| POP Working Committee | |
| POP Board | |
| SJOM Steering Committee | |
| William Hager | |
| Drumi Bainov | |
| Xiaoqi Yang | |
| Hiroshi Konno | |
| Guoliang Xue | |
| David Gao | |
| Masaku Kojima, Sunyoung Kim and Hayato Waki | |
| Alfred Auslender | |
| Masao Fukushima | |
| Lou Caccetta | |
| Alex Rubinov | |
| Tamas Terlaky | |
| Alex Rubinov | |
| Leonid Churilov | |
| Gleb Beliakov | |
| Igor Konnov | |
| Vladimir Demyanov | |
| POP Working Committee | |
| Liqun Qi | |
| Chang Yu and Shuzhong Zhang | |
| Tang Guochun | |
| Chang Yu | |
| Lucien Polak | |
| Chang Yu |
The idea to establish POP was first discussed in a dinner meeting in ISMP 2000, Atlanta in August, 2000.
Masao Fukushima, Masakazu Kojima, Liqun Qi and Jie Sun attended that dinner meeting. They also represented Kok Lay Teo and Jianzhong Zhang, who had not been in ISMP 2000. Then, in October 2000, during OHTA 2000 (Oct. 23-25, 2000) and SJOM 2000 (Oct. 26-28, 2000), Fukushima, Kojima, Qi, Sun, Teo and Zhang formerly call to establish POP.
About 60-80 people who attended OHTA 2000 and SJOM 2000 joined POP. At the end of 2000, POP had already more than 150 members. POP also established its Board, Working Committee then. On March 20, 2001, the first issue of ORB, the POP Newsletter was issued. POP had more than 200 members from 27 countries. On June 20, 2001, the second issue of ORB appeared. POP had 223 members from 27 countries then. The number of POP members grows steadily. In February 2002, the POP Board had some discussions with the ICOTA (The International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications) Steering Committee and the SJOM (JSOM) (Sino-Japanese Optimization Meeting) Steering Committee separately. They agreed that these two conference series would be official conference series of POP. POP now has 401 members from 40 countries, with two official conference series (SJOM and ICOTA) and an electronic newsletter ORB, which is issued every three months. (The two last persons who joined POP recently are Song Wang (Australia) and Gleb Beliakov (Australia).) In 2001 and 2002, POP endorsed more than 20 international conferences in optimization held in this region or in other regions but organized by POP members. POP is now a driving force in optimization research in the Pacific region.Return to the Table of Contents
Professor Wenci Yu, a POP Board member, died in October. We are very sad for this news.
Professor Xiangsun Zhang, Executive Vice President of Academy of Mathematics & System Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, President of Chinese Operations Research Society, now joins the POP Board as a new board member.
The homepage address of Prof. Zhang is http://www.amt.ac.cn/faculty/zxs/zxs.html
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The Second Japanese Sino Optimization Meeting (JSOM 2002) was successfully held in Kyoto during September 25-27, 2002. During the meeting, the JSOM Steering Committee decided that the next SJOM will be held in Singapore in 2005. It will be called the Third Singaporean Sino Japanese Optimization Meeting (SSJOM 2005). Its organizer will be Professor Jie Sun in National University of Singapore.
After JSOM 2002, we heard the sad news: Professor Wenci Yu, a member of SJOM Steering Committee, died on October 7.
The Steering Committee now expands its team. We now have 24 members with five new members:
Bingsheng He (Nanjing University)
Lizhi Liao (Hong Kong Baptist University)
Tamaki Tanaka (Niigata University)
Shouyang Wang (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Akiko Yoshise (Tsukuba University)
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"COMPUTATIONAL OPTIMIZATION AND APPLICATIONS" (COAP), which published its first issue in October, 1992, has grown from 4 issues per year in 1992 up to 9 issues per year in 2002. The scope of the journal is broad, and includes theoretical and experimental analysis of algorithms, and discrete and continuous optimization. In recent years, COAP's journal impact factor has ranked it between the 3rd and 7th journal out of the 53 journals listed in the ISI Journal Citation Reports. This speaks highly both of the authors, who have used COAP as an outlet for their work, and of the editorial board members who have guided the journal through its initial decade.
COAP publishes both regular issue articles, and special issues. Regular issue articles, which comprise the majority of the papers published by COAP, should be sent to the following address:
Ms. Michelle MisnerTo initiate a special issue, please email your suggestion to William W. Hager (hager@math.ufl.edu). The most recent COAP special issue was a remarkable 6 issue volume organized by Jong-Shi Pang in tribute to Olvi Mangasarian's 40 years of research contributions. The next special issue, organized by Suvrajeet Sen and Julie Higle and due out in Spring, 2003, focuses on Stochastic Programming, an optimization area which provides many computational challenges. Shortly after this volume appears, COAP will publish Liqun Qi's special 3 issue volume in tribute to Lucien Polak on the occasion of his 72nd birthday.
