On the p-median polytope of a special class of graphs

In this paper we consider a well known class of valid inequalities for the p-median and the uncapacitated facility location polytopes, the odd cycle inequalities. It is known that their separation problem is polynomially solvable. We give a new polynomial separation algorithm based on a reduction from the original graph. Then, we define a nontrivial … Read more

Global optimization by continuous GRASP

We introduce a novel global optimization method called Continuous GRASP (C-GRASP) which extends Feo and Resende’s greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) from the domain of discrete optimization to that of continuous global optimization. This stochastic local search method is simple to implement, is widely applicable, and does not make use of derivative information, thus … Read more

Survivable Energy Markets

In this paper we present a centralized model for managing, at the same time, the dayahead energy market and the reserve market in order to price through the market, beside energy, the overall cost of reliability and to assure that the power grid survives the failure of any single components, so to avoid extended blackouts. … Read more

Efficiently packing unequal disks in a circle: a computational approach which exploits the continuous and combinatorial structure of the problem

Placing $N$ non-overlapping circles in a smallest container is a well known, widely studied problem that can be easily formulated as a mathematical programming model. Solving this problem is notoriously extremely hard. Recently a public contest has been held for finding putative optimal solutions to a special case in circle packing. The contest saw the … Read more

New solution approaches to the general single machine earliness-tardiness problem

This paper addresses the general single-machine earliness-tardiness problem with distinct release dates, due dates, and unit costs. The aim of this research is to obtain an exact nonpreemptive solution in which machine idle time is allowed. In a hybrid approach, we formulate and then solve the problem using dynamic programming (DP) while incorporating techniques from … Read more

A robust approach to the chance-constrained knapsack problem

Chance-constrained programming is a relevant model for many concrete problems. However, it is known to be very hard to tackle directly. In this paper, the chance-constrained knapsack problem (CKP) is addressed. Relying on the recent advances in robust optimization, a tractable combinatorial algorithm is proposed to solve CKP. It always provides feasible solutions for CKP. … Read more

Representing the space of linear programs as a Grassmannian

We represent the space of linear programs as the space of projection matrices. Projection matrices of the same dimension and rank comprise a Grassmannian, which has rich geometric and algebraic structures. An ordinary differential equation on the space of projection matrices defines a path for each projection matrix associated with a linear programming instance and … Read more

Benchmark of Some Nonsmooth Optimization Solvers for Computing Nonconvex Proximal Points

The major focus of this work is to compare several methods for computing the proximal point of a nonconvex function via numerical testing. To do this, we introduce two techniques for randomly generating challenging nonconvex test functions, as well as two very specific test functions which should be of future interest to Nonconvex Optimization Benchmarking. … Read more