International Conference of Continuous Optimizatio; August 2-4, 2004; RPI, Troy, NY

这项拨款申请资金用于支持首届持续优化国际会议，该会议将于2004年8月2日星期一至8月4日星期三在伦斯勒理工学院校园举行。会议之前将有一个为期两天的暑期学校，几位杰出的学者将在持续优化方面提供当代主题的教程。根据导师的推荐，学院将招收高级研究生和博士后。所提议的活动的智力价值在于，它将为持续优化的持续研究提供刺激，这是一个具有巨大实际应用的肥沃的科学/工程学科。在其更广泛的影响中，拟议的活动将对网络基础设施产生重大影响。持续优化已经并将继续在推动和影响许多科学和工程学科的当代发展方面发挥重要作用，并提供了一套基本的数学和计算工具，这些工具对于许多现实世界的决策支持系统和建模应用至关重要，而这些系统和建模应用对于经济的持续增长和社会的福祉至关重要。会议的目标有三个：(a)为美国和国际研究人员和实践者提供一个重点论坛，以促进最新成果和有前途的想法的快速交流，以确保持续优化的健康发展；(b)为研究生和初级研究人员提供教育机会，了解持续优化的最新发展；(c)鼓励妇女和少数族裔研究人员在运筹学和计算科学的这一重要领域工作。会议将促进对持续优化最新成果的讨论和异化，将激发新思想和强化现有思想，将推进科学知识和提高一般人群的优化意识，并将吸引新的人才在该学科工作。对社会的最终好处是，复杂的科学、工程、金融和经济问题可以更好地建模和解决，人力资源可以得到有益的利用。

This grant requests funds to support the inaugural International Conference on Continuous Optimization, to be held on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from Monday August 2, 2004 through Wednesday August 4, 2004. The Conference will be preceded by a two-day Summer School, in which several distinguished scholars will offer tutorials on contemporary topics in continuous optimization. The School will be attended by advanced graduate students and postdoctoral fellows on the recommendation of their supervisors. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity is that it will provide a stimulus for sustained research in continuous optimization, which is a fertile scientific/engineering discipline with immense practical applications. Among its broader impacts, the proposed activity will have a significant affect on cyber infrastructure. Continuous optimization has played, and continues to play, a major role in advancing and impacting the contemporary developments of many scientific and engineering disciplines, and provides a fundamental set of mathematical and computational tools that are key for many real-world decision support systems and modeling applications, which in turn are vital for the sustained growth of the economy and for the well being of society. The goal of the Conference is threefold: (a) to provide a focused forum for US and international researchers and practitioners to meet in order to facilitate the rapid exchange of state-of-the-art results and promising ideas to ensure the healthy advancement of continuous optimization, (b) to offer educational opportunities to graduate students and junior researchers to learn about the latest developments in continuous optimization, and (c) to encourage women and minority researchers to work in this important area of Operations Research and Computational Science. The Conference will facilitate the discussion and dissimilation of the latest results in continuous optimization, will inspire new ideas and sharpen existing ones, will advance scientific knowledge and increase the general population's awareness of optimization, and will attract new talents to work in the discipline. The end benefits to society are that complex scientific, engineering, financial, and economic problems can be better modeled and solved, and human resources can be gainfully utilized.