The First Trade-OPT Workshop! - Algorithmic and Continuous Optimization

 The ESRs have finally had an opportunity to meet in person! After so much uncertainty and challenges due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the first TraDE-OPT workshop has finally happened at UCLouvain on 4-8 July. All participants from the network – both students and supervisors – were able to finally shake hands, collaborate, and got to know each other better. The main scientific part consisted of presentations by invited keynote speakers and doctoral students, which presented their most recent work to their peers and to the supervisor panel. But besides the talks, the workshop included an algorithmic bootcamp and activities devoted to job market preparation, both very appreciated by the participants! Keep reading to know more about the program.

Invited keynote speakers:

Radu Ioan Boţ - "Fast methods for linearly constrained convex optimization problems."

Panos Patrinos - "Escaping limit cycles: Global convergence for nonmonotone inclusions and constrained nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems."

Coralia Cartis - "Evaluation complexity of algorithms for nonconvex optimization."

Benoît Legat - "Low-Rank Univariate Sum-of-Squares Has No Spurious Local Minima."

Nelly Pustelnik - "Deep unfolded proximal algorithms."

Adrien Taylor - "Constructive approaches to optimal first-order methods for convex optimization."

Progress presentations:

All 15 doctoral students (ESRs) from our network participated and gave a progress presentation at the workshop.

Algorithmic bootcamp:
Benoît Legat - "Implementation of a solver in Julia / Introduction to JuMP."

Adrien Taylor and Baptiste Goujaud - "Automated performance estimation of optimization algorithms" (Python / Matlab).

CV writing, hiring processes and job interviews:

Véronique Joubert - "Preparation to the job market": high level presentation, how to talk about yourself, interview simulations.

Nicolas Dardenne - "Boost your CV with your doctoral skills!"