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

Penalty Decomposition Methods for Rank Minimization

In this paper we consider general rank minimization problems with rank appearing in either objective function or constraint. We first show that a class of matrix optimization problems can be solved as lower dimensional vector optimization problems. As a consequence, we establish that a class of rank minimization problems have closed form solutions. Using this … Read more

Penalty Decomposition Methods for hBcNorm Minimization

In this paper we consider general l0-norm minimization problems, that is, the problems with l0-norm appearing in either objective function or constraint. In particular, we first reformulate the l0-norm constrained problem as an equivalent rank minimization problem and then apply the penalty decomposition (PD) method proposed in [33] to solve the latter problem. By utilizing … Read more

Scenario decomposition of risk-averse multistage stochastic programming problems

For a risk-averse multistage stochastic optimization problem with a finite scenario tree, we introduce a new scenario decomposition method and we prove its convergence. The method is applied to a risk-averse inventory and assembly problem. In addition, we develop a partially regularized bundle method for nonsmooth optimization. CitationRUTCOR, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854ArticleDownload View PDF

New formulas for the Fenchel subdifferential of the conjugate function

Following [13] we provide new formulas for the Fenchel subdifferential of the conjugate of functions defined on locally convex spaces. In particular, this allows deriving expressions for the minimizers set of the lower semicontinuous convex hull of such functions. These formulas are written by means of primal objects related to the subdifferential of the initial … Read more