Strategies for Handling Applications with Nonconvexity (25w5372)

The Banff International Research Station will host the “Strategies for Handling Applications With Nonconvexity (SHAWN)” workshop in Banff from May 11 - 16, 2025.

We live in exciting times today, being confronted with unparalleled opportunities and challenges. From the triumphs of machine learning and artificial intelligence to the challenges brought to humankind to deal with sustainability and climate change, the underlying mathematical problems are optimization problems. Solving these optimization problems will allow us to make amazing progress and mitigate serious problems. Mathematics plays a key role in the solution of these problems due to the analysis and design of optimization algorithms, which are computer-implementable methods that allow us to find optimal solutions. It is of paramount importance to understand how these algorithms perform when dealing with complicated real-world scenarios to make sure that the answers the computer returns are accurate and obtained quickly.

The goal of the ``Strategies for Handling Applications With Nonconvexity (SHAWN)'' workshop is to understand these algorithms in all possible situations and to make them more efficient. This will be achieved by surveying the latest research results, exchanging novel ideas and promising techniques, and discussing and identifying remaining challenges. The leading researchers attending along with the next generation of researchers will also explore new areas of applications, ranging from optics, crystallography, and satisfiability problems to linear programming problems. The expected outcome of this workshop is a new generation of research that will improve processes in industry and help train the next generation of applied scientists, equipping them with tools to attack future problems humankind will face.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and Alberta’s Advanced Education and Technology.