COAP maintains a web site which provides access to some software connected with articles published in COAP:
This site also provides a web interface to some test problems, links to the software guide and benchmarks of Hans Mittelmann and Peter Spellucci, and a link to Kluwer's journal web page.
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Dear Colleagues, introducing a journal that may be of interest:
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Editor: Drumi BainovH. Adeli (USA)
J. Abadie (France)
I. K. Argyros (USA)
A. Auslender (France)
O. Axelsson (The Netherlands)
D. D. Bainov (Bulgaria)
A. J. Baker (USA)
M. J. Balas (USA)
H. T. Banks (USA)
V. Barbu (Romania)
P. W. Bates (USA)
J. Bona (USA)
R. Brooks (Israel)
G. Buttazzo (Italy)
F. Calogero (Italy)
J. R. Cash (UK)
C. Castaing (France)
E. W. Cheney (USA)
G. Cooperman (USA)
G. Da Prato (Italy)
C. Dafermos (USA)
G. Dantzig (USA)
F. Deutsch (USA)
E. DiBenedetto (USA)
A. B. Dishliev (Bulgaria)
I. S. Duff, (UK)
C. Elliott (UK)
D. J. Evans (UK)
R. Ewing (USA)
R. Finn (USA)
T. Fokas (UK)
R. Freund (USA)
W. Gautschi (USA)
B. Gavish (USA)
C. W. Gear (USA)
I. Gladwell (USA)
G. Glimm (USA)
R. Graham (USA)
B. Gramsch (Germany)
P. M. Gresho (USA)
C. W. Groetsch (USA)
C. Hess (France)
M. Iri (Japan)
M. Ito (Japan)
J. N. R. Jaffers (UK)
H. Kawarada (Japan)
N. Kenmochi (Japan)
D. Kolev (Bulgaria)
D. R. Larson (USA)
G. Leitmann (USA)
T. Li (R. China)
P. L. Lions (France)
M. Luskin (USA)
V. Milman (Israel)
C. Mitchell (UK)
B. Mordukhovich (USA)
K. Morgan (UK)
D. Motreanu (France)
Z. Nashed (USA)
S. I. Nenov (Bulgaria)
H. Niederreiter (Singapore)
G. Nürnberger (Germany)
J. E. Osborn (USA)
M. ôtani (Japan)
C. V. Pao (USA)
N. Pavel (USA)
G. F. Pinder (USA)
S. Reich (Israel)
M. Renardy (USA)
L. Rowen (Israel)
P. C. Sabatier (France)
M. Schechter (USA)
R. E. Showalter (USA)
C.-W. Shu (USA)
M. Shub (USA)
S. Suzuki (Japan)
E. Tadmor (USA)
A. Tani (Japan)
R. Thomas (USA)
K. K. Tomma (USA)
R. S. Varga (USA)
W. Vasconcelos (USA)
A.S. Vatsala (USA)
R. U. Verma (USA)
J. Vines (France)
T. L. Ward (USA)
R. Wets (USA)
O. Widlund (USA)
M. Yasugi (Japan)
L. A. Zadeh (USA)
J. Zou (Hong Kong)
Call for Papers
Authors are cordially invited to submit papers in triplicate to the Editor: Drumi Bainov.INSTRUCTION TO AUTHORS
First Author1, Second Author2
1First Author's address, COUNTRY
e-mail: authorl@mbox.pharmfac.acad.bg
2Second Author's address, COUNTRY
e-mail: author2@math.bas.bg
Abstract: The abstract must not exceed 200 words. Leave two
lines between the address(es) and abstract.
AMS Subj. Classification: 26A33
Key Words: operators for integration and differentiation of
fractional order
1. Introduction
The manuscript should be prepared only using LaTeX processing
system, basic font Roman 12pt size, and must remain legible
after small reduction. The papers should be in English and
typed in frames 12 * 20 cm (margins 4 cm on left and 5 cm on
top) on A4-format white paper. Do not type page numbers. Use
pencil to write page numbers on top right comers. On the
first page leave 3.5 cm space on the top for the journal's
headings, then type the title of the paper in capital letters
bold face, leave two lines and type the authors' names and
addresses, centered.
After the acceptance of the paper for publication, the
authors are obliged to submit the LaTeX -source file copied
on two 1.44 MB, DOS-formatted, 3.5"-diskettes.
Subscription Rate (4 issues):
Library/Inst: USD 120; personal: USD 60;
(Add US $ 20 for express mail). ISSN 1311-8080
Ordering Information
All payments are by bank cheques in favour of Drumi Bainov.
The bank cheques in USD must be sent to the following
address: Drumi Bainov, P.O.Box 45, Sofia 1504, Bulgaria.
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Personal interview --- Panos Pardalos
=============================
Interviewee: Panos Pardalos
Interviewer: Xiaoqi Yang
Date: November 2002
=============================
I have published over 170 papers in the field of optimization. In addition, I co-authored 7 books and edited over 50 books in optimization. Recently I co-edited the Handbook of Applied Optimization (Oxford University Press), the six-volume Encyclopedia of Optimization (published by Kluwer Academic Publishers) and the Handbook of Massive Datasets (Kluwer).
