Completion of theses

Benjamin Peters defended his thesis Monomial Patterns in Polynomial Optimization. He introduced a generalization of various concepts in polynomial optimization that is at the same time elegant, efficient, and stimulating for future research. Additional reviewers of the thesis were Gennadiy Averkov and Christoph Helmberg. Clemens Zeile defended his thesis Combinatorial Integral Decompositions for Mixed-Integer Optimal Control. He defined the new state-of-the-art in constrained mixed-integer optimal control and could solve challenging applications in mobility and cardiology. Additional reviewers of the thesis were Christian Kirches and Sven Leyffer. Jennifer Uebbing defended her thesis Power-to-Methane Process Synthesis via Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming. She introduced several models of different complexity for Power2X processes and developed novel optimization algorithms that leverage the different complexities. Additional reviewers of her thesis were Kai Sundmacher and Larry Biegler.

Also several Master theses were successfully defended: Susanne Anzer (Physiologie-basierte pharmakokinetische Modellierung von Methotrexat bei akuter lymphatischer Leukämie), Kilian Bock (Active Learning for maximizing model utility in material science on a small fractographic data set), Sarah Feldmann (née Ludwig, Der Two-Halfspace Closure), Jan Krause (Investigation of Options to handle 3D MRI data via convolutional neural networks - applications in knee osteoarthritis classification), Melina Licht (Modellbasierte Untersuchung von Cortisol in Zeitreihen), Christoph Plate (A linearization-based method for Partial Outer Convexification), Christopher Puest (Lösung eines Optimierungsproblems zur Erkennung von Vorhofflattern mittels Dekomposition in quadratische Teilprobleme), and Adrian Reimann (Machine Learning Ansätze für Zeitreihen bei Akuter Lymphatischer Leukämie).

After finishing his Master's thesis about machine learning methods applied to time series in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Adrian Reimann started in April to work as a PhD student in our working group and continues to do research in the intersection of machine learning and optimization applied to medical applications. Welcome to the group!

Conferences

Clemens, Mirko, and Sebastian participated in the virtual SIAM CSE 2021 conference with talks in the minisymposia on mixed-integer PDE constrained optimization.