A Numerically-safe Branch-Price-and-Cut Algorithm for the Length-Constrained Cycle Partition Problem

The length-constrained cycle partition problem (LCCP) is a graph optimization problem in which a set of nodes must be partitioned into a minimum number of cycles. Every node is associated with a critical time and the length of every cycle must not exceed the critical time of any node in the cycle. We formulate LCCP … Read more

Integrating Power Profile Optimization with Timetabling for Underground Train Networks

We study energy-efficient operation of underground train networks by integrating power profile optimization with timetable design in a single mixed-integer optimization framework. The model minimizes traction energy by synchronizing braking and acceleration across trains sharing a power subnetwork to exploit regenerative energy and flexibly allocating running times to promote coasting. Unlike timetable-only approaches with fixed … Read more

Optimal Combinatorial Testing with Constraints: The Balancing Act

Imagine that you are in front of a cockpit with several on–off buttons. If you were to thoroughly test it, you would need to try a prohibitive number of configurations. But since most bugs in practice can be isolated to interactions among few components, having tests that cover every possible pairwise configuration is a good … Read more

Convexlikeness and Supportedness in Quadratic Multiobjective Optimization

This paper studies geometric and structural properties of quadratic multiobjective optimization problems. Thereby, a multiobjective optimization problem is called convexlike if the upper image, i.e., the image set plus the nonnegative orthant, is a convex set. Moreover, we say that a feasible point is supported in case it is a minimal solution of a weighted … Read more

Attention Mechanisms in Physics-Inspired Graph Neural Networks for the Max-Cut Problem

Physics-Inspired Graph Neural Networks (PI-GNNs) reformulate MAX-CUT as QUBO energy minimization, training a GNN to produce soft binary node assignments without labeled data. The baseline PI-GCN uses static, degree-normalized aggregation, while its attention-augmented counterpart PI-GAT—built on GATv2—introduces additional hyperparameters whose effects remain uncharacterized. This paper addresses that gap through controlled experiments on five Gset benchmark … Read more

Random-Key Optimization for 2D Irregular Packing with Reusable Area Evaluation

The diverse constraints of industrial applications lead to variants of 2D irregular packing problems that require tailored solution methods. This paper addresses a real-world industrial challenge by proposing a new problem definition, the Maximum Reusable Contiguous Area Problem (MRCAP), and a novel metric, the Maximum Contiguous Area, developed to measure and maximize the contiguous unused … Read more

Robust Chance-Constrained Optimization using a Continuous Parameter Space Wasserstein-2 Ambiguity Set of Gaussian Mixtures

We study distributionally robust linear chance-constrained problems in which uncertainty is modeled by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). Finite-support distributionally robust (FDR) formulations, widely used in data-driven robust optimization, robustify over empirical mixture support points and therefore primarily stress-test the fitted nominal mixture. This can be insufficient when service reliability depends on structural misspecification of … Read more

Tight Conic Relaxations for Rank-one Doubly Nonnegative Matrix Completion

We study tight conic relaxations for a quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) formulation of rank-one doubly nonnegative (DNN) matrix completion. Motivated by sparse QCQPs whose lifted matrix variables include elements not directly specified by the objective or constraints, we interpret tightness as a rank-one completion property for the unspecified elements. For sparsity patterns whose blocks … Read more

Approximate solution of infinite-horizon risk-sensitive Markov decision processes

Infinite-horizon risk-sensitive Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the discounted cost criterion are challenging to solve because the optimal policy may be non- stationary. Existing solution methods reformulate the problem as a continuous-state (risk-neutral) MDP and solve it using state-discretization or value function approximation. Such approaches typically lack explicit stopping conditions or error bounds. In this … Read more

Exploring polynomial models in the Search Step of Direct Multisearch

Direct Multisearch (DMS) is a class of direct-search algorithms designed for multiobjective derivative-free optimization. Its framework consists of an optional search step and a poll step, the latter ensuring the corresponding theoretical convergence properties. Recently, a search strategy based on the minimization of quadratic polynomial models, constructed from previously evaluated points, was proposed to improve … Read more