4. Your research interests:My research interests include global optimization: analysis and algorithms, complexity issues, applications, and software development.
5. Some of your most representative papers or books.My first book was a monograph based on my Phd thesis and
published by Springer-Verlag in the LNCS Series in 1987. My
book with Horst & Thoai (2nd edition) "Introduction to
Global Optimization" has been used as a textbook in many
universities.
Another recent book I coauthored is "The Mathematical Theory
of Optimization"
(with DingZhu Du and Weili Wu).
Some of my major contributions in optimization are in:
In addition, I believe that my book series "Nonconvex Optimization and Its applications" (http://www.wkap.nl/prod/s/NOIA) has made a significant contribution to the field of global optimization.
7. Your PhD students: how many them, please present names of some of them.I have supervised 13 PhD students:
Gregory Rodgers, Algorithms for Unconstrained Quadratic 0-1
Programming and Related Problems on Contemporary Computer
Architectures (Spring 1989).
Geoffrey M. Guisewite, Concave-Cost Network Flow Problems
(Summer 1991).
Chi-Geun Han, Solving Large-Scale Nonlinear Programs Using
Interior-Point Algorithms (Summer 1991).
Kowtha Murthy, Algorithms for Solving the Quadratic
Assignment Problem (Fall 1991).
Yong Li, Heuristic and Exact Algorithms for the Quadratic
Assignment Problem (Fall 1992).
Nainan Kovoor, Algorithms for the Least Distance Problem
(co-advisor: P. Berman, Fall 1992).
Bassam Khoury, The Steiner Problem in Graphs (Summer
1993).
Luana Gibbons, Algorithms for Solving the Maximum Clique
Problem (Summer 1994).
Leonidas Pitsoulis, Nonlinear Assignment Problems (Fall
1998).
Duk Won Kim, Nonconvex Network Flow Problems (Summer
1999).
Paveena Chaovalitwongse, Multi-echelon Multi-Commodity
Transportation and Inventory Control Problems (Fall
2000).
Sandra Duni Eksioglu, Optimizing Integrated Production,
Inventory and Distribution Problems in Supply Chains (Summer
2002).
Burak Eksioglu, Network Algorithms for Supply Chain
Optimization Problems (Summer 2002).
and the following students are completing their PhD
degrees:
Sergiy Butenko, Graph Problems in the Internet (expected
graduation: 2003).
Wanpracha Chaovalitwongse, Optimization and Brain Disorders
(expected graduation: 2003).
Carlos Oliveira, Optimization in Telecommunications (expected
graduation: 2003).
Recently, I have been working on "A multivariate partition approach to optimization problems" (with Hong-Xuan Huang from Tsingua University). This technique has been applied to the spherical code problem, distance geometry problems, and nonconvex energy functions.
The spherical code problem (included in the list of S. Smale's challenging problems for this century) and global optimization of multivariable polynomials and nonconvex energy functions are among the most interesting unsolved problems in the area I am recently working on.
I am a Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors
(Spain), Foreign Member of the Lithuanian Academy of
Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Petrovskaya Academy of
Sciences and Arts (Russia).
I was invited to be a member of these academies. I think that
membership to the academies serves our profession to promote
optimization as an important tool to solve problems in
science and society.
The Journal of Global Optimization (JOGO) deals with
theoretical and computational aspects of seeking global
optima and their applications in science, management, and
engineering.
(JOGO) is completing its 24th volume this year. We are very
pleased with the quality of papers published in the journal
and the reception that continues to receive from the
optimization community.
See: http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0925-5001
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I met Panos for the first time in early 1990 when I visited Pennsylvania State University at College Park. He was in his early thirties then and was working very hard on global optimization and combinatorial optimization. I was shocked to learn that he already wrote close to 100 papers then. But this was only the beginning.
Since he moved to University of Florida, his activities accelerated year after year. As the editor of J. of Global Optimization, he handled over 100 papers every year for more than 10 years. Also, he organized numerous symposia, at least twice or three times every year and edited many books. The expanding field of global optimization owes very much to this single person Panos M. Pardalos.
I do not know how many papers he wrote in the last 10 years. The record holder among my friends is Andrew B. Whinston of University of Texas, who wrote over 660 papers by the time he reached 60. I believe that Panos will easily break this record. He is really the superstar of our field.
Since 1990, I met him at least once a year on the occasion of ISMP, INFORMS and a number of symposia in Hong Kong and Greece. I regret that I cannot afford to attend many of them because most of them are held in the middle of the semester at the island of Greece, a very fantastic and yet very inconvenient place for Japanese and Asians.
I hope that he will continue to be energetic and productive. My only concern is that he seems to accumulate one more pound each time he writes one paper and organize one symposium. Therefore, I hope that he will not accelerate further in the years to come, so that he can remain healthy and take care of us.
