Edinburgh Research Group in Optimization

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Why Optimization?

"Nothing in the world takes place without optimization, and there is no doubt that all aspects of the world that have a rational basis can be explained by optimization methods", Leonhard Euler (1744).

What is ERGO?

Centred around the Operational Research and Optimization research group in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Research Group in Optimization (ERGO) is a loose association of researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Management School, Institute for Energy Systems, and the Agriculture/IERM department, together with the Optimization group at the University of Dundee, and the Numerical Analysis groups at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

ERGO also has links with Bioparametrics, Edinburgh Petroleum Services, Format International, France Télécom R&D, Yahoo!, SAS, Intel and Stochastic Solutions.

Research

The main focus of the group is on mathematical and computing aspects of optimization. It has world-leading expertise in the solution of large sparse linear and quadratic problems by two of the core technologies in optimization - the simplex method and interior point methods. The group also has interests in nonlinear and global optimization, decomposition methods, parallel computing, industrial applications of optimization, and stochastic optimization. There is other expertise in simulation and stochastic areas of operational research.

The group interacts with academics in Italy, Norway, China, France, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, USA and the UK. Two of the visiting professors, Roger Fletcher and Nick Gould, are world leaders in continuous optimization.

Researchers from the OR Group have been invited to give plenary addresses at several major optimization conferences, to join international committees of several conferences, to organise specialised sessions/mini-workshops at these conferences, and to be on assessment panels for European grants.

See the ERGO preprints series page for current preprints, technical reports and recent publications.

The group has a strong experience in computational software. More information, background material and download links are in the ERGO software page.

The group meets regularly for seminars.

Research projects

EPSRC funded projects:

Industry funded research projects:

International roles

• Andreas Grothey is the Vice-Chair of the European Exascale Software Initiative (EESI) Activity Group 4.3 on Numerical libraries, solvers and algorithms.
• Andreas Grothey is a member of the Managing Board of the EURO Continuous Optimization Working Group.
• Julian Hall is the Project Manager for the Clp LP solver of the open-source COIN-OR initiative.
• Ken McKinnon is the UK member of the Management Committee of the ICT COST Action TD1207 "Mathematical Optimization in the Decision Support Systems for Efficient and Robust Energy Networks".
• Peter Richtárik serves on evaluation panels for EU FP7/Horizon2020 grant proposals.

Awards

Awards to staff

Staff in the Operational Research and Optimization group have been awarded several prizes in recent years.

• Julian Hall was awarded the Computational Optimization and Applications best paper prize for 2013, for the paper "Parallel distributed-memory simplex for large-scale stochastic LP problems".
• Peter Richtárik was nominated for the 2014 Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (selected universities can nominate a single candidate).
• Julian Hall won the COIN-OR INFORMS 2013 Cup for the best use of open-source COIN-OR software, for the paper "Parallel distributed-memory simplex for large-scale stochastic LP problems".
• Olivier Fercoq was awarded Best PhD Thesis Prize, Gaspard Monge Program for Optimization and Operations Research (the prize recognizes two doctoral theses defended in France in 2012, in mathematics or computer science, with significant contributions to optimization and operations research, both from a theoretical and applied point of view, and attracts a 1,000 EUR check).
• Sergio García Quiles received the Ramiro Melendreras 2009 Award by the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research to the best paper by a young researcher, for the paper "Solving large p-median problems with a radius formulation".
• Roger Fletcher was awarded the 2006 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization, having been awarded the 1997 George B. Dantzig Prize by SIAM and the Mathematical Programming Society.
• Coralia Cartis was awarded second prize at the 2005 edition of the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis (The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications).
• Julian Hall and Ken McKinnon were awarded the Computational Optimization and Applications best paper prize for 2005.
• Jacek Gondzio was awarded the Computational Optimization and Applications best paper prize for 2004.

Awards to our PhD students

• Jakub Konečný won the 2014 Google Europe Doctoral Fellowshp.
• Pedro Munari won the 1st Prize for the Best PhD Dissertation in Applied Mathematics in Brazil for his dissertation "Theoretical and computational issues for improving the performance of linear optimization methods".
• Martin Takáč was awarded the following:
  • 2013, 16th IMA Leslie Fox Prize (2nd prize), Parallel coordinate descent methods for big data optimization
  • 2013, SIAM Certificate in recognition of outstanding efforts and accomplishments on behalf of the SIAM Chapter at the University of Edinburgh for academic year 2012-2013
  • 2012, INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Award 2012 (sole runner-up), Iteration complexity of randomized block-coordinate descent methods for minimizing a composite function, Phoenix, USA
  • 2012, Best Talk at the SIAM National Student Chapter Conference, How to climb a hill in billion dimensions using a coin and a compass?, Manchester, United Kingdom
  • 2012, Best Talk at the Edinburgh Postgraduate Colloquium, Inpainting (also nominated in categories: Best Delivery, Most Entertaining)
  • 2012, Alice Margaret Campbell Bequest Fund Award (for success in first year of PhD)
  • 2011, Certificate of Appreciation at the 24th Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis, Iteration complexity of randomized block-coordinate descent methods for minimizing a composite function, Glasgow
  • 2011, Best Poster at the Edinburgh SIAM Student Chapter Conference, A randomized coordinate descent method for large-scale truss topology design, Edinburgh
• Marco Colombo won the 2007 BA Perspectives competition with the poster Optimization: the science of the best.

Study opportunities

PhD opportunities

The people and research page lists the research interests of the Staff members, and it is a good starting point for finding information on PhD topics and opportunities.

For additional information and on-line applications to the Operational Research and Optimization group, see also the Graduate School website.

MSc in Operational Research

We have started enrolling for the Operational Research MSc. For information see the Edinburgh OR MSc pages.

Where to find us

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