- Written by: Thomas Weise
Today and yesterday I attended the meeting "Research and Teaching in China" organized by the DAAD, the [Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst], i.e., the German Academic Exchange Service [德国学术交流中心] in the German Embassy in Beijing. This meeting was well-attended by probably over 50 German researchers who live, work, study, and teach in China. The event was organized as two half-day meetings, which stroke a perfect balance between presentations and opportunities for personal discussions. It allowed us to exchange thoughts, experiences, and impressions and to discuss topics such as research funding and career planning in China. The meeting also showed that there is a very thriving and growing community of German researchers in China, many of which live here for a long time and are well-integrated into the society. These scientists contribute research in many diverse areas such as architecture, chemistry, biology, city planning, computer science, operations research, mathematics, medicine, archeology, as well as law studies and history. It was a really nice meeting and I hope that many such meetings will follow. (The second meeting was held in June 2019 in Shanghai.)
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 30, 2018, I gave my research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the chair for Artificial Intelligence and Software Technology (KIST) of Prof. Dr. Manfred Schmidt-Schauß at the Computer Science Institute, Computer Science and Mathematics Department of the Goethe University Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Prof. Schmidt-Schauß and his group are following several highly interesting strands of research centered around functional programming languages and program analysis. For instance, they work on the static analyses of programs and expressions, including termination analysis, demand analysis, and strictness analysis, which are important topics for compilers of (non-strict) functional programming languages. They work on understanding the observational semantics of functional programming languages with call-by-need evaluation in the contexts of studying extended lambda-calculi and concurrent computation. Another one of their research topics is understanding the side effects of input/output operations in lazy functional programming languages. They also conduct research on unification, i.e., solving equations in a logical form, encompassing unification in equational theories, sorted unification, combination of unification algorithms and unification in higher order logics. Finally, they work on knowledge representation, and investigate the properties of concept description languages and their reasoning behavior and complexity.
It was very nice to meet Prof. Schmidt-Schauß and his group. I am very thankful for their hospitality and for the nice discussion as well as the kind reception of my talk.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 29, 2018, I gave my research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the Simulation and Modelling (SIM) group of Prof. Dr. Helena Szczerbicka at the Institut of Systems Engineering (ISE) of the Leibniz University Hannover in Hannover, Germany.
The SIM group conducts fundamental and applied research in the fields of modeling, simulation, and optimization. They are especially interested in the modeling of complex systems (such as technical processes) with discrete simulations, stochastic Petri nets, and multi-agent systems, the analysis of models, the simulation of algorithms in the domain of "search & rescue", bio-inspired algorithms for optimization of networks, anomaly detection, online simulations for control (e.g., in construction side vehicles and heat distribution networks, as well as algorithms and standards for co-simulation (e.g. ACOSAR). Prof. Szczerbicka furthermore is a highly respected member of the Society for Computer Simulation International, in which she had several leading positions for several years.
It was very nice to meet Prof. Szczerbicka and her group and my presentation was received well. I very much enjoyed the very interesting and inspiring discussion afterwards.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 26, 2018, I gave my research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the junior professor chair for information systems and operations research of Prof. Dr. Lin Xie at the Institute of Information Systems (IIS) of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.
Prof. Xie has contributed valuable research on applied optimization, covering topics such as automated warehousing fulfillment systems and crew rostering. She emphasizes on the importance of modelling for making complex decisions. Application areas with such scenarios are often logistics and transportation, such as public bus systems. Another application field processed by Prof. Xie and her group is the assessment and developments of algorithms for routing multiple robots through warehouses in order to transport items for storage. This work is actually quite related to our research direction on rigorous performance analysis of algorithms, but also features other important aspects. Her other areas of interest include operations research and data science.
Meeting Prof. Xie and her group was very nice and my talk was received with interest by a large audience. The positive feedback on the talk was very encouraging and the following discussion with Prof. Xie was very interesting – especially since our works on algorithm analysis are highly related.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 25, 2018, I gave my research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the CSLog research group of Prof. Dr. Nicole Megow at the Fachbereich 3: Mathematik/Informatik, University of Bremen in Bremen, Germany.
The research of the CSLog group is centered on combinatorial optimization, often on the interface between logistics, mathematics, and computer science. They analyze the structure of discrete problems and design efficient algorithms with provable performance guarantees for solving them. Another strand of research is on solving combinatorial problems under incomplete information, as well as the development online, stochastic or robust algorithms. They contribute theoretic results and also apply them in complex real-world environments. The typical application areas are scheduling, production planning, logistics, network design, communication and routing in networks, and health care.
The application areas interesting for CSLog are very similar to those interesting to our team, which made the visit even more interesting for me. The audience of my talk was interested in the presented concepts and we had a nice discussion afterwards. I was very happy to meet Prof. Megow and her group and found the outstanding rigor and quality of their work very impressing. From our discussion, I could take home several new ideas, so the exchange the thoughts was definitely helpful for me.
- Research Talk "Automating Scientific Research in Optimization" by Prof. Thomas Weise at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany
- Research Talk "Automating Scientific Research in Optimization" by Prof. Thomas Weise at the University of Kassel in Kassel, Germany
- Research Talk "Automating Scientific Research in Optimization" by Prof. Thomas Weise at the IAS and IAO in Stuttgart, Germany
- Research Talk "Automating Scientific Research in Optimization" by Prof. Thomas Weise at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Mainz, Germany