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Panos Pardalos is the most famous researcher in the field of Global Optimization. His 1987 book (with J.B. Rosen), titled, Constrained Global Optimization: Algorithms And Applications is one of the most cited book in global optimization. Effective algorithms for solving quadratic 0/1 programs introduced by Panos has important applications in science and engineering. Under his leadership, the Journal of Global Optimization has become one of the most important scientific journals in optimization. He is always energetic, never tired of working. His energy also feed off his collaborators. He makes you work harder. As famous as he is, Panos is very accessible, especially for young researchers.
I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with Panos on many research papers, conferences, books and journals. I enjoy working with him and am very proud of him!
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Abstract:
The class of POPs (Polynomial Optimization Problems) over
cones covers a wide range of optimization problems such as
0-1 integer linear and quadratic programs, nonconvex
quadratic programs and bilinear matrix inequalities. We
present a new framework for convex relaxation of POPs over
cones in terms of linear optimization problems over cones. It
unifies many existing convex relaxation methods based on the
lift-and-project linear programming procedure, the
reformulation-linearization technique and the semidefinite
programming relaxation for a variety of problems. It also
extends the theory of convex relaxation methods, and thereby
brings flexibility and richness in practical use of the
theory.
For extended Abstract with References see here For presentation slides
at JSOM 2002, Kyoto, September 25-27, 2002 see here
The full Paper will appear in Journal of Operations Research
Society of Japan.
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One of the main ideas for solving nonlinear constrained optimization problems consists by solving a sequence of unconstrained minimization problems or minimization problems on an open set. In this case often the sub-problem can be efficiently solved by an unconstrained optimization algorithm as a Newton or quasi-Newton method. This leads to penalty and barrier methods, a field that has been developed in large in the past (see for example the book of Fiacco, A.V and McCormick,G.P [6]). The same kind of ideas can be used for solving variational inequalities and also for constrained sets that are more general that the classical sets defined by a finite number of inequalities with given functions. In particular one can consider constrained sets where a vector function takes its values in the cone of symmetric semidefinite positive matrices, or in the second order cone as it occurs in Semi-Definite Optimization and in Second Order Cone Optimization, two new and important fields in optimization; for more details see the recent book of A.Ben-Tal and A.Nemirowski [5].
The main purpose of this paper (see here) is to show that for finding penalty and barrier methods for such kinds of problems, the key tool is the notion of asymptotic function which coincides with the recession function when the function is convex; for a detailed treatment of this notion see the book of A. Auslender and M.Teboulle [1], and for algorithms using this notion intensively see [2,3,4]. Not only this notion allows to define penalty and barrier methods for these new classes of constrained sets but it covers most of the classical well-known methods in a unified way. In this survey it is also shown how with this notion we obtain convergence with quasi minimal assumptions.
References
1. A. Auslender,and M.Teboulle. Asymptotic Cones and Functions in Optimization and Variational inequalities. Springer Monographs in Mathematics. Springer Verlag 2002.
2. A. Auslender, R. Cominetti and M. Haddou, Asymptotic analysis of penalty and barrier methods in convex and linear programming, Mathematics of Operations Research, Vol. 22 (1997) 43--62.
3. A. Auslender, Penalty and barrier methods: A unified framework, SIAM J. Optimization, Vol. 10 (1999) 211--230.
4. A. Auslender, Asymptotic analysis for penalty and barrier methods in variational inequalities, SIAM J. Control Optim., Vol.37 (1999) 653--671.
5. A.Ben-Tal,and A.Nemirowski. Lectures on Modern Convex Optimization, Analysis, Algorithms, And Engineering Applications. MPS-SIAM Series on Optimization, 2002.
6. Fiacco, A.V and McCormick,G.P,1968.Non Linear Programming:Sequential Unconstrained minimization Techniques, Wiley, N.Y.
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The Second Japanese-Sino Optimization Meeting (JSOM2002) was held in Kyoto, Japan, during September 25-27, 2002.
JSOM2002 is the second meeting of the JSOM conference series, which is run by the Steering Committee of JSOM and is one of two official conference series of POP. The aim of this conference series is to provide an opportunity for researchers in Japan, China and other countries particularly in the Asia-Pacific region to exchange their ideas on the latest work in optimization and related areas.
JSOM2002 was organized by the Organizing Committee of JSOM2002 co- chaired by Masao Fukushima and Masakazu Kojima, and was endorsed by The Mathematical Programming Society (MPS), The Operations Research Society of Japan (ORSJ), The Chinese Mathematical Programming Society, The Research Association of Mathematical Programming (RAMP) of Japan, besides POP.
JSOM2002 had nine plenary speakers, including Alfred Auslender, Satoru Fujishige, Toshihide Ibaraki, Masakazu Kojima, Jong-Shi Pang, Liqun Qi, Marc Teboulle, Ya-xiang Yuan and Jianzhong Zhang. In addition to the plenary talks, JSOM2002 had about 100 presentations.
JSOM2002 had about 130 participants from Japan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, USA, Vietnam, Korea, Canada, Israel, France and the Netherlands.
