The optimal design of low-latency virtual backbones

Two nodes of a wireless network may not be able to communicate with each other directly perhaps due to obstacles or insufficient signal strength. This necessitates the use of intermediate nodes to relay information. Often, one designates a (preferably small) subset of them to relay these messages (i.e., to serve as a virtual backbone for … Read more

Scenario-based cuts for structured two-stage stochastic and distributionally robust p-order conic mixed integer programs

In this paper, we derive (partial) convex hull for deterministic multi-constraint polyhedral conic mixed integer sets with multiple integer variables using conic mixed integer rounding (CMIR) cut-generation procedure of Atamtürk and Narayanan (Math Prog 122:1–20, 2008), thereby extending their result for a simple polyhedral conic mixed integer set with single constraint and one integer variable. … Read more

On decomposability of the multilinear polytope and its implications in mixed-integer nonlinear optimization

In this article, we provide an overview of some of our recent results on the facial structure of the multilinear polytope with a special focus on its decomposability properties. Namely, we demonstrate that, in the context of mixed-integer nonlinear optimization, the decomposability of the multilinear polytope plays a key role from both theoretical and algorithmic … Read more

Provably High-Quality Solutions for the Meal Delivery Routing Problem

Online restaurant aggregators with integrated meal delivery networks have become more common and more popular in the past few years. Meal delivery is arguably the ultimate challenge in last mile logistics: a typical order is expected to be delivered within an hour (much less if possible), and within minutes of the food becoming ready. We … Read more

The running intersection relaxation of the multilinear polytope

The multilinear polytope MP_G of a hypergraph G is the convex hull of a set of binary points satisfying a collection of multilinear equations. We introduce the running-intersection inequalities, a new class of facet-defining inequalities for the multilinear polytope. Accordingly, we define a new polyhedral relaxation of MP_G referred to as the running-intersection relaxation and … Read more

Polyhedral-based Methods for Mixed-Integer SOCP in Tree Breeding

Optimal contribution selection (OCS) is a mathematical optimization problem that aims to maximize the total benefit from selecting a group of individuals under a constraint on genetic diversity. We are specifically focused on OCS as applied to forest tree breeding, when selected individuals will contribute equally to the gene pool. Since the diversity constraint in … Read more

Strong formulations for conic quadratic optimization with indicator variables

We study the convex hull of the mixed-integer set given by a conic quadratic inequality and indicator variables. Conic quadratic terms are often used to encode uncertainties, while the indicator variables are used to model fixed costs or enforce sparsity in the solutions. We provide the convex hull description of the set under consideration when … Read more

The Stable Set Problem: Clique and Nodal Inequalities Revisited

The stable set problem is a fundamental combinatorial optimisation problem, that is known to be very difficult in both theory and practice. Some of the solution algorithms in the literature are based on 0-1 linear programming formulations. We examine an entire family of such formulations, based on so-called clique and nodal inequalities. As well as … Read more

An Improved Flow-based Formulation and Reduction Principles for the Minimum Connectivity Inference Problem

The Minimum Connectivity Inference (MCI) problem represents an NP-hard generalisation of the well-known minimum spanning tree problem and has been studied in different fields of research independently. Let an undirected complete graph and finitely many subsets (clusters) of its vertex set be given. Then, the MCI problem is to find a minimal subset of edges … Read more

The Cost of Not Knowing Enough: Mixed-Integer Optimization with Implicit Lipschitz Nonlinearities

It is folklore knowledge that nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems can be notoriously hard to solve in practice. In this paper we go one step further and drop analytical properties that are usually taken for granted in mixed-integer nonlinear optimization. First, we only assume Lipschitz continuity of the nonlinear functions and additionally consider multivariate implicit … Read more