- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 11, 2018, I gave the research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the Chair of Numerical Optimization of Prof. Dr. Andreas Fischer, director of the Optimization Group, at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics of the Technische Universität Dresden.
The Optimization Group is focused on the design, analysis, and application of efficient numerical algorithms for a variety of different classes of optimization problems. They solve smooth problems with non-linear constraints, non-smooth and degenerate problems, as well discrete/combinatorial optimization tasks. They mainly focus on developing exact methods. Special application areas where the group has made outstanding contributions are, for instance, cutting stock-, skiving stock-, and packing problems, optimization tasks in machine learning, highly-adaptive energy-efficient computing, as well as high-speed wireless communication.
It was very nice presenting at the TU Dresden and I am thankful to Prof. Fischer for his hospitality. The talk was received well and we had an interesting set of questions and answers afterwards.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 10, 2018, I gave the research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the Computational Intelligence Group of Prof. Dr. Sanaz Mostaghim at the Institute of Intelligent Cooperating Systems, Faculty of Computer Science of the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (OVGU, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg).
The Computational Intelligence Group has a long and very successful tradition in the field of Computational Intelligence, both in theoretical research as well as in practical application. They focus on the fields of swarm intelligence and swarm robotics. The group also contributes excellent research on Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), multi-objective optimization and decision making, artificial life, and evolutionary robotics. Multi-objective decision making is a very important branch of optimization, since most problems in the real world present themselves as trade-offs between different goals, e.g., cost vs. speed, cost vs. quality. Multi-objective EAs are currently among the best methods to tackle such problems. Swarm intelligence and swarm robotics play a bigger and bigger role, e.g., in logistics as well as in traffic planning. Since I work in the domain of EAs for more than dozen years now, and our presented benchmarking method directly applies there, this gave us a good starting point for interesting discussions.
I had a nice visit to the group last year, too, and back then was hosted by Prof. Dr. Rudolf Kruse, who now has become an emeritus member but still attended my talk this time. It was a real pleasure to visit this research group again and see the great work that Prof. Mostaghim is doing. I am very thankful for their hospitality.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
On October 8, 2018, I gave the research talk Automating Scientific Research in Optimization at the Mathematics of Transportation and Logistics group of Prof. Dr. Ralf Borndörfer at the Mathematical Optimization department, Mathematical Optimization and Scientific Information division of the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) in Berlin, Germany.
The Mathematical Optimization department of the ZIB contributes research on modeling, simulation, and optimization methods for difficult problems in transport and logistics, telecommunications, energy supply, and healthcare. They combine theoretical insight and practical experience to optimization software for cooperation partners such as Lufthansa or Deutsche Bahn. The group is strong in fundamental research on branch-and-cut-and-price algorithms, graph theory, combinatorics, algorithmic game theory, and convex optimization, especially applicable to large-scale models. They often combine multiple different aspects of a real-world optimization problem, such as different objectives, handle data uncertainty, parallelize algorithms, and develop new decomposition techniques, as well as adaptive and dynamic methods.
Prof. Borndörfer has worked on many interesting projects, especially with the goal to improve the efficiency of public and private transportation systems, such as optimized infrastructure design with respect to passenger behavior in public transport, rolling stock roster planning for railways, multi-day cyclic rotations for trains, service design in public transport, solving the vehicle positioning problem, airline crew scheduling, and cyclic roster planning in public transport.
The background of this group is highly interesting for me. On one hand, our team member Dr. Zijun Wu, works on algorithmic game theory especially with respect to traffic optimization. On the other hand, we also have conducted quite a lot of research on logistics too, e.g., for the Traveling Salesman Problem. There was much to discuss – especially since the algorithm performance analysis methods we develop also fit to the iterative natures of algorithms of the branch-and-bound family.
It was a real pleasure to visit this research group, to meet Prof. Borndörfer and to meet Prof. Möhring again, who helped in arranging the meeting. I am very thankful to both professors and to the kind audience. really enjoyed our talk.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
Today, I had the great pleasure of teaching my short course Metaheuristics for Smart Manufacturing [智能制造的元启发式算法] at the Quanzhou University of Information Engineering [泉州信息工程学院] in Quanzhou city [泉州市] in the Fujian province [福建省] as part of the 2018 Teacher Training Program of the Sino-German Center for Education Cooperation and Development of the Fujian Province [中德（福建）教育合作与发展师资培训项目] with the topic "Intelligent Manufacturing". The course was given as two 2-hour lectures to an audience of about 30 key teachers from more than 20 higher vocational colleges in the province who mainly specialized in the field of mechanical engineering.
- Written by: Thomas Weise
Today, on Thursday, July 26, 2018, our first Institute Workshop on Applied Optimization took place. Three talks were contributed by our researchers as well as our international guest researcher Dr. Mohammad Ali Raayatpanah [محمدعلی رعایت پناه] from the Kharazmi University [دانشگاه خوارزمی] in Iran [جمهوری اسلامی ایران]. We believe that a good way to good research is cooperation and the exchange of thoughts. It is especially good to discuss about research from different, but related fields. Each talk led to interesting conversations and hopefully has opened up opportunities for even more inspiring discussions and joint research. This workshop was succeeded by the Second Institute Workshop on Applied Optimization: Seminar on Operations Research and Optimization in 2019.
- Research Talk "Dynamic Network Routing: Meeting the Challenge of Complex Traffic and Transportation Tasks" by Prof. Dr. Rolf H. Möhring from TU Berlin
- World Manufacturing Convention 2018 in Hefei, China
- International Workshop on Benchmarking of Computational Intelligence Algorithms (BOCIA)
- German Science Circle Meeting: Focus Max Planck Institutes and their Collaboration with China