ROC++: Robust Optimization in C++

Over the last two decades, robust optimization has emerged as a popular means to address decision-making problems affected by uncertainty. This includes single- and multi-stage problems involving real-valued and/or binary decisions, and affected by exogenous (decision-independent) and/or endogenous (decision-dependent) uncertain parameters. Robust optimization techniques rely on duality theory potentially augmented with approximations to transform a … Read more

Manifold Identification for Ultimately Communication-Efficient Distributed Optimization

This work proposes a progressive manifold identification approach for distributed optimization with sound theoretical justifications to greatly reduce both the rounds of communication and the bytes communicated per round for partly-smooth regularized problems such as the $\ell_1$- and group-LASSO-regularized ones. Our two-stage method first uses an inexact proximal quasi-Newton method to iteratively identify a sequence … Read more

A Restricted Dual Peaceman-Rachford Splitting Method for QAP

We revisit and strengthen splitting methods for solving doubly nonnegative, DNN, relaxations of the quadratic assignment problem, QAP. We use a modified restricted contractive splitting method, rPRSM, approach. Our strengthened bounds and new dual multiplier estimates improve on the bounds and convergence results in the literature. CitationDepartment of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo, Canada,06/2019ArticleDownload … Read more

Solving Previously Unsolved MIP Instances with ParaSCIP on Supercomputers by using up to 80,000 Cores

Mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem is arguably among the hardest classes of optimization problems. This paper describes how we solved 21 previously unsolved MIP instances from the MIPLIB benchmark sets. To achieve these results we used an enhanced version of ParaSCIP, setting a new record for the largest scale MIP computation: up to 80,000 cores in … Read more

Linearization and Parallelization Schemes for Convex Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Optimization

We develop and test linearization and parallelization schemes for convex mixed-integer nonlinear programming. Several linearization approaches are proposed for LP/NLP based branch-and-bound. Some of these approaches strengthen the linear approximation to nonlinear constraints at the root node and some at the other branch-and-bound nodes. Two of the techniques are specifically applicable to commonly found univariate … Read more

Towards practical generic conic optimization

Many convex optimization problems can be represented through conic extended formulations with auxiliary variables and constraints using only the small number of standard cones recognized by advanced conic solvers such as MOSEK 9. Such extended formulations are often significantly larger and more complex than equivalent conic natural formulations, which can use a much broader class … Read more

Enhancements to the DIDO© Optimal Control Toolbox

In 2020, DIDO© turned 20! The software package emerged in 2001 as a basic, user-friendly MATLAB teaching tool to illustrate the various nuances of Pontryagin’s Principle but quickly rose to prominence in 2007 after NASA announced it had executed a globally optimal maneuver using DIDO. Since then, the toolbox has grown in applications well beyond … Read more

A new interior-point approach for large two-stage stochastic problems

Two-stage stochastic models give rise to very large optimization problems. Several approaches have been devised for efficiently solving them, including interior-point methods (IPMs). However, using IPMs, the linking columns associated to first-stage decisions cause excessive fill-in for the solution of the normal equations. This downside is usually alleviated if variable splitting is applied to first-stage … Read more

Polyhedral Approximation Strategies in Nonconvex Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming

Different versions of polyhedral outer approximation is used by many algorithms for mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). While it has been demonstrated that such methods work well for convex MINLP, extending them to solve also nonconvex problems has been challenging. One solver based on outer linearization of the nonlinear feasible set of MINLP problems is the … Read more

Improving solve times of stable matching problems through preprocessing

We present new theory, heuristics and algorithms for preprocessing instances of the Stable Marriage with Ties and Incomplete lists (SMTI), the Hospitals/Residents with Ties (HRT), and the Worker-Firms with Ties (WFT) problems. We show that instances of these problems can be preprocessed by removing from the preference lists of some agents entries that correspond to … Read more