9, May, 2013 15:00-16:00 (1 hour)
CISTER, Porto, Portugal

ABSTRACT:
In many networked systems such as wireless sensors, robots, smart grids, water distribution, and vehicular networks, decision variables must often be optimized by algorithms that need to be fast, simple, and robust to errors and noises, both in a centralized and in a distributed set-up. In this lecture, a new simple optimization theory, named Fast-Lipschitz optimization, is introduced for a novel class of both convex and non-convex scalar and multi-objective optimization problems that are pervasive in these networked systems. Fast-Lipschitz optimization can be applied to both centralized and distributed optimization. Fast-Lipzhitz optimization solvers exhibit a low computational and communication complexity when compared to existing solution methods, which makes this new optimization method very useful in wireless sensor networks. In particular, compared to traditional Lagrangian methods, which often converge linearly, the convergence time of centralized Fast-Lipschitz algorithms is superlinear. Distributed Fast-Lipschitz algorithms converge fast, as opposed to traditional Lagrangian decomposition and parallelization methods, which generally converge slowly and at the price of many message passings among the nodes. In both cases, the computational complexity is much lower than traditional Lagrangian methods.
SHORT BIO:
Dr. Carlo Fischione is a tenured Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering and ACCESS Linnaeus Center, Automatic Control Lab, Stockholm, Sweden. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Information Engineering in May 2005 from University of L’Aquila, Italy, and the Dr.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering (Laurea, Summa cum Laude, 5/5 years) in April 2001 from the same University. He held research positions at University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA (2004-2005, Visiting Scholar, and 2007-2008, Research Associate) and Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden (2005-2007, Research Associate). His research interests include optimization and parallel computation with applications to wireless sensor networks, networked control systems, and wireless networks. He has co-authored over 80 publications, including book, book chapters, international journals and conferences, and an international patent. He received numerous awards, including the best paper award from the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics of 2007, the best paper awards at the IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor System 05 and 09 (IEEE MASS 2005 and IEEE MASS 2009), the Best Business Idea award from VentureCup East Sweden, 2010, the “Ferdinando Filauro