The photos taken during the conference have been uploaded on the webpage:
A refereed proceedings of JSOM2002 will be published in a special issue of the journal Optimization Methods and Software with the guest editors, Masao Fukushima and Ya-xiang Yuan.
The support given by the following sponsors is deeply appreciated: Casio Science Promotion Foundation, Inoue Foundation for Science, Kansai Research Foundation for Technology Promotion, Tateishi Science and Technology Foundation.
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For details see here . The item is formatted as a Word Document.
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Two mini-workshops were recently held in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) under the auspices of CIAO ( Research Centre for Informatics and Applied Optimization, School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, University of Ballarat). The purpose of these workshops was to bring together researchers, to present and discuss recent developments and to assess future directions of research. There were many interesting lectures and these extended to a number of useful informal discussions which were held during these workshops.
First Mini-Workshop: "Optimization Theory and Applications" was held on 14-15 November.
The keynote lecture: "The Radius of Metric Regularity" was presented by Prof. R.T. Rockafellar.
The following lectures also were presented:
E. Anderson, Optimization models in wholesale electricity pool markets.
A. Bagirov, Continuous subdifferential approximations and their applications.
B. Craven, Optimal control of an economic model with a small stochastic term.
A. Eberhard, Variation Approximation and Characterization of Some Second Order Subdifferentials.
J. Filar, Perturbations of Mathematical Programs.
R. Gasimov, Solution Methods Based on Lagrange-type Functions
P. Howlett, V. Ejov and K. Avratchenkov, Inversion of analytically perturbed linear operators that are singular at the origin.
A. Jofre, Sensitivity and existence of equilibria for discontinuous constrained games.
M. Mamedov, Turnpike theorems for nonconvex optimal control problems.
B. Mond, What is Mond-Weir Duality?
C. Pearce, Jensen's inequality for quasiconvex functions.
A. Rubinov, Penalty-type functions for non-convex optimization problems with a single constraint.
The Second Mini-Workshop: "Numerical Global Optimization" was held on December 5.
The following lectures were presented:
A. Bagirov, On hybrid methods in global optimization
G. Beliakov, Solving global optimization problems using Cutting Angle method
L. Caccetta, Computational Aspects of Hard Knapsak Problems
D. Li, Hidden Convex Minimization
J. Moore, Camera Calibration and/or Pose Estimation of 3D Objects from 2D Images
C. Newton, Nature Inspired Global Optimization
J. Pintér, Global Optimization in Modelling Environments
The workshop was accompanied on December 6th, 2002 by a
short course titled "Algorithms and Software for
Nonlinear Systems Modeling and Optimization", presented
by János D. Pintér.
The course was held in a lively, constructive and informal
atmosphere, with an emphasis on practically useful tools and
techniques. The discussion was illustrated by introducing
several modelling and solver platforms that meet a broad
range of needs, from the business-focused user through
researchers and practitioners to academia. 'Live'
demonstration and test examples, as well as other interesting
optimization challenges and significant applications were
also be discussed.
The Presenter, János D. Pintér is a well-known
researcher in the area of global / nonlinear optimization,
including also professional software development. Recently,
János was elected to serve as Vice Chair of Global
Optimization for the Optimization Section of INFORMS.
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The 3rd annual McMaster Optimization Conference (MOPTA 03) (http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~mopta) will be held at the campus of McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, July 30 - August 1, 2003. It will be hosted by the Advanced Optimization Lab at the Department of Computing and Software and it is co-sponsored by the Fields Institute and MITACS.
SCOPE
The conference aims to bring together a diverse group of
people from both discrete and continuous optimization,
working on both theoretical and applied aspects. We aim to
bring together researchers from both the theoretical and
applied communities who do not usually get the chance to
interact in the framework of a medium-scale event.
Distinguished researchers will give one-hour long invited talks on topics of wide interest.
Invited speakers include:
CONTRIBUTED TALKS Each accepted paper will be allotted a
25 minute talk.
Authors wishing to speak should submit an abstract via the
conference WEB page in ASCII or LaTex source, to terlaky@mcmaster.ca by
April 30, 2003.
Please use "MOPTA 03" in the email subject line.
Notification of acceptance / Program available: May 31,
2003.
Deadline for early registration: June 30, 2003.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee
Tamás Terlaky, terlaky@mcmaster.ca (Chair, McMaster
University)
Further information is available at http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~mopta/
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The International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA) is one of two official conference series of POP. The goal of ICOTA is to provide an international forum for scientists, researchers, software developers, and practitioners to exchange ideas and approaches, to present research findings and state-of-the-art solutions, to share experiences on potentials and limits, and to open new avenues of research and developments, on all issues and topics related to optimization.
Five previous ICOTA conferences held in Singapore, Chendu, Perth and Hong Kong.
The sixth ICOTA will be held in Ballarat (Victoria, Australia) from September 26 till September 28, 2004. The General conference Co-Chairs are Alex Rubinov (University of Ballarat) and Moshe Sniedovich (University of Melbourne). The chairman of the International Program Committee is Liqun Qi (Hong Kong Polytechnic University).
