About optimization

In an industrial or economical context, one often faces the problem of assessing the value of some unknown variables, such that a given criterion is minimized or maximized. Examples of such problems range from the design of communication routes in wireless networks such that the power consumption is minimized, to construction of a profit maximizing production plan in manufacturing industry. The Optimization group provides teaching and research in the field of modeling such problems, development of solutionj methods for the models, and fast and efficient implementations of them. Most often, the problems under study originate from industrial applications, typically the telecommunications or the oil and gas business. Optimization models that are studied include linear programming and network flow models, non-linear models, and combinatorial optimization models.