Research
Areas of Research and Development
A (somewhat outdated) description of the group's research activities is available as a pdf file.
The main focus of the group is on the application driven development of optimization methods, and their efficient implementation on computers. We believe in the potential of multi-disciplinary cooperation between partners with a profound disciplinary expertise and value the mutual benefit for both sides: novel, innovative approaches and insights in the application field by means of optimization; and a demand/feedback effect that stimulates the development of new methodologies in applied mathematics.
Active research fields include
- direct methods for optimal control,
- in particular for mixed-integer optimal control,
- structure exploiting QP solvers for real-time optimization,
- as well as optimum experimental design for nonlinear processes,
- and mixed-integer nonlinear programming.
Main application areas are found in Automotive Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Medicine, and Economics. Challenging problems in these areas are treated in interdisciplinary cooperations with scientists from academia and industry. New research directions include projects in Complex Problem Solving and in the modeling, simulation, and optimization of price dynamics.
Members of the group have been involved in industrial projects, e.g., currently with ABB, BASF, Daimler and Deutsche Lufthansa. Industrial relevance of our mathematical and computational optimization algorithms is of utmost importance, and we are always open for new collaborations.
Some current projects are included in the research programs
- DFG special focus program SPP1253 PDE Optimization,
- Embedded Optimization for Resource Constrained Platforms (EMBOCON) within the EU FP7.
