Category: Seminars

This page contains MoCaO-related talks which will be made remotely accessible. If you wish to connect remotely, please contact the local coordinate indicated for each seminar. If you wish to list a talk here, contact Matthew Tam.

Optimisation Days 2025 at UNSW Sydney, 11-12 November, 2025

Dear friends and colleagues,

We are excited to invite you to Optimisation Days 2025 at UNSW Sydney, a workshop bringing together researchers from across the broad field of mathematical optimisation. The event offers a platform for presenting and discussing both established and emerging trends, spanning theoretical, computational, and applied perspectives. Whether you’re working in pure optimisation theory, numerical methods, modelling, applications, or somewhere in between, we welcome your contributions. 

Key Details

  • Website:  http://unsw.to/optdays
  • Dates: 11-12 November 2025 
  • Venue: Room 4082, Anita B. Lawrence Centre, UNSW Sydney, School of Mathematics & Statistics
  • Registration deadline: by 30 September 2025 
  • How to register: via the UNSW registration form 
  • A special NEXUS Lecture by James Saunderson on the afternoon of 12 November, followed by a reception. 

Registration is free for all participants.  

Please share this invitation with colleagues, students, and anyone who may be interested in attending or presenting.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!
Mareike, Michelle, Sarat, and Vera

events, news, Seminars

69th Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society

Call for Abstracts in the Special Session “Optimisation”

Dear MOCAO members,

The 69th Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS Meeting 2025) will take place from the 9th to the 12th of December 2025 at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. A website for the conference is available at:

https://www.austms2025.org.au

It is our great pleasure to invite you to participate in the special session “Optimisation” and hope that you will agree to present a 25-minute talk.

This special session will focus on new mathematical and computational developments and their applications in all areas of continuous and discrete optimisation. Submissions related to applications of optimisation in data science, as well as data science applications in optimisation, are also welcome. We are delighted to have Jein-Shan Chen (National Taiwan Normal University) and Andrew Eberhard (RMIT University) as our keynote speakers.

As the session will have a maximum of 25 speakers, please let us know your interest to present by October 15, 2025.

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WOMBAT2025

Dear friends and colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to Workshop on Optimisation, Metric Bounds, Approximation and Transversality (WOMBAT 2025), a broad and inclusive workshop covering all aspects of mathematical optimisation. Join us to explore new ideas, share knowledge, and build connections! We welcome contributions on any topic related to mathematical optimisation: theoretical, computational, or applied.

Website: https://wombat.mocao.org/ 

Location: University of Queensland, Brisbane

Dates: 26-28 November 2025

Registration: Register here

Abstract submission deadline: 24 October 2025

Keynote Speakers: Stephen Wright (University of Wisconsin–Madison), and Dmytro Matsypura (University of Sydney)

Registration is completely free for all participants.

We also have limited funds available to support student travel: students can apply for financial assistance through the registration form.

Please feel free to share this invitation with your colleagues, students, and broader network who may be interested in attending or presenting.

For any questions, feel free to contact us: wombatconference2025@gmail.com

We look forward to seeing you in Brisbane!

Warm regards,

Fred, Alexander, and Oscar

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MoCaO lectures 2025: August 25-29 (zoom).

The MoCaO Lecture Series will run daily from 25–29 August, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM AEST.

Speakers

Professor Tim Moroney is Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics within QUT’s School of Mathematical Sciences. Among all the topics that have played a role throughout his research career, the one that features most prominently is numerical linear algebra, and particularly methods for sparse matrices. His current research interests come from various applications across water waves, droplets, surface reconstruction, moving interface problems, and fractional calculus.

Dr Qianqian Yang is a Senior Lecturer in Applied and Computational Mathematics within QUT’s School of Mathematical Sciences. Qianqian has extensive experience in developing computationally efficient methods for solving fractional order partial differential equations. With this background, her recent research interest lies in the application of these fractional calculus models to real-world problems, especially in the area of combining numerical simulations, fractional order models and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to probe in vivo brain tissue microstructure.

Abstract

This series of lectures will introduce the theoretical and practical ideas for iterative methods applied to sparse matrices. Sparse matrices arise in many applications across science, engineering, statistics, business and beyond. Iterative methods that exploit the sparsity of these matrices are essential for overcoming the scaling on storage and floating-point calculations that otherwise renders problems even of modest dimensionality impractical to solve.

A remarkably versatile family of numerical methods called Krylov subspace methods can be applied to a wide class of sparse matrix problems. In doing so, they impose only minimal requirements on the means by which a matrix is utilised, paving the way for many of today’s high-performance codes. This course covers Krylov subspace methods for two common problems: eigenvalue problems and linear systems, from their derivation through to efficient numerical implementation.

