Norwegian Workshop on Mathematical Optimization, Nonlinear and Variational Analysis, Trondheim, May 19-20, 2025

This workshop constitutes a continuation of the first MONVA-gathering, which was successfully held at NTNU in April 2023.

• Julio R. Banga (Misión Biolóxica de Galicia - CSIC, Spain)
• Jawad Elomari (SINTEF Industry, Trondheim)
• Sjur Didrik Flåm (University of Bergen, Norway)
• Ulrich Gerland (TU München, Germany)
• Christian Günther (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)
• César Gutiérrez (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
• Basca Jadamba (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
• Iain George Johnston (University of Bergen, Norway)
• Akhtar Khan (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
• Bahareh Khazayel (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)
• Nina Kliche (WIAS Berlin, Germany)
• Jan Kronqvist (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• Marcel Marohn (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany)
• Luisa Plato (WIAS Berlin, Germany)
• Paul Schmölling (NTNU, Trondheim, Norway)
• Christiane Tammer (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)
• Chaoli Yao (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)

• Iain George Johnston (UiB)
• Elisabeth Köbis (NTNU)
• Markus Köbis (NTNU)

The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts from different countries with researchers in Norway to exchange the latest contributions and drive forward the state of the art in the fields of nonlinear and variational analysis, set and vector optimization, and operations research. These topics have expanded tremendously due to rich applications in economics and management science, engineering, mechanics, and the natural and behavioral sciences. This spread of topics and applications means that an interdisciplinary hub for exchange of ideas, from the theoretical to the applied, has great potential to open new research avenues, international collaborations, and applications.

The main objective of the MONVA workshop is to realise this potential – initiating research communication between these often rather detached focal points in mathematical research and strengthening their complementary benefits early on. As a second pillar of the gathering, we will again give room for young researchers from the Nordics to present their work in those areas and receive critical feedback and spark discussions with internationally leading experts in the fields – theoretically and application-driven.

Although the concerned subject areas are closely interrelated, we present the main significance of the workshop for the areas separately below.

Nonlinear and variational analysis: Nonlinear and variational analysis is a fundamental area of mathematical research that broadens classical analysis to a wider class of problems involving nonlinearity, optimization, and more general function spaces. The field has deep theoretical importance as well as numerous applications in diverse areas such as engineering, economics, and physics and thereby underlines the workshop’s pivotal goal of bringing together application and theoretical mathematics. Set and vector optimization: One of the keynote speakers, Prof. Dr. Christiane Tammer, co-authored the monograph “Set-Valued Optimization – An Introduction with Applications, Springer, 2015” (together with Prof. Dr. Akhtar Khan and Prof. Dr. Constantin Zalinescu), the first book on the vibrant field of set optimization. Since this topic is rather modern and extends the field of vector optimization, we anticipate that many researchers will be attracted by Prof. Dr. Christiane Tammer’s talk and are certain that this workshop will inspire new collaborations. Operations Research: The before-mentioned fundamental research has strong applications in the field of Operations Research. We expect that this conference will serve as a bridge between the theoretic research and solution concepts for practical problems arising in economics, engineering, and behavioral/natural sciences. Therefore, we believe that this conference will be of great significance for scientist who are working in Operations Research. We plan to encourage invited speakers in those areas to put emphasis the role of discrete optimization and recent developments therein, as well as connections to the broader field of more abstract optimization and analysis as a whole.

For each topic we will solicit and encourage a range of researchers from the theoretical to the applied. We anticipate that biomathematics (understanding complex biological problems with mathematical models) will be a common applied topic, as both the previous MONVA and ongoing research involved exciting work in this area.

The main objective of this workshop is to present and discuss new results, develop further ideas and encourage collaborations among participants to create new knowledge which will be beneficial for theoretical problems as well as for applications.

Novel results developed during the workshop will be published in a Special Issue of the international journal Optimization: A Journal of Mathematical Programming and Operations Research (Taylor & Francis).

The workshop will include a one-hour poster session, where contributors will have the opportunity to present their research and get into discussions with the participants.

We will award prizes for the best talks/poster presentations, which will include book vouchers sponsored by Taylor & Francis.

We are grateful to receive support for the realisation of this workshop by the project Pure Mathematics in Norway, funded by Trond Mohn Foundation and Tromsø Research Foundation.