LIX, Ecole Polytechnique 3-year Ph.D. Fellowship Announcement ------------------------------------ Digiteo (www.digiteo.fr) finances a 3-year Ph.D. fellowship on the topic of Reformulations in Mathematical Programming, within the ARM (Automatic Reformulation Methods) project. For a given optimization problem, there are many possible mathematical programming formulations that describe its set of optimal solutions. With respect to a given solution algorithm, certain formulations are "better" than others (in the sense that the algorithm performs better). Reformulations are endomorphisms of the set of all mathematical programs that keep some of their mathematical properties (such as, e.g., the set of solutions) invariant [1]. The main topics in the ARM project are: nonconvex quadratic programming, symmetry in mathematical programming, search in formulation space, embedding reformulations [2]. [1] L. Liberti, Reformulations in Mathematical Programming: Definitions and Systematics, RAIRO-RO 43(1):55-86, 2009. [2] C. Audet, P. Hansen, B. Jaumard, G. Savard, Links between linear bilevel and mixed 0-1 programming problems, JOTA 93(2):273-300, 1997. The institutions participating to the ARM project are: - LIX, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France. - GERAD & HEC, Montreal, Canada. - PRISM, Universite Versailles Saint-Quentin, Versailles, France. The Ph.D. candidate will enrol at the Doctoral School of Ecole Polytechnique, and will be co-supervised by Leo Liberti (LIX), Pierre Hansen (GERAD & HEC) and Ider Tseveendorj (PRISM). The main workplace is LIX, Ecole Polytechnique (Paris region), but some periods will be spent at PRISM and GERAD. We therefore invite applications from candidates with: - a strong enthusiasm for research - a strong motivation to obtain a Ph.D. - a good overall knowledge of Operations Research (graph theory, combinatorial optimization, shortest paths, linear programming, simplex algorithm, integer programming, branch-and-bound) - a solid mathematical background Knowledge of theoretical computer science subjects such as computability theory, formal languages and grammars, semantics is a plus. The application must consist of: - a motivational letter; - a detailed CV (this can be several pages long if need be); - a list of courses taken during previous studies (B.Sc. and M.Sc. equivalent) with relative marks; - dissertations written during B.Sc. and M.Sc.; - accepted or published papers if any. All application material must be sent by PDF (bundle all PDFs together in a .ZIP file please) to the email listed in the contact below. The fellowship pays an approximate salary of 1800EUR/month and starts 1st october 2009. This call will remain open until the position is filled. Contact: Dr. Leo Liberti (leoliberti @ gmail.com, http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~liberti)