Computing closest stable non-negative matrices

Problem of finding the closest stable matrix for a dynamical system has many applications. It is well studied both for continuous and discrete-time systems, and the corresponding optimization problems are formulated for various matrix norms. As a rule, non-convexity of these formulations does not allow finding their global solutions. In this paper, we analyze positive … Read more

Matroid Optimization Problems with Monotone Monomials in the Objective

In this paper we investigate non-linear matroid optimization problems with polynomial objective functions where the monomials satisfy certain monotonicity properties. Indeed, we study problems where the set of non-linear monomials consists of all non-linear monomials that can be built from a given subset of the variables. Linearizing all non-linear monomials we study the respective polytope. … Read more

Proximal-Proximal-Gradient Method

In this paper, we present the proximal-proximal-gradient method (PPG), a novel optimization method that is simple to implement and simple to parallelize. PPG generalizes the proximal-gradient method and ADMM and is applicable to minimization problems written as a sum of many differentiable and many non-differentiable convex functions. The non-differentiable functions can be coupled. We furthermore … Read more

The Gamut and Time Arrow of Automated Nurse Rostering

There is an undeniable global shortage of skillful nurses. This is a problem of high priority, which is correlated to workforce management issues. These issues can be palliated by increasing nurses’ satisfaction based on flexible rosters using automated nurse rostering. This paper in concerned with nurse rostering based on constraint programming by satisfying global constraints, … Read more

Portfolio Optimization with Entropic Value-at-Risk

The entropic value-at-risk (EVaR) is a new coherent risk measure, which is an upper bound for both the value-at-risk (VaR) and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). As important properties, the EVaR is strongly monotone over its domain and strictly monotone over a broad sub-domain including all continuous distributions, while well-known monotone risk measures, such as VaR and … Read more

Improving the performance of DICOPT in convex MINLP problems using a feasibility pump

The solver DICOPT is based on an outer-approximation algorithm used for solving mixed- integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems. This algorithm is very effective for solving some types of convex MINLPs. However, there are certain problems that are dicult to solve with this algorithm. One of these problems is when the nonlinear constraints are so restrictive … Read more

Business-to-Consumer E-Commerce: Home Delivery in Megacities

To deliver to consumers in densely populated urban areas, companies often employ a two-echelon logistics system. In a two-echelon logistics system, the entry point for goods to be delivered in the urban area is a city distribution center (CDC). From a CDC the goods are transported to an intermediate facility, from where the goods are … Read more

On Solving the Quadratic Shortest Path Problem

The quadratic shortest path problem is the problem of finding a path in a directed graph such that the sum of interaction costs over all pairs of arcs on the path is minimized. We derive several semidefinite programming relaxations for the quadratic shortest path problem with a matrix variable of order $m+1$, where $m$ is … Read more

Membership testing for Bernoulli and tail-dependence matrices

Testing a given matrix for membership in the family of Bernoulli matrices is a longstanding problem, the many applications of Bernoulli vectors in computer science, finance, medicine, and operations research emphasize its practical relevance. A novel approach towards this problem was taken by [Fiebig et al., 2017] for lowdimensional settings d

The Trimmed Lasso: Sparsity and Robustness

Nonconvex penalty methods for sparse modeling in linear regression have been a topic of fervent interest in recent years. Herein, we study a family of nonconvex penalty functions that we call the trimmed Lasso and that offers exact control over the desired level of sparsity of estimators. We analyze its structural properties and in doing … Read more