minicourses
1 ECTS
Prof. Pablo Parrilo 5-day minicourse on

Algebraic Optimization and Semidefinite Programming

Prof. Pablo Parrilo
Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Massachusetts Institute of Technology

May 31 - June 4, 2010


Prof. Pablo Parrilo received an Electronics Engineering undergraduate degree from the University of Buenos Aires, and a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 1995 and 2000, respectively. He has held short-term visiting appointments at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Physics), Lund Institute of Technology (Automatic Control), and UC Berkeley (Mathematics). From October 2001 through September 2004, he was Assistant Professor of Analysis and Control Systems at the Automatic Control Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). He is currently the Finmeccanica Career Development Professor of Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is also affiliated with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the Operations Research Center (ORC). Prof. Parrilo is the recipient of the 2005 Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, as well as the 2005 SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory (SIAG/CST) Prize. He was also a finalist for the Tucker Prize of the Mathematical Programming Society for the years 2000-2003. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM) society, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and a member of the Editorial Board of the MPS/SIAM Book Series on Optimization. His research interests include optimization methods for engineering applications, control and identification of uncertain complex systems, robustness analysis and synthesis, and the development and application of computational tools based on convex optimization and algorithmic algebra to practically relevant engineering problems.

Contents
Algebraic Optimization and Semidefinite Programming
This minicourse will focus on theoretical and computational techniques for optimization problems with algebraic structure (in particular, those involving polynomial equations and inequalities), emphasizing the connections with techniques based on semidefinite programming (SDP). The course will develop in a parallel fashion several algebraic and numerical approaches to polynomial systems, with a view towards methods that simultaneously incorporate both elements. We will study both the complex and real cases, developing techniques of general applicability, and stressing convexity-based ideas, complexity results, and efficient implementations. We will use examples from several applied math and engineering areas, including systems and control, geometric theorem proving, and classical and quantum information theory. Among the topics covered we will have: semidefinite relaxations, sum of squares representations, hyperbolic polynomials, SDP representability of convex sets, complex and real Nullstellensatz, convex algebraic geometry, sparsity and rank minimization problems, etc.

Time and Place
CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
May 31- June 4, 2010.
For more information about CWI, location and accomodation please check this page.

Admission fee
The admission fee for a minicourse is EUR 300 for university staff members and PhD students, and EUR 500 for people from industry. EIDMA and DIAMANT members receive a reduction of EUR 100 on these amounts. Registered Dutch EIDMA PhD students may attend free of charge. DIAMANT offers limited extra support for its members. Young mathematicians get priority, but otherwise the "first come, first serve" principle applies. To apply for this additional DIAMANT support please follow the instructions on the registration form. For undergraduate students special conditions apply.

Registration
Registration is closed.


Back to the course program