After a busy day with plenty of talks, the participants enjoyed the conference dinner on a boat, cruising through the historic center of Berlin.
Congratulations to Xudong Li for winning the Best Paper Prize for Young Researchers in Continuous Optimization with his contribution "Exploiting second order sparsity in big data optimization". The three other finalists, Amal Alphonse, Yuxin Chen, and Damek Davis were also praised by the best paper Committee.
After a sensational opening ceremony, ICCOPT is underway! Plenary sessions brought to the forefront the latest developments in mathematical optimization. The Best Paper Session showcased four finalists who gave their talks. The result will be announced during today's Conference Dinner. The day ended with a lot of robust discussions during the poster session.
ICCOPT opened with a vibrant and active summer school with tutorials by P. Richtárik, J.-C. De los Reyes and T. Munson. The Welcome Reception is taking place right now in the Lichthof of TU Berlin -- you still have the chance to join!
On Friday, August 2 at 15:15, Prof. Ya-Xiang Yuan will give a Special Guest Lecture on "Efficient optimization algorithms for large scale data analysis" at WIAS Berlin. All ICCOPT guests who are already in Berlin are invited to join the lecture.
Details
Sightseeing tours are offered on all four days of the conference, taking place from 14:00 to 16:00.
All sightseeing tours are held in English and are offered by StattReisen Berlin GmbH.
The following holds for all tours:
For each sightseeing tour, a meeting at 13:15 at the main entrance of the conference venue is arranged, to jointly go to the starting point of the tour.
The tour operator offers additional tours: you may have a look at their offering at StattReisen Berlin
Every street in the center of Berlin has its history, much of it no longer visible: On this walk you will meet the ghosts and murmers of Prussians and Prussian palaces, Nazis and Nazi architecture, Communists and real, existing socialist architecture, as well as visit some sites of the present.
Meeting point: Berliner Abgeordnetenhaus, Niederkirchnerstraße (near Potsdamer Platz)
End: Unter den Linden / Museumsinsel
Berlin: the heart of the cold war. So little is left. Walking the former "deathstrip" between Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdam Square, listen to the stories of how a city was violently split in 1961, how one lived in the divided city, how some attempted to escape from the east, how the wall fell in 1989, and memory today.
Meeting point: U-Bhf. Stadtmitte, on the platform of U6 (not U2!)
End: Potsdamer Platz
Huguenots, Viennese Jews, Silesians: Immigration has always characterized the history of Berlin. One of the most vibrant Berlin districts today consists of Turkish, Swabian, Polish and other “Kreuzbergers.” Encounter churches, mosques, synagogues, and a variety of ethnic food. Social tensions become visible, here, too. Is Kreuzberg an example of a modern multi-cultural society made up of many (sub‑)cultures? Is the district truly a melting pot, or do its inhabitants simply co-exist in parallel worlds?
Meeting point: Kottbusser Tor / Corner Admiralstraße, in front of the "is-bank" (U-Bhf. Kottbusser Tor)
End: Oranienplatz
Berlin: the heart of the cold war. So little is left. Walking the former "deathstrip" between Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdam Square, listen to the stories of how a city was violently split in 1961, how one lived in the divided city, how some attempted to escape from the east, how the wall fell in 1989, and memory today.
Meeting point: U-Bhf. Stadtmitte, on the platform of U6 (not U2!)
End: Potsdamer Platz