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 at 3pm in Sem. R. DB gelb 04. 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. The next iteration - VC2025 - will take 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.
05. May 2025, 16:00 until 18:00
Guest Lecture: Torbjorn Cunis, Characterizations of Strong Metric Regularity in Nonlinear Optimization
Lecture
Abstract: Nonlinear optimization has become increasingly involved in the guidance and control of dynamic systems. Its applications include optimal path planning, collision avoidance, model predictive control, and extremum seeking. This has motivated the development of an algorithmic systems theory, which studies the stability and robustness of optimization algorithms as dynamic systems.
This talk focuses on (strong) metric regularity of the Karush—Kuhn—Tucker system of necessary conditions in nonlinear optimization. Rooted in variational analysis, metric regularity is a notion of Lipschitz stability for a primal-dual solution under perturbations. It has played a prominent role in analyzing Newton-type methods for optimization, including sequential quadratic programming and augmented Lagrangian methods. In my talk, I will provide a characterization of strong metric regularity in the form of necessary and sufficient optimality conditions. I then show that strong metric regularity is equivalent to a notion of small-input input-to-state stability of a prototypical Newton method. These results show that metric regularity plays a significant role in the systems theory of nonlinear optimization algorithms.
Biography:
Torbjørn Cunis received his doctoral degree in systems and control from ISAE-Supaéro, University of Toulouse, in 2019. Before that, he studied computer science, aerospace computer engineering, and automation engineering at the University of Würzburg and RWTH Aachen University.
Since 2021, he has been a lecturer (Akademischer Rat a.Z.) at the University of Stuttgart Institute of Flight Mechanics and Controls and an adjunct researcher at the University of Michigan Aerospace Department. He was a researcher at ONERA – The French Aerospace Lab (with Laurent Burlion) from 2016 to 2019 and a research fellow at the University of Michigan (with Ilya Kolmanovsky) from 2019 to 2021. His research focuses on algorithmic systems and control theory, in particular, nonlinear optimization algorithms and verifiable nonlinear control systems.
Dr. Cunis is a fellow of the Young ZiF at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld.
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
05. May 2025, 16:00 until 18:00
Guest Lecture: Torbjorn Cunis, Characterizations of Strong Metric Regularity in Nonlinear Optimization
Lecture
Abstract: Nonlinear optimization has become increasingly involved in the guidance and control of dynamic systems. Its applications include optimal path planning, collision avoidance, model predictive control, and extremum seeking. This has motivated the development of an algorithmic systems theory, which studies the stability and robustness of optimization algorithms as dynamic systems.
This talk focuses on (strong) metric regularity of the Karush—Kuhn—Tucker system of necessary conditions in nonlinear optimization. Rooted in variational analysis, metric regularity is a notion of Lipschitz stability for a primal-dual solution under perturbations. It has played a prominent role in analyzing Newton-type methods for optimization, including sequential quadratic programming and augmented Lagrangian methods. In my talk, I will provide a characterization of strong metric regularity in the form of necessary and sufficient optimality conditions. I then show that strong metric regularity is equivalent to a notion of small-input input-to-state stability of a prototypical Newton method. These results show that metric regularity plays a significant role in the systems theory of nonlinear optimization algorithms.
Biography:
Torbjørn Cunis received his doctoral degree in systems and control from ISAE-Supaéro, University of Toulouse, in 2019. Before that, he studied computer science, aerospace computer engineering, and automation engineering at the University of Würzburg and RWTH Aachen University.
Since 2021, he has been a lecturer (Akademischer Rat a.Z.) at the University of Stuttgart Institute of Flight Mechanics and Controls and an adjunct researcher at the University of Michigan Aerospace Department. He was a researcher at ONERA – The French Aerospace Lab (with Laurent Burlion) from 2016 to 2019 and a research fellow at the University of Michigan (with Ilya Kolmanovsky) from 2019 to 2021. His research focuses on algorithmic systems and control theory, in particular, nonlinear optimization algorithms and verifiable nonlinear control systems.
Dr. Cunis is a fellow of the Young ZiF at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld.
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