Some meetings which are of interest for ICOTA participants will be held in Melbourne after ICOTA (Ballarat is located about 100 km from Melbourne). In particular:
1) Meeting of Australian Mathematical Society will be held
from September 28 till October 1st, 2004.
2) International Conference on Complex Systems and
Applications 2004 (ICCSA 2004) incorporating the 10th Bellman
Continuum will be held from September 29 till October 1st,
2004.
Preliminary announcement about ICCSA2004 see in the next article.
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ICCSA 2004 hosted by The School of Business Systems, Monash University, Melbourne. The conference will held 29 Sep - 1 Oct 2004, Melbourne, Australia.
The aim of ICCSA2004 is to explore the achievements, challenges, and further research directions for managing increasing complexity, dynamic behavior, and uncertainty of real life systems. Recent political, economical, and social developments worldwide call for integrated multidisciplinary approaches to understanding and managing complex real life systems. ICCSA2004 is envisaged as a multidisciplinary conference - the researchers from systems science, decision sciences, information systems, optimization and simulation, process modelling, intelligent computing, data mining, knowledge management, and other relevant areas are invited to participate. The conference will specifically focus on applications of complex systems research to the challenges arising in business, industry, and government, including, but not limited to, logistics, manufacturing, finance, health, military, emergency, and crisis management systems.
The 10th Bellman Continuum is dedicated to the memory of Professor Richard Ernest Bellman for his pioneering work in pure and applied mathematics to science, engineering, economics and medicine, and for his long-lasting influence on students and researchers throughout the world. Previous conferences were held in Michigan (USA), Georgia (USA), France, Kansas (USA), Hawaii (USA), Tokyo (Japan), New Mexico (USA), Taipei (Taiwan) and Beijing (China). BC10 will be held in Melbourne, Australia and hosted by the School of Business Systems, Monash University.
Papers accepted for presentation at both the ICCSA2004 and the 10th Bellman Continuum will be fully refereed and included in the conference proceedings.
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ICOTA 2004 will be held in Australia, in the beautiful Victorian city of Ballarat. Besides being a great opportunity to present your academic work, trip to ICOTA offers you a fantastic chance to visit many Victorian attractions and explore its capital, Melbourne, and its surroundings. Here are some of the highlights.
Ballarat
Ballarat is the perfect host, serving up a fine array of
restaurants and a range of excellent accommodation, from snug
bed-and-breakfasts to carefully restored 19th century
hotels.
Attractions
Sovereign Hill
Imagine going back over a century to Victoria's goldrush days
and reliving the history and excitement of the era. You can
at Sovereign Hill - Australia's foremost outdoor museum!
Built on a 25 hectare (60 acre) site linked with the richest
alluvial goldrush in the world, Sovereign Hill faithfully
depicts Ballarat's first ten years after the discovery of
gold in 1851.
http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/about/index.shtml
Gold Museum
The Gold Museum houses an extensive and valuable collection
of gold nuggets, alluvial deposits, gold ornaments and coins,
featuring the renowned Jessica and Paul Simon collection of
gold coins.
Ballarat Wildlife & Reptile Park
Set in 16 acres of beautiful peppermint gum woodland, you can
experience close contact with koalas, kangaroos, emus and
other native animals in an atmosphere of contentment and
tranquillity.
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Visit the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Australia's oldest and
largest regional gallery, and home to the original Eureka
flag. Join a tour and view the wide ranging collection
covering Australian art, from colonial to contemporary,
including material from the Heidelberg School
Victoria
Once you've explored Ballarat's past and present, there's a
whole region to discover. The city lies close to the Great
Ocean Road and to the heart of some of central Victoria's
finest attractions: the spectacular Grampians, the wineries
of the Pyrenees, and historic mining towns such as Clunes and
Creswick.
From magnificent beaches to snow-capped mountain peaks, Victoria is home to diverse natural environments with abundant flora and fauna. The state's compact size means its unique and varied landscapes are easily accessible - in under a day's drive you can experience natural attractions such as mountains, temperate rainforests, rugged coastal scenery, volcanic plains, vineyards, lakes, magnificent rivers, wildflowers in spring and snow in winter.
Victoria's fascinating native wildlife includes kangaroos,
koalas, wombats, platypus, echidnas and lovable little
penguins, which parade nightly along an island beach. Its
extensive coastline also provides plentiful opportunities to
get up close to dolphins, seals and whales. What's more, the
state's lush forests and parklands are havens for stunning
varieties of native birds - the extraordinary mallee fowl,
the elusive lyrebird, emus and reed warblers, to name a
few.
http://www.visitvictoria.com/
The Great Ocean Road winds westwards from the major regional city of Geelong to the South Australian border. Along with striking ocean views, the region contains laid back coastal towns and maritime villages, and there are plenty of opportunities for bush walking, swimming, surfing, fishing and whale-watching. You can wander the boardwalks and paths at the Twelve Apostles, remarkable limestone rock stacks rising from the ocean.
