News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
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Sep24
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall 2024 Classes Begin (No Northwestern Monday in Fall)
TIME Tuesday, September 24, 2024
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Sep30
EVENT DETAILS
lessLast day to add a class or change a section for Fall (Last day for tuition adjustment related to enrollment changes (to or from full-time). No reductions are made to bills for dropped or swapped classes after this date)
TIME Monday, September 30, 2024
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Oct1
EVENT DETAILS
lessAbstract: Congestion games are a class of non-cooperative games that can be used to model resource sharing among selfish players. A prominent solution concept for these games is that of pure Nash equilibrium (PNE), a strategy profile where no player has incentive to unilaterally deviate. In this talk I will address two central questions. The first question is: which structures allow us to design a polynomial-time algorithm for the computation of a PNE? The second question is: which structures can limit the inefficiency of pure Nash equilibria? To answer the first question, I will present a polyhedral approach that can be leveraged to design a strongly polynomial-time algorithm to compute a PNE in symmetric totally unimodular (TU) congestion games, where the players’ strategies are binary vectors inside polyhedra defined by TU constraint matrices. In relation to the second question, I will consider different measures of social cost and quantify equilibria inefficiency through the notion of pure Price of Anarchy (PoA). I will present bounds on the PoA for two main structured congestion games: congestion games defined over series-parallel networks and congestion games defined over paving matroids. This is a joint work with Bainian Hao.
BIO: Carla Michini is an assistant professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at UW-Madison since Fall 2018. Prior to that, she held postdoctoral positions at UW-Madison and ETH Zürich and she was a visiting researcher at CMU. She obtained her PhD in Operations Research at Sapienza University of Rome. Carla's research is motivated by the practical relevance of combinatorial optimization and integer programming in real-world problems. The core of her research approach consists in identifying and exploiting the polyhedral structure of various combinatorial problems to design efficient algorithms for their solution. Currently, her main goal is to leverage this approach beyond optimization, particularly in game theory and machine learning.
TIME Tuesday, October 1, 2024 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
CONTACT Nathan Keiller nathan.keiller@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IEMS)
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Nov19
EVENT DETAILS
lessTalk abstract: Benders decomposition is a mathematical decomposition technique designed to solve large-scale linear and mixed-integer programs. Since its introduction in 1962, the approach has been successfully applied to a wide variety of problems arising in supply chain management, transportation, telecommunications, and energy management. Despite its success, however, it has long been overshadowed by dual decomposition methods such as Lagrangian relaxation and Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition. Over the last two decades, one has witnessed a renewed interest in Benders decomposition with the introduction of several novel ideas to improve performance. The purpose of this talk is to give an overview of the main acceleration techniques by focusing on two families of problems where Benders decomposition has proven especially effective: facility location problems and network design problems. After briefly explaining the general methodology and practical enhancements, we will present examples of successful applications to set covering problems and fixed-charge network design problems. In each case, we will focus on strategies for generating strong cuts efficiently, including the application of unified cut generation frameworks and the use of normalization constraints in the dual subproblem.
Bio: Jean-François Cordeau obtained his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1999. He is a professor of Operations Management at HEC Montréal, where he also holds the Chair in Logistics and Transportation. He has authored or co-authored more than 175 scientific articles in combinatorial optimization and mathematical programming, focusing primarily on vehicle routing and logistics network design. He has also supervised more than 75 M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. Dr. Cordeau is an Area Editor of Transportation Science and a member of the Editorial Board of Computers & Operations Research. He has worked as a consultant for several Canadian and European organizations in the private and public sectors. He is currently one of the scientific directors of IVADO Labs. He received the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) Award of Merit in 2016 and the Pierre-Laurin Award for Research Excellence at HEC Montréal in 2018. In 2023, he and ten of his colleagues won the CORS Practice Prize for their work on maritime vessel routing.
TIME Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
LOCATION Hive Annex, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
CONTACT Kendall Minta kendall.minta@gmail.com EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IEMS)
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Dec7
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall classes end
TIME Saturday, December 7, 2024
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar