Date	Speaker	Title and Abstract
Apr. 16th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Minh Ngoc Dao UBC Okanagan and Hanoi National University of Education	Nonconvex Bundle Method for Constrained Optimization Problems Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Apr. 10th *10:30* *SUR 3250*	M. Beddis, M. Mitrovic and M. Sharma Simon Fraser University	Math 402W Operations Research Clinic project presentation Selecting Station Locations for a Public Bike-Share Program: A Case Study for the City of Vancouver, B.C.
Apr. 9th	Ante Ćustić Simon Fraser University	Geometric versions of the 3-dimensional assignment problem Abstract: In this talk we will discuss the computational complexity of special cases of the 3-dimensional assignment problem where the elements are points in a Cartesian space and where the cost coefficients are the perimeters of the corresponding triangles measured according to a certain norm. All our results also carry over to the corresponding special cases of the 3-dimensional matching problem. The minimization version is NP-hard for every norm, even if the underlying Cartesian space is 2-dimensional. The maximization version is polynomially solvable, if the dimension of the Cartesian space is fixed and if the considered norm has a polyhedral unit ball. If the dimension of the Cartesian space is part of the input, the maximization version is NP-hard for every Lp norm. This is joint work with Bettina Klinz and Gerhard Woeginger, and a preprint is available here.
Apr. 2nd via COCANA (Kelowna)	Jim Nastos UBC Okanagan	Observations on problem reductions Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Mar. 26th	Chen Greif Computer Science University of British Columbia	Bounds on Eigenvalues of Matrices Arising from Interior-Point Methods Abstract: Interior-point methods feature prominently among numerical methods for inequality-constrained optimization problems, and involve the need to solve a sequence of linear systems that typically become increasingly ill-conditioned with the iterations. To solve these systems, whose original form has a nonsymmetric 3-by-3 block structure, it is common practice to perform block elimination and either solve the resulting reduced saddle-point system, or further reduce the system to the normal equations and apply a symmetric positive definite solver. In this talk we use energy estimates to obtain bounds on the eigenvalues of the matrices, and conclude that the original unreduced matrix has more favorable eigenvalue bounds than the alternative reduced versions. Our analysis includes regularized variants of those matrices that do not require typical regularity assumptions. This is joint work with Erin Moulding and Dominique Orban.
Mar. 19th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Jason Loeppky UBC Okanagan	TBA Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Mar. 5th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Mark Schmidt UBC	Tractable Big Data and Big Models in Machine Learning Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Feb. 26th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Walaa Moursi UBC Okanagan	On the range of the Douglas-Rachford operator Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Feb. 19th via COCANA (Kelowna)	John Braun UBC Okanagan	Improved Density Estimation via Data Sharpening Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Feb. 5th	Soon-Yi Wu National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan)	On finite convergence of an explicit exchange method for convex semi-infinite programming problems with second-order cone constraints Abstract: In this talk, we propose an explicit exchange algorithm for solving semi-infinite programming problem (SIP) with second-order cone (SOC) constraints. We prove, by using the slackness complementarity conditions, that the algorithm terminates in a finite number of iterations and the obtained solution sufficiently approximates the original SIP solution. In existing studies on SIPs, only the nonnegative constraints were considered, and hence, the slackness complementarity conditions were separable to each component. However, in our study, the existing componentwise analyses are not applicable anymore since the slackness complementarity conditions are associated with SOCs. In order to overcome such a difficulty, we introduce a certain coordinate system based on the spectral factorization. In the numerical experiments, we solve some test problems to see the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Jan. 22nd via COCANA (Kelowna)	Chayne Planiden UBC Okanagan	Moreau Envelopes and Thresholds of Prox-boundedness Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Jan. 8th *SUR 5380*	Michael Armstrong Faculty of Business Brock University	Salvo Models for Missile Combat Abstract: Modern surface warships attack and defend using guided missiles such as the Harpoon and Standard. Because few battles have been fought this way, missile combat is not as well understood as that involving gunfire. Salvo models provide a simple way to represent such battles, much as Lanchester models represent gunfire battles. This talk will introduce salvo combat models, describe some of their properties, and demonstrate their application to the carrier airstrikes of the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea.
Dec. 4th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Abbas Milani UBC Okanagan	Applications of Modeling and Optimization Tools for Quality Improvement in Composites Manufacturing Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Tuesday, Nov. 25th Joint O.R. and Discrete Math Seminar *Burnaby* *AQ K9509*	Bala Krishnamoorthy Department of Mathematics Washington State University	Flat Norm Decomposition of Integral Currents Abstract: Currents represent generalized surfaces studied in geometric measure theory. The flat norm provides a natural distance in the space of currents, and works by decomposing a d-dimensional current into d- and (the boundary of) (d+1)-dimensional pieces. A natural question about currents is the following. If the input is an integral current, i.e., a current with integer multiplicities, can its flat norm decomposition be integral as well? The answer is not known in general, except in the case of d-currents that are boundaries of (d+1)-currents in (d+1)-dimensional space. On the other hand, for the discretization of the flat norm on a finite simplicial complex, the analogous statement remains true even when the inputs are not boundaries. This result is implied by the boundary matrix of the simplicial complex being totally unimodular, guaranteeing integer solutions for an associated integer linear program. We develop an analysis framework that extends the result in the simplicial setting to that for d-currents in (d+1)-dimensional space, provided a suitable triangulation result holds. Following results of Shewchuk on triangulating planar straight line graphs, our framework shows that the discrete result implies the continuous result for the case of 1-currents in 2D space. This is joint work with Sharif Ibrahim and Kevin Vixie, and a preprint is available here.
Tuesday, Nov. 25th *10:00 a.m.* *SUR 5060*	Piyashat Sripratak Department of Mathematics Simon Fraser University	The Bipartite Boolean Quadratic Programming Problem Ph.D. thesis defence
Nov. 20th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Guillaume Carlier Université Paris-Dauphine	Wasserstein barycenters and related problems: theory, numerics and applications Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Oct. 16th via COCANA (Kelowna)	John Braun UBC Okanagan	Lying with Statistics! Optimally Changing Data to Improve Nonparametric Function Estimates Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Oct. 2nd via COCANA (Kelowna)	Yuriy Zinchenko University of Calgary	On a shortest 2-path problem Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Sept. 21st *8:30-4:30*	WCOM Hosted by SFU Surrey	Details of the Fall 2014 West Coast Optimization Meeting here.
Sept. 11th via COCANA (Kelowna)	Jane Ye University of Victoria	Smoothing SQP methods for solving nonsmooth and nonconvex constrained optimization problems Further details available from the COCANA Website.
Aug. 26th *10:00-12:00* *SUR 5380*	Yong Zhang Ph.D. thesis defence Senior Supervisor: Z.Lu	Optimization Methods for Sparse Approximation