An Oracle-based Approach for Price-setting Problems in Logistics

We study a bilevel hub location problem where on the upper level, a shipment service provider –the leader–builds a transportation network and sets the prices of shipments on each possible transportation relation. Here, the leader has to take into account the customers’ reaction — the follower — who will only purchase transport services depending on … Read more

Mathematical models for the kidney exchange problem with reserve arcs

The kidney exchange problem with reserve arcs (KEP-RA) is an extension of the classical kidney exchange problem in which one is allowed to select in the solution a limited number of arcs that do not belong to the compatibility graph. This problem is motivated by recent breakthroughs in the field of kidney transplantation involving immunosuppressants … Read more

Pessimistic bilevel optimization approach for decision-focused learning

The recent interest in contextual optimization problems, where randomness is associated with side information, has led to two primary strategies for formulation and solution. The first, estimate-then-optimize, separates the estimation of the problem’s parameters from the optimization process. The second, decision-focused optimization, integrates the optimization problem’s structure directly into the prediction procedure. In this work, … Read more

Strengthening Dual Bounds for Multicommodity Capacitated Network Design with Unsplittable Flow Constraints

Multicommodity capacitated network design (MCND) models can be used to optimize the consolidation of shipments within e-commerce fulfillment networks. In practice, fulfillment networks require that shipments with the same origin and destination follow the same transfer path. This unsplittable flow requirement complicates the MCND problem, requiring integer programming (IP) formulations with binary variables replacing continuous … Read more

Lagrangian Duality for Mixed-Integer Semidefinite Programming: Theory and Algorithms

This paper presents the Lagrangian duality theory for mixed-integer semidefinite programming (MISDP). We derive the Lagrangian dual problem and prove that the resulting Lagrangian dual bound dominates the bound obtained from the continuous relaxation of the MISDP problem. We present a hierarchy of Lagrangian dual bounds by exploiting the theory of integer positive semidefinite matrices … Read more

Risk-Averse Antibiotics Time Machine Problem

Antibiotic resistance, which is a serious healthcare issue, emerges due to uncontrolled and repeated antibiotic use that causes bacteria to mutate and develop resistance to antibiotics. The Antibiotics Time Machine Problem aims to come up with treatment plans that maximize the probability of reversing these mutations. Motivated by the severity of the problem, we develop … Read more

New Dynamic Discretization Discovery Strategies for Continuous-Time Service Network Design

Service Network Design Problems (SNDPs) are prevalent in the freight industry. While the classic SNDP is defined on a discretized planning horizon with integral time units, the Continuous-Time SNDP (CTSNDP) uses a continuous-time horizon to avoid discretization errors. Existing CTSNDP algorithms primarily rely on the Dynamic Discretization Discovery (DDD) framework, which iteratively refines discretization and … Read more

A Single-Level Reformulation of Integer Bilevel Programs using Decision Diagrams

Integer bilevel programs are notoriously difficult to solve due to the absence of strong and efficiently computable relaxations. In this work, we introduce a novel single-level reformulation of these programs by leveraging a network flow-based representation of the follower’s value function, utilizing decision diagrams and linear programming duality. This approach enables the development of scalable … Read more

Mixed Integer Linear Programming Formulations for Robust Surgery Scheduling

We introduce Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations for the two-stage robust surgery scheduling problem (2SRSSP). We derive these formulations by modeling the second-stage problem as a longest path problem on a layered acyclic graph and subsequently converting it into a linear program. This linear program is then dualized and integrated with the first-stage, resulting … Read more

Improved Approximation Algorithms for Low-Rank Problems Using Semidefinite Optimization

Inspired by the impact of the Goemans-Williamson algorithm on combinatorial optimization, we construct an analogous relax-then-sample strategy for low-rank optimization problems. First, for orthogonally constrained quadratic optimization problems, we derive a semidefinite relaxation and a randomized rounding scheme, which obtains provably near-optimal solutions, mimicking the blueprint from Goemans and Williamson for the Max-Cut problem. We … Read more