Penguin parade. Just 90 minutes from
Melbourne, Phillip Island Nature Park offers a unique
Australian wildlife experience and is home to the famous
Penguin Parade at Summerland Beach. From the viewing stands
and boardwalk, visitors can watch Little Penguins emerge each
night from the surf and waddle to their burrows on the
foreshore.
http://www.visitvictoria.com/
Ballarat is located about 100 km from Victoria's capital, Melbourne, one hour trip by car or 1.5 hour by train.
Promotional material is copyright by Tourism Victoria.
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We are pleased to announce the appearance of the new Working Group "EQUILIBRIUM MODELS IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS" (EMICS) at http://emics.ksu.ru
There were several reasons for organizing the Working Group and developing Internet resources on the topic. One of them goes back to the fact that within the relatively short time the noticeable progress both in theory and in techniques of solving various equilibrium problems has taken place. The other reason is the existing limitation of the apparatus in applied research which is based mainly on the rather old models. The necessity of the acceleration of propaganda of new results is evident. The activity of the Working Group is aimed on the popularization of the results of research in equilibrium problems (including static and dynamic variational inequalities, complementarity problems, and game equilibria). The other objective of our research and learning activity is to apply these results in practice and to reveal new fields of applications. The Interner resource has to be an "information core" that unifies all kinds of the activities of the Working Group.
Thus, the EMICS Web-site will resemble the Internet resources of other societies, but it should be mentioned that in order to be enrolled to the Working Group one has not only to be interested in the theme but to conduct research in this area. Along with the customary information one also has to provide
The Working Group and the web resource are in the making now, that is why you are welcome to contact the project coordinators for any questions or proposals.
E-mail: e.mics@ksu.ru
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Michel Balinski, Vienna, 1983,
The founder and first Editor of MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING
Journal
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Ben Rosen, University of Wisconsin, 1968
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Steve Robinson, IIASA in Laxenburg (Austria), 1984.
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We sadly announce that Professor Wenci Yu, Dean of Science College, East China University of Science and Technology, passed away on October 7, 2002.
Professor Wenci Yu had worked in various branches of mathematics, including optimization. He had also actively participated in various international optimization activities. He was a member of POP, its Board and Working Committee, and the Steering Committee of SJOM. We are sad for his departure.
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I knew Professor Wenci Yu since 1984. I met him in MIT during the 12th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming. Actually, I made several friends during that conference, including Ya-xiang Yuan. I met Yinyu Ye in Stanford a little bit earlier and met Yinyu in that conference again.
I came back to Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1985. Professor Yu was then the Head of the new established Department of Operations Research and Statistics in Fudan University. Professor Yu invited me to visit his department and give several seminars. I met his student Shuzhong Zhang and his son Chang then. Shuzhong accompanied me to visit Professors Quan Zheng, Deren Wang and Lianshen Zhang in Shanghai University of Sciences and Technology.
Since then, I met Professor Yu in different occasions: in Xi'an, Baisha, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Nanjing.
Professor Yu was a reliable friend. He was happy to help people, to listen and to talk with people. I also know several young people had his help, and are now excellent researchers. These include Shuzhong Zhang, now in Hong Kong, and Bo Chen, now in UK.
Professor Yu was always supportive. He played a supportive role for the 1998 Hong Kong conference, the 1999 Nanjing conference, the 2000 SJOM Hong Kong conference, etc.
His sudden departure shocked every person in this community. We lost a friend. We all felt sad at the news of his passing.
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Wenci Yu was born in 1940 in the Zhejiang Province of China. In 1957, he traveled to Shanghai to study at the Fudan University and obtained a bachelor's degree from the Department of Mathematics in 1961. Upon graduation, he became a Junior Lecturer in the same department until 1978, at which time he became an associate professor and the head of the Applied Mathematics group within the department. By 1984, he had become a full professor and the Chairman of the newly formed Department of Operations Research and Statistics at Fudan University.
In 1988, Professor Yu moved on to ECUST (East China University of Science and Technology) where he assumed the responsibility of the Director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics and later the Dean of the School of Science.
Throughout his career, Professor Yu served in numerous organizations such as the Vice President of the Operations Research Society of China, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Mathematical Programming, President of the Shanghai Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Board Member of the Pacific Optimization Activity Group (POP), and so on. He also served on the editorial committees of various academic journals including the Chinese Annals of Mathematics, and was Vice Editor-in-chief for two of these journals.
In 1979, Professor Yu went to the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley as a visiting scholar for two years. Later, he visited dozens of other universities in the United States, as well as universities in New Zealand, Australia, The Netherlands and Germany. He spent the academic year 1995-1996 at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology, where, within nine months, he wrote and defended a PhD thesis on sequencing and scheduling. In the last four years, he had visited several universities in Hong Kong including The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The City University of Hong Kong.
Professor Yu's main research interests were in the areas of Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, Nonlinear Optimization and Combinatorial Optimization. Throughout his career, he published over 100 academic papers and authored 5 books. He has won several awards from the National Commission for Education in China and similar organizations. Last but certainly not least, he supervised 26 Master and Ph.D. theses, which he always considered to be one of his greatest achievements.
As an excellent supervisor, Professor Yu is beloved by his students. Professor Yu always set high standards for his students as well as for himself. He was also famous to be passionate in pursuing novel knowledge and conducting scientific researches. These high standards, together with his passion for scientific research, will always be in the minds of his students and will continue to benefit all of them in their own career developments, no matter whether they chose to work in academics or industry.
With great remorse we shall remember Professor Yu, Wenci, who tragically passed away on October 7, 2002, a loss and pain that shall be felt for a long time to come, in the communities of Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Optimization, and Applied Mathematics in China.
Professor Yu, Wenci is survived by his wife, son, and grandson. His son has followed in his footsteps into the field of Operations Research and obtained a Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in the same year as his father.
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My colleagues and I all felt very sorry and deeply grieved to hear Professor Yu Wenci's death. His death is indeed a great loss for the academic circles. It is also a great loss for myself because I have lost for ever a very good teacher and respected friend. I deeply cherish the memory of him.
I cherish the memory of him because he was an extremely learned and talented scholar who had made outstanding achievements in the study of nonlinear programming as well as that of combinatorial optimization.
I cherish the memory of him because he was an extremely kind and helpful scholar who recommended me as a visiting scholar to U.S. for Professor Leon Lasdon in 1984. And in 1990, when he was in charge of The First National Conference On Scheduling Of China, he, together with Professors Yue Minyi and Han Jiye from China Academy of Sciences, proposed me as the Chairman of Scheduling Society of China. He also introduced me to Professor Les Foulds who then invited me to go and work in New Zealand.
I cherish the memory of him because he was an extremely selfless and hard-working teacher and had made great contributions for decades to the educational cause. For the last more than ten years I have joined him in almost all the thesis defences by his students studying for doctorate and master's degrees. It's for sure that outstanding teachers bring up outstanding students. Now some of Professor Yu Wenci's students have become celebrated scholars themselves.
Professor Yu Wenci has left us. And he left in such a hurry that we couldn't believe it is true. However we will always remember him for he will for ever live in our hearts.
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On behalf of my family, I would like to express our deepest appreciation and gratitude to all the people who took time to send us your condolence letters and wrote about my father in various articles. It is through all these memories about him that my father's spirit lives on.
In particular, I like to share the following excerpt from Dr. Ian Coope's letter from University of Canterberry, New Zealand.
…. I first met Wenci in 1988 when he visited New Zealand. I hosted him for a short visit in Christchurch where he gave a seminar at Canterbury University. At this point I had not been aware that we had both worked (independently) on similar topics in derivative-free optimization and it was a pleasure to be able to discuss and compare our different approaches. More recently I have returned to work on derivative-free optimization and over the last five years have, with my colleague Chris Price, published several papers exploiting the concept of "positive bases" which I believe Wenci was the first to use in an optimization context in a paper he published in 1979 (in a special issue of Scientia Sinica). Although the theory of positive bases had been developed by Chandler Davis in 1954, it had largely been disregarded. It was Wenci Yu who I believe showed the way in applying this important theory to the development and convergence analysis of optimization algorithms. Of course Wenci continued to contribute significantly to the field of optimization (and other areas) but I should particularly like to pay tribute to his pioneering work in introducing the theory of positive bases to optimization theory and algorithmsÉ
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Wenci Yu spent a year as my Post-Doc, at Berkeley, and we stayed in touch ever since. He was an exceptionally nice, warm person and a very good mathematician. He was most intrigued by the cultural differences between China and the USA and was constantly asking probing questions.
I visited him in Shanghai in 1986, during a 6 week trip to China. The date for our arrival in Shanghai was not set, and my host felt sure that he would be able to contact Wenci while we were flying from Wuhan to Shanghai (a two hour trip). Unfortunately, my host was not able to get through to Wenci by phone and when we arrived in Shanghai, after dark, there was no Wenci to greet us, no cabs, and the airport was being closed down. Fortunately for us, a senior manager of the Bank of China, whom we had met on our Yangtze River Three Gorges trip and who was on the same plane, took the initiative into his own hands and arranged for us to stay in a very nice guest house that night and succeeded to contact Wenci. It took Wenci a couple of hours to get a car and come out to the guest house. Since hotels were very full in Shanghai at the time, he was going to call the mayor of Shanghai (an old school friend) for help. Anyhow, all worked out well in the end; we stayed in the Fudan University guest house and we had a very good visit. Wenci was a marvelous host.
Wenci visited Berkeley several times and he brought me from Shanghai a couple of very nice pieces of painted lacquer which I keep in a place of honor and which remind me of him whenever I pick them up. I will always remember him fondly.
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Father and son, a park in Shanghai, 1973
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University of California at Berkeley, 1980
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The Netherlands, 1996
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