math.rpi.edu/iccopt/

Submissions are invited for a special session at ICCOPT I dedicated to papers authored by young researchers.

The submitted papers should be in the area of continuous optimization that satisfies one of the following three criteria:

• a) passed the first round of normal refereeing process in an open journal;
• b) published in the year of 2002 or after (including forthcoming);
• c) certified by a thesis advisor or postdoctoral mentor as a well-polished paper that is ready for submission to an open journal.

Papers can be single-authored or multi-authored, subject to the following criterion:

d) Each paper must have at least one principal author who was under age 30 on January 1st 2000 and has not earned a Ph.D before that date. In case of joint authorship involving senior researchers (i.e., those who fail both the age test and the Ph.D. test), one senior author must certify the pivotal role and the principal contribution of the qualifying author in the work. The Selection Committee will decide on questions on eligibility in exceptional cases.

The selection criteria will be based solely on the quality of the paper that includes originality of results and their potential impact.

• The following items are required for submission:
• A) the paper for consideration;
• B) a brief description of the contribution (limited to 2 pages)
• C) a statement about the status of the paper: not submitted, under review, accepted, or published (when) in a journal;
• D) a certification of the principal author's eligibility in terms of age and Ph.D. (by the first author's advisor or department chair);
• E) in case of joint authorship involving a senior researcher, a certification by the latter individual about the qualifying author's pivotal role and principal contribution.

The deadline for submission is April 5, 2004. Submission should be sent electronically in Adobe Acrobat pdf format, to the Chair of the Selection Committee, Professor Adrian S. Lewis,

email address: aslewis@cecm.sfu.ca.

Up to 4 papers will be selected; the selected papers will befeatured in a dedicated session in ICCOPT I; travel expenses of the first authors of the selected papers will be partially paid for by the Conference. If a selected paper has not been published nor submitted for publication, the author(s) will be invited to submit the paper for publication in the special Mathematical Programming, Series B issue of ICCOPT papers, which will be subject to the usual review of a Mathematical Programming paper.

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APORS 2003- A Brief Report---------------------Joydeep Dutta

To view the article click here

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International Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization ---- Wenyu Sun

The International Conference on Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization was held in Guilin, China during October 7--10, 2003. The conference is chaired by Professor Ya-xiang Yuan, Director of Institute of Computational Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Science. There are about eighty participants attending the meeting. The participants exchanged their recent research results in numerical linear algebra and numerical optimization. Professors M.J.D.Powell, Liqun Qi, M.Raydan, E.W.Sachs, Jianzhong Zhang, T.Terlaky et al participated in the meeting and gave talks. The main plenary and invited talks are as follows:

• M.J.D.Powell, University of Cambridge, On the stability of least Frobenius norm updating of quadratic models;
• Liqun Qi, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Supersymmetric tensors and their applications in multivariate polynomial optimization and systems;
• M.Raydan, Central University of Venezuela, Low-cost methods for nonlinear large-scale matrix equations;
• E.W.Sachs, University of Trier, Germany and Virginia Tech, USA, Preconditioning in optimal control problems;
• T.Terlaky, McMaster University, Implementing self-regular proximity based IPMs for linear and second order cone optimization;
• Jianzhong Zhang, City University of Hong Kong, Value functions and error bounds for a trust region model;
• S.L.Zhang, The University of Tokyo, The Bi-CR method for solving large nonsymmetric linear systems;
• Bingsheng He, Nanjing University, Study on some approximate proximal point algorithms for monotone variational inequalities;
• Xingsi Li, Dalian University of Technology, Penalty function vs Lagrangian relaxations;
• Qin Ni, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Trust region problem of conic model;
• Wenyu Sun, Nanjing Normal University, Nonmonotone optimization methods: motivation and development;
• Chuanlong Wang, Taiyuan Teachers' Colleage, Necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for non-decomposable two-stage min-max optimization;
• Zhenxing Wei, Guanxi University, Recent progress in unconstrained nonlinear optimization;
• Naihua Xiu, Northern Jiaotong University, Lagrangian duality and related methods for generalized Nash equilibrium;
• Shufang Xu, Peking University, Pole assignment in discriptor periodic systems;
• Lian-sheng Zhang, Shanghai University, The simple smooth exact multiplier penalty function;
• Zhengyue Zhang, Zhejiang University, Principal manifolds and nonlinear dimension reduction via tangent space alignment;

All participants took a tour on beautiful Li river.

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The 7th China National Conference ------ Wenyu Sun

The 7th China National Conference on Computational Mathematics (held once every four years) was held in Nanjing Normal University during October 19--23, 2003. Over four hundred scholars from all over the country took part in the meeting.

The conference was chaired by Professor Zhongci Shi, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The vice-governor of Jiangsu Province gave a warm speech to the delegates.

There were 12 plenary talks and over 280 contributed talks on numerical solutions of differential equations, numerical algebra, numerical optimization, numerical approximation, software and information. The conference distributed "The Fen Kang Prize on scientific computing" which is the top prize for computational mathematics in Chinese for indoviduals from all over the world, who are less than 45 years of age.

The two winners are

• Professor Tao Tang, the Institute of computational mathematics, Chinese Academy of Science; and Hong Kong Baptist University ;
• Professor Gang Bao, Dept of Mathematics, Michigan State University.

Some famous scientists also gave lectures to students of Nanjing Normal University.

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The Fourth International Conference on System Science and System Engineering --------------- G.Y.Chen and Wenyu Sun

The Fourth International Conference on System Science and System Engineering was held in Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Nov 25 --28, 2003. About 120 participants attended the meeting. The topic of the meeting is "Applications of System Engineering in Management". The plenary talks consist of four talks as follows:

• Z.T. Wang, Scale-free Network and Knowledge Management;
• Y. Nakamori, Complex Problem Solving in the Knowledge Grid;
• G.M.Brugha, A Framework for Understanding System Methodologies in Management;
• J.F.Gu, Meta-Synthesis System Modelling.

The conference was organized by the general chairs: J.F.Gu (China) and T.C.Edwin Cheng (Hong Kong, China) and co-chairs: G.Y.Chen (China) and J.Chen (China).

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Workshop on Continuous Optimization and Optimal Control with Applications in Melbourne-------- A.Rubinov

The workshop on Continuous Optimization and Optimal Control with Applications was held in Melbourne on December 15-16.

The absracts of keynote lectures and invited talks can be found here as a Word file.

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