The lectures will be running in zoom.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://qut.zoom.us/j/87221801096?pwd=TGQK2WysRMquyaohaNhK9FryY3X5MC.1

Meeting ID: 872 2180 1096
Passcode: 519836

The lecture recordings will be available via our YouTube channel.

We are looking forward to seeing you soon.

Nadia (nsukhorukova@swin.edu.au)

Monday lecture: slides and code (PDF format only).

Tuesday lecture: slides and code files (PDF format only): Arnoldi Convergence, Arnoldi Theory Check, Arnoldi VS Naive and Gram-Schmidt Comparison

Wednesday lecture: slides

Thursday lecture: slides

Friday lecture: slides

events, news, Seminars

MoCaO Lectures:  Geometry and Convexity in Optimisation

 July 15-19, 2024

We are pleased to announce the 2024 MoCaO Lectures in Computation and Optimisation. For 2024 we
are focusing on Geometry and Convexity in Computation. These one-hour lectures will be held each day, and all lectures will be broadcast via Zoom.

July 15-19, 2024, 11-12 am AEST (GMT+10) each day

This series of lectures will introduce the theoretical tools and notions of convex geometry that stem from or are applicable to the problems of modern convex optimisation. The lectures will cover the facial structure of general and structured convex set in Euclidean spaces, as well as in general vector spaces. These lectures are designed to be accessible to novices to the field who have a mathematics and computational background, such as PhD students, postdoc and/or inquisitive academics who wish to have a better understanding of recent advances in this dynamic field. These lectures will be given online via
Zoom. Please read the notice below regarding the registration to obtain the Zoom link.

Summary: Convex geometry is a fascinating area of simplicity and elegance yet mathematically rich. It is home to many beautiful and surprising theorems with numerous applications ranging from optimisation practical ones such as robotics, economics, and machine learning. In these year’s lectures, we go over the basics of facial structure of convex sets, starting with the finite dimensional setting. We review the tools that help study geometric properties of convex sets and to construct convex sets with desirable properties. We then focus on structured convex problems, predominantly those defined algebraically (through matrix and polynomial inequalities and representations). Finally, we review some properties and behaviours of convex sets that are specific to the infinite-dimensional setting. The fundamental mathematical ideas and phenomena will be contextualised in optimisation applications, including conic programming and projection methods.


MoCaO Lectures 2024:
Vera Roshchina (UNSW, Sydney)
Isabelle Shankar (Portland State University)
Bruno Lourenco (Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan)

Biographies:
A/Prof. Vera Roshchina (MoCaO lecturer 2024) is an applied mathematician working on convex and nonsmooth problems that mostly come from optimisation. Vera is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW Sydney. Before joining UNSW in 2018 she was an ARC DECRA Research Fellow at RMIT University and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Melbourne, Federation University Australia and University of Évora (in Portugal). In addition to DECRA Vera won 2 ARC grants and in 2021 was awarded Christopher Heyde medal by the Australian Academy of Science.

Dr. Isabelle Shankar: Isabelle Shankar is an Assistant Professor in the Fariborz Maseeh Department of Mathematics + Statistics at Portland State University.  She received her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 2021 from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Serkan Hoşten.  She held postdoctoral positions at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany before joining PSU.  Her research interests include real algebraic geometry, convex optimization, and combinatorics.

Assoc/Prof. Bruno Figueira Lourenço: BSc in Computer Science and MSc in Mathematics by the University of Brası́lia, Brazil, in 2010 and 2012, respectively.  PhD in Mathematical and Computing Sciences from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2016.  Worked as an assistant professor at Seikei University from 2016 to 2018 and at the University of Tokyo from 2018 to 2020. Currently is an associate professor at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan. Likes most things related to convex cones.

We encourage participants to register using the google form the bottom of the webpage (so you may receive the zoom details)

Website
and Registration:

https://forms.gle/CGhNt3bssmqLMXcj6


MoCaO Lectures: 
Mathematics of Computation and Optimisation 2024

If you have any enquiries, please send an email to MoCaO@austms.org.au. Please check the website prior to the lectures for last minute information or announcements.



 



 



 



events, news, Seminars

The 15th Alexander Rubinov Memorial Lecture on February 15 at 2.30pm to 4pm

Dear colleagues,

We will have the 15th Alexander Rubinov Memorial Lecture on February 15 at 2.30pm to 4pm as a part of CSA lecture series.  This time the lecture will be given by Professor Juan Enrique Martinez-Legaz, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. The topic is:  Voronoi diagrams and their applications. Please use the link given below.

The lecture is intended for the broad audience.

Alexander Rubinov Memorial Lecture:

Voronoi Diagrams and Their Applications.

Juan Enrique Martinez-Legaz

Department d’Economia I d’Historia Economica

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Abstract

In this talk, first I will talk about my collaboration with Professor Alexander Rubinov on many topics of nonlinear analysis and generalized convexity. Then I will discuss Voronoi diagrams and cells. Finally, I will present some interesting applications of Voronoi diagrams.

Dr Juan Enrique Martinez-Legaz is an Emeritus Professor at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. He received his PhD degree in Mathematics on 1981 from the University of Barcelona, Spain. He was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Lima, Peru, 2011) and EUROPT Fellow 2011. Professor Martinez-Legaz is serving on the editorial board of many international journals in optimization and operations research, including Journal of Global Optimization, Optimization, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications. Since 1981 he delivered more than 100 keynote and invited talks in different international conferences. His research areas include continuous optimization, operator theory, convex and discrete geometry and economics.

________________________________________________________________________________

Microsoft Teams meeting

Join on your computer, mobile app or room device

Click here to join the meeting

events, news, Seminars

A reminder to register for the joint WOMBAT/WICO workshops

Dear all,

A reminder to register for the joint WOMBAT/WICO workshops on optimisation and computational mathematics, to be held from 11-15 December 2023 at the University of Sydney (in-person). Registration is free and closes on 31 October. Some travel support for students is available.

For more details (including the registration form), see the event website: https://wombat.mocao.org/

On behalf of the organising committee:

Mareike Dressler, Nam Ho-Nguyen, Quoc Le Gia, Dmytro Matsypura, Lindon Roberts

events, news, Seminars

Optimisation talks at UNSW: Vinesha Peiris and Didier Aussel

August is a busy month for UNSW’s optimisation group: there will be three talks given by visitors at the School of Mathematics and Statistics.

11 August 2022: Dr Vinesha Peiris (Deakin University), Rational Approximation in EEG signal classification

Speaker: Vinesha Peiris (Deakin University)
Date: 11/08/22, 11am
Rational approximation and its application in EEG signal classification

Rational approximation (that is, approximation by a ratio of two polynomials) is a flexible alternative to polynomial approximation. In particular, rational functions exhibit accurate estimations to nonsmooth and non-Lipschitz functions, where polynomial approximations are not efficient. In this talk, we discuss the quasiconvexity property of the optimisation problems appearing in univariate rational Chebyshev approximation and its generalisation to a ratio of linear combinations of basis functions. This fact can be used in the development of computational methods. Then we apply our approximation as a preprocessing step to classify EEG signals and demonstrate that the classification accuracy is significantly improved compared to the classification of the raw signals.

This is a hybrid talk, delivered in-person in RC-4082 and online on Zoom with the following link and passcode.

Link: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/81997494743?pwd=ekZ0SlJoZ2hqWFNGMVdxR3psZFVadz09
Passcode: 704577

The talk is part of the Applied Mathematics Seminar Series at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW Sydney. We are grateful to the seminar coordinator Dr Michael Watson for organising this event.

19 August 2022: Prof. Didier Aussel (University of Perpignan), Recent advances bilevel optimization with several players: multi-leader-follower games.

Speaker: Didier Aussel (University of Perpignan)
Date: Friday 19 August 2022, 11am AEST (Sydney time)
Title: Recent Advances in Bilevel Optimization with Several Players: Multi-Leader-Follower Games

Multi-Leader-Follower games are perfect mathematical tools for the modelling of agents interactions on a market in which some of the agents have some leading position while a set of the other agents are competing in a non cooperative way. These models are known for decades but recent advances opened the door to new developments and applications. Motivated by applications in energy management the aim of this seminar will be to consider modern approaches of well-posedness, first order reformulation and existence results for Multi-Leader-Follower games.

This is a hybrid talk, delivered in-person in RC-4082 and online on Zoom with the following link and passcode.

Zoom Link: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/89935594957?pwd=TzExZUNKci9raDVzdWZSa2RMckhydz09
Passcode: 843637

The talk is part of the Applied Mathematics Seminar Series at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW Sydney. We are grateful to the seminar coordinator Dr Michael Watson for organising this event.

24 August 2022: Prof. Didier Aussel (University of Perpignan), Quasiconvex nonsmooth optimization through the normal approach

Speaker: Didier Aussel (University of Perpignan)
Date: Wednesday 24 August 2022, 11am AEST (Sydney time)
Title: Quasiconvex nonsmooth optimization through the normal approach

Location: Hybrid in RC-4082 and via zoom. Please contact Hongzhi Liao (hongzhi.liao@unsw.edu.au) for the zoom link.

The talk is part of the Convex Geometry Reading Group Series at UNSW Sydney. More info: https://www.mocao.org/cg/.

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