Optimization is an act, process, or methodology of making something as fully perfect or effective as possible. Almost everything can be improved, so optimization’s relevance spans to almost every business or process to make it operate more efficiently and effectively.
Optimization employs mathematical models to discover more efficient ways to control and manage systems, ranging from radiation treatments to data centers and power networks. Optimization researchers at WID solve systems-level problems in emerging science and engineering applications by using optimization technologies in an integrated, interdisciplinary, and collaborative fashion. This includes finding solutions to problems that are the most cost-effective or achieve the highest performance under given constraints by maximizing desired elements and minimizing the undesired elements.
Optimization models promise better process planning that can be tied to and offered by social, economic, and financial systems. Certain social and political constraints have caused optimization to go largely unexplored, as have methods for translating plans into policy. We hope to draw on collaborations with communications experts, political scientists, sociologists, economists, behavioral scientists, and business professionals to further leverage optimization’s potential for boosting efficiencies and improving systems that reach into all corners of our lives.
Learn more about Optimization at WID. It is a key component of WID’s Data Science Hub.
Stephen Wright, a Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Fellow and Computer Science professor, has been awarded a Hilldale Professorship for his pioneering work in continuous optimization and machine learning.
Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE) led by Robert Nowak, UW–Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering and researchers at Ohio State.
WID’s Michael Ferris joined the Thompson Center on Public Leadership to discuss a data-based planning tool called “Wisconsin Expansion of Renewable Electricity with Optimization under Long-term Forecasts” (WEREWOLF) he developed with Thompson Center faculty research funding.
Professor of Computer Sciences at WID Stephen Wright and three colleagues were announced winners of the prestigious Test of Time Award at the 2020 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.
The Bazaar, happening throughout February, 2021, has the theme Data Science for the Social Good.
The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is home to the Institute for the Foundations of Data Science, which has received Phase II funding from the National Science Foundation.
Jon Eckhardt, Robert Nowak, and Kevin Ponto were among the recipients of nine mini grants from the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute to advance data science.
Discovery Fellow Jim Luedtke, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializes in stochastic and integer optimization, a natural fit for power systems.
A new data science project, “WEREWOLF”, puts powerful modeling tools into the hands of Wisconsin policymakers to create the energy systems of tomorrow.
Researchers at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery are co-Principal Investigators and co-Investigators on four UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative projects.
WID’s new hubs—Data Science, Multi-Omics, and Illuminating Discovery—represent a new path forward for collaborative research projects and fields.
A paper published in eLife this week by an interdisciplinary team at WID describes new methods for reproducibly manufacturing brain and spinal cord organoids with strict control over morphogenic and developmental processes.
A new approach to climate data analysis hopes to improve regional forecasts.
Investigators from WID are among the recipients of the latest round of UW2020 awards.
Karen Schloss and Laurent Lessard are working on a method for matching colors to people’s expectations to send the right message — starting with the best colors for waste and recycling bins.
The new institute, housed at UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), will play a key role in the future of data science, developing fundamental techniques for handling increasingly massive data sets in shorter times.
Systems Biology Theme Leader, John Yin, Optimization Fellow, Rebecca Willett, LEL alumna, Carrie Roy, and new LEL Principal Investigator, Karen Schloss explain their innovative research. Sit back, relax and massage your brain with WID science.
The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s SILO and Qbio Seminars pull researchers from across campus for engaging interdisciplinary talks in mathematics and quantitative biology.
WID Optimization researchers have partnered with faculty across campus to work on ways to use computers to make better use of human brain power.
Victor Zavala, WID Optimization Affiliate and Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, spoke at the Discovery Seminar Series in February, 2016, about optimization of energy systems.
Professor Thomas Rutherford, WID Optimization, and colleagues used numerical models to examine whether the threat of carbon tariffs might lower the cost of reductions in world carbon emissions in a paper published in the February issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
The New Yorker is using a machine learning system developed by WID Optimization researchers to sort through captions for their weekly cartoon caption contest.
UW-Madison and WID are on the front lines of the applied algebra movement, changing the way scientists in a wide range of disciplines solve problems.
Michael Ferris and Stephen Wright, principal investigators in the WID Optimization Theme comment on New York Times Magazine article “A Sucker is Optimized Every Minute”.
WID Optimization teams with local wildlife agencies to improve Great Lakes basin habitat.
