Key speakers

Prof. Miguel F. Anjos

The University of Edinburgh

Short bio

Miguel F. Anjos is Chair of Operational Research at the School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh, and Inria International Chair. His research interests are in the theory, algorithms and applications of mathematical optimization. He was Editor-in-Chief of Optimization and Engineering, and sits on several other international editorial boards. He served on the Mitacs Research Council since its creation in 2011 until 2017, and is now an Emeritus member. He is the current President-Elect of the INFORMS Section on Energy, Natural Resources, and the Environment. His accolades include a Canada Research Chair, an NSERC Industrial Research Chair, a Humboldt Fellowship, the title of EUROPT Fellow, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Title: Convex Optimization Approaches for Large-Scale Optimal Power Flow Problems

Abstract: The classical alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) problem is highly nonconvex and generally hard to solve. Computational speed and global optimality are key needs for practical ACOPF algorithms. Convex relaxations of ACOPF, including conic, convex quadratic and linear relaxations, have recently attracted significant interest. We will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in convex optimization approaches for large-scale ACOPF and related problems, and highlight promising directions for future research.

Prof. Adam Letchford

Lancaster University

Short bio

Adam Letchford is Professor of Optimisation in the Department of Management Science at Lancaster University. His research, which lies at the interface between OR, Computer Science and Discrete Math, is concerned with exact methods for NP-hard problems. He has published over 70 articles in leading journals, and over 15 book chapters. He is known especially for his work in three areas: the travelling salesman problem, vehicle routing problems, and cutting plane theory. Adam has served on the editorial boards of six international journals: Computational Optimization and Applications, Discrete Optimization, EURO Journal of Computational Optimization, Mathematical Programming, Mathematical Programming Computation and Operations Research. In 2006, he received an IBM Faculty Award and was made an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow. In 2009, he was made a Fellow of the OR Society. From 2008 to 2013, he co-ordinated the optimisation cluster of the LANCS Initiative. In 2013, he led a research programme on optimisation at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge. From 2011-2018, he was director of NATCOR, the national doctoral training centre in OR. Since 2017, he has been a member of the REF subpanel on mathematical sciences.

Title: Fairness in Optimisation (and Elsewhere)

Abstract: Roughly speaking, fairness (or equity) means treating all people in the same way. The issue of fairness arises frequently, not only in operational research (OR), but also in many other fields. This talk will consist of three parts. In the first part, I will briefly review some key works on fairness in, e.g., OR, computer science, economics, game theory, marketing, philosophy, political science, psychology and recreational mathematics. In the second part, I will present a new way to model fairness in optimisation problems that involve networks, using the multiple TSP, the capacitated spanning tree problem and the k-median problem as examples. In the third and final part, I will present some computational results. These results indicate that one can usually find solutions that are significantly fairer, with only a small increase in total cost and total computing time.

This talk is based on joint work with Tolga Bektas, University of Liverpool.