Workshop on Multilevel Computational Methods and Optimization

这笔赠款支持美国研究人员参加2013年4月29日至5月2日在以色列雷霍沃特魏兹曼科学研究所举行的“多层次方法和优化”研讨会的旅费。计划中的讲座和小组讨论将涵盖偏微分方程等经典问题，以及网络搜索和数据挖掘等现代任务。研讨会的讲者和参与者来自不同学科，包括物理、生物、化学、经济学、环境和地球科学、计算机科学和工程学。一个特别的两个小时的小组讨论“多水平计算的挑战：我们应该把我们的努力和我们的研究生放在哪里？”计划在第二天举行。针对大量变量的模拟和优化问题的多层求解方法对于科学和工程中几乎所有的学科都是核心和重要的。这些方法非常强大，因为它们利用了大多数计算问题具有多个尺度这一事实。这种多尺度的概念可能会有许多不同的伪装，包括时间和空间、像素、粒子、蛋白质或网页。这种尺度的多样性和不一致性是计算复杂性的一个重要来源。多层次算法在尺度的层次上解决正在考虑的问题，通常使用针对特定尺度的局部方法来处理每个尺度。拟议的研讨会将汇集初级研究人员和世界级专家，主要来自北美、西欧和以色列，展示和讨论他们在各种主题和应用中对模拟和优化的多级计算方法的最新研究。讲习班参与者的不同背景和计划的活动预计将揭示多层次计算方法的新研究方向，并确定这一不同领域中最紧迫的挑战。

This grant supports travel of US researchers to attend the workshop on "Mutilevel methods and Optimization" from April 29 to May 2, 2013, at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The planned talks and panel discussions will cover classical problems such as partial differential equations, together with modern tasks such as web search and data mining. Speakers and participants in the workshop come from a variety of disciplines, including physics, biology, chemistry, economics, environment and earth sciences, computer science and engineering. A special two-hour panel "Challenges in Multilevel Computation: where should we be directing our efforts and our graduate students?" is planned for the second day. Multilevel solution methods for simulation and optimization problems over very large number of variables is central and important to virtually all disciplines in the sciences and engineering. These methodologies are very powerful because they exploit the fact that most computational problems have multiple scales. This notion of multiple scales may take on many different guises, including time and space, pixels, particles, proteins, or web-pages. This multiplicity and disparity of scales is an essential source of computational complexity. The multilevel algorithms address the problem under consideration at a hierarchy of scales, typically treating each with a method that is local to that particular scale. The proposed workshop will bring together junior researchers and world-class experts, mainly from North America, Western Europe, and Israel, to exhibit and discuss their recent research on multilevel computational methods for simulation and optimization in a wide variety of topics and applications. Together, the diverse backgrounds of the participants in the workshop and the planned activities are expected to expose new research directions in multilevel computational methods and to identify the most pressing challenges in this diverse field.