VADOR Events Calendar

We frequently host one off lectures on topics relating to variational analysis, dynamics and operations research.  In term-time, we host different speakers at our weekly AKOR seminar.  Seminars take place most Thursdays in Sem. R. DB gelb 04. For 25/26 the start-time will move to 4pm.  Once a month, the AKOR seminar will be replaced by the Vienna Seminar on Optimization, opens an external URL in a new window - a joint venture with Radu Bot and Yurii Malitskyi of the University of Vienna

We organise the Viennese Conference on Optimal Control and Dynamic Games, typically every three years.  VC2025 took place in July 2025.  For further details on this conference, and its forerunners, please visit the VC2025, opens an external URL in a new window website.

Topics and speakers for all forthcoming events will be posted below.

02. October 2025, 16:00 until 18:00

VSO Seminar: A Nonsmooth Differentiation Theory and Some Applications

Seminar

Jerome Bolte, Toulouse School of Economics

Nonsmooth phenomena are common in optimization—from constraints, solution maps, regularizers, and conditional code. 
Classical tools in variational analysis often rely on qualification conditions that are hard to check and rarely met in computational settings. 


This talk presents conservative calculus: a qualification-free framework aligned with algorithmic implementation and compatible with 
automatic differentiation libraries (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow). For functions given by analytic or polynomial formulas, including implicit definitions, subgradients can be composed via a chain rule to form a conservative Jacobian.

Mathematically, o-minimal (e.g., semi-algebraic) locally Lipschitz functions fit this notion; informally, many finite-dimensional locally Lipschitz functions built from standard operations (+, ×, exp, cos, min/max, argmin/argmax, …) do as well.

Applications include training deep networks (explicit and implicit), differentiating solution maps, and differentiating algorithms.

Calendar entry

Event details

Event location
Sem.R. DB gelb 03(SEM 325/2)
1040 Wien
Wiedner Hauptstraße 8 E105-4
Organiser
VADOR
vador@tuwien.ac.at
Public
No
Entrance fee
No
Registration required
No

02. October 2025, 16:00 until 18:00

VSO Seminar: A Nonsmooth Differentiation Theory and Some Applications

Seminar

Jerome Bolte, Toulouse School of Economics

Nonsmooth phenomena are common in optimization—from constraints, solution maps, regularizers, and conditional code. 
Classical tools in variational analysis often rely on qualification conditions that are hard to check and rarely met in computational settings. 


This talk presents conservative calculus: a qualification-free framework aligned with algorithmic implementation and compatible with 
automatic differentiation libraries (PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow). For functions given by analytic or polynomial formulas, including implicit definitions, subgradients can be composed via a chain rule to form a conservative Jacobian.

Mathematically, o-minimal (e.g., semi-algebraic) locally Lipschitz functions fit this notion; informally, many finite-dimensional locally Lipschitz functions built from standard operations (+, ×, exp, cos, min/max, argmin/argmax, …) do as well.

Applications include training deep networks (explicit and implicit), differentiating solution maps, and differentiating algorithms.

Calendar entry

Event details

Event location
Sem.R. DB gelb 03(SEM 325/2)
1040 Wien
Wiedner Hauptstraße 8 E105-4
Organiser
VADOR
vador@tuwien.ac.at
Public
No
Entrance fee
No
Registration required
No