Workshops

Fall 2014

Semidefinite Optimization, Approximation and Applications

Sep 22, 2014 to Sep 26, 2014

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Click on the titles of individual talks for abstract, slides and archived video.

All events take place in the Calvin Lab Auditorium.

Monday, September 22nd, 2014
9:00 am–9:20 am		Coffee and Check-In
9:20 am–9:30 am		Opening Remarks
9:30 am–10:30 am		Analysis and Design of Optimization Algorithms via Integral Quadratic Constraints Benjamin Recht, UC Berkeley
10:30 am–11:15 am		Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm		Adventures in Linear Algebra++ and Unsupervised Learning Sanjeev Arora, Princeton University
12:15 pm–1:45 pm		Lunch
1:45 pm–2:30 pm		Learning Overcomplete Latent Variable Models through Tensor Power Method Rong Ge, Microsoft Research
2:30 pm–3:00 pm		Break
3:00 pm–3:45 pm		Robust PCA via Non-convex Methods: Provable Bounds Animashree Anandkumar, UC Irvine
3:45 pm–4:15 pm		Break
4:15 pm–5:00 pm		Convex Relaxations for Recovering Simultaneously Structured Objects Maryam Fazel, University of Washington
5:00 pm–6:00 pm		Reception

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014
9:00 am–9:30 am		Coffee and Check-In
9:30 am–10:30 am		The Edge of Tractability: Unique Games vs Sum of Squares David Steurer, Cornell University
10:30 am–11:15 am		Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm		Recovering Hidden Sparsity via Sum of Squares Jonathan Kelner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12:15 pm–1:45 pm		Lunch
1:45 pm–2:30 pm		A Polynomial Time Algorithm for Lossy Population Recovery Ankur Moitra, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2:30 pm–3:00 pm		Break
3:00 pm–3:45 pm		Serialrank: Spectral Ranking using Seriation Alexandre d'Aspremont, CNRS - École Normale Superieure Paris
3:45 pm–4:15 pm		Break
4:15 pm–5:00 pm		Relative Entropy Relaxations for Signomial Optimization Venkat Chandrasekaran, California Institute of Technology

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
9:00 am–9:30 am		Coffee and Check-In
9:30 am–10:30 am		Robust Sketching for Large-Scale Multi-Instance Conic Optimization Laurent El Ghaoui, UC Berkeley
10:30 am–11:15 am		Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm		Spectrahedra and their Shadows Bernd Sturmfels, UC Berkeley
12:15 pm–1:45 pm		Lunch
1:45 pm–2:30 pm		Spectral Bounds and SDP Hierarchies for Geometric Packing Problems Frank Vallentin, University of Cologne
2:30 pm–3:00 pm		Break
3:00 pm–3:45 pm		Positive Semidefinite Rank Rekha Thomas, University of Washington
3:45 pm–4:15 pm		Break
4:15 pm–5:00 pm		An SDP-based Algorithmic Cheeger Inequality for Vertex Expansion Santosh Vempala, Georgia Institute of Technology

Thursday, September 25th, 2014
9:00 am–9:30 am		Coffee and Check-In
9:30 am–10:30 am		Tensor Decompositions: Uniqueness and Smoothed Analysis Moses Charikar, Princeton University
10:30 am–11:15 am		Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm		Convex Optimization and Quantum Information Aram Harrow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12:15 pm–1:45 pm		Lunch
1:45 pm–2:30 pm		Noncommutative Polynomial Optimization under Dimension Constraints Miguel Navascués Cobo, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2:30 pm–3:00 pm		Break
3:00 pm–3:45 pm		Faster SDP Hierarchy Solvers for Local Rounding Algorithms Ali Sinop, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
3:45 pm–4:15 pm		Break
4:15 pm–5:00 pm		Convergence of SDP Hierarchies Using Kernel Based Methods: Moment Matrices Stephanie Wehner, National University of Singapore

Friday, September 26th, 2014
9:00 am–9:30 am		Coffee and Check-In
9:30 am–10:30 am		Controlling Eigenvalues (at least in theory) Adam Marcus, Yale University
10:30 am–11:15 am		Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm		Efficient First-Order Methods for Linear (and Semidefinite and Hyperbolic) Programming James Renegar, Cornell University
12:15 pm–1:45 pm		Lunch
1:45 pm–2:30 pm		Primal-Dual Symmetric Interior-Point Methods: From SDP to Hyperbolic Cone Programming and Beyond Levent Tunçel, University of Waterloo
2:30 pm–3:00 pm		Break
3:00 pm–3:45 pm		Effectivity Issues and Results for Hilbert's 17th Problem Marie-Françoise Roy, Universite de Rennes
3:45 pm–4:00 pm		Break
4:00 pm–4:30 pm		Open Problem Session