An Effective Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for Convex Quadratic Integer Programming

We present a branch-and-bound algorithm for minimizing a convex quadratic objective function over integer variables subject to convex constraints. In a given node of the enumeration tree, corresponding to the fixing of a subset of the variables, a lower bound is given by the continuous minimum of the restricted objective function. We improve this bound … Read more

Parallel solver for semidefinite programming problem having sparse Schur complement matrix

SemiDefinite Programming (SDP) problem is one of the most central problems in mathematical programming. SDP provides a practical computation framework for many research fields. Some applications, however, require solving large-scale SDPs whose size exceeds the capacity of a single processor in terms of computational time and available memory. SDPARA (SemiDefinite Programming Algorithm paRAllel version) developed … Read more

Inexact Bundle Methods for Two-Stage Stochastic Programming

Stochastic programming problems arise in many practical situations. In general, the deterministic equivalents of these problems can be very large and may not be solvable directly by general-purpose optimization approaches. For the particular case of two-stage stochastic programs, we consider decomposition approaches akin to a regularized L-shaped method that can handle inexactness in the subproblem … Read more

Energy Security: a robust optimization approach to design a robust European energy supply via TIAM

Energy supply routes to a given TIAM region (say E.U.) are subject to randomness, resulting in partial or total closure of a route (corridor). For instance: a pipeline may be subject to technical problems that reduce its capacity. Or, oil supply by tanker may be reduced for political reasons or because of equipment mishaps at … Read more

Minimax optimization for handling range and setup uncertainties in proton therapy

Purpose: Intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) is sensitive to errors, mainly due to high stopping power dependency and steep beam dose gradients. Conventional margins are often insufficient to ensure robustness of treatment plans. In this article, a method is developed that takes the uncertainties into account during the plan optimization. Methods: Dose contributions for a … Read more

PySP: Modeling and Solving Stochastic Programs in Python

Although stochastic programming is a powerful tool for modeling decision-making under uncertainty, various impediments have historically prevented its wide-spread use. One key factor involves the ability of non-specialists to easily express stochastic programming problems as extensions of deterministic models, which are often formulated first. A second key factor relates to the difficulty of solving stochastic … Read more

Interior Point Methods for Computing Optimal Designs

In this paper we study interior point (IP) methods for solving optimal design problems. In particular, we propose a primal IP method for solving the problems with general convex optimality criteria and establish its global convergence. In addition, we reformulate the problems with A-, D- and E-criterion into linear or log-determinant semidefinite programs (SDPs) and … Read more

Information-theoretic lower bounds on the oracle complexity of convex optimization

Relative to the large literature on upper bounds on complexity of convex optimization, lesser attention has been paid to the fundamental hardness of these problems. Given the extensive use of convex optimization in machine learning and statistics, gaining an understanding of these complexity-theoretic issues is important. In this paper, we study the complexity of stochastic … Read more

Inclusion Certificates and Simultaneous Convexification of Functions

We define the inclusion certificate as a measure that expresses each point in the domain of a collection of functions as a convex combination of other points in the domain. Using inclusion certificates, we extend the convex extensions theory to enable simultaneous convexification of functions. We discuss conditions under which the domain of the functions … Read more

A polynomial case of cardinality constrained quadratic optimization problem

We investigate in this paper a fixed parameter polynomial algorithm for the cardinality constrained quadratic optimization problem, which is NP-hard in general. More specifically, we prove that, given a problem of size $n$, the number of decision variables, and $s$, the cardinality, if, for some $0