My First Secondment at FAU

Collaboration!

Collaboration has always been an element that I have been enthusiastic about. For this reason, I am thankful to POEMA for providing the opportunity to create international networks which I believe to be extremely valuable.                                

I started my secondment at Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen (FAU) under the supervision of Professor Michael Stingl in order to have close collaboration with Arefeh, ESR12, from the 1^st of October to the end of December 2020. I had some regular face to face meetings with Prof. Stingl and Arefeh at least one time per week. Also, I kept having online meetings with Prof. Kočvara and some joint meetings between FAU and UoB every week.    

                             

To give a general overview of our recent research topics; we are using different approaches for solving large-and-sparse low-rank linear Semidefinite Programs (SDPs). These approaches use Interior-Point (IP) method in UoB and Primal-Dual Penalty/Barrier Multiplier (PD-PBM) method in FAU. In UoB, we have developed a preconditioner for solving SDPs. In this secondment, along with Arefeh’s secondment in UoB, the development of optimization solvers taking structures specific to polynomial optimization problems into account is exchanged.  This includes a common data and software basis, maintained by the two groups. It turned out that the linear systems which have to be solved at the core of both methods have a mathematically equivalent structure. Thus, it seems possible to develop iterative methods and in particular, preconditioners, which can be applied in the framework of both solution concepts.  These methods have been tested using problems from truss topology design. Furthermore, we have started writing the paper and we will continue our collaboration in the next term.

                                

In general, it was a great pleasure to meet the FAU optimization team. However, it was unfortunate that I could not meet all of the team in person due to the pandemic. Everyone was very helpful and welcoming. They prepared a nice working environment with everything I needed. I shared an office with Arefeh and we were working closely together during of my time there.

 

There were weekly meetings every Monday morning with the Optimization group in FAU. These meetings were called ‘Jour fix’ and the purpose was to share the research progress from the previous week and plans for the new week. I found this to be very helpful and motivating.

 

There is no doubt that this secondment was a rewarding experience and helped me to enhance my knowledge both in the theoretical and numerical elements of the project. Moreover, it was a great opportunity to live in another beautiful country for three months and to be in contact with people from a different culture. For sure, I gained lots of valuable life experiences as well.

My shared office with Arefeh (ESR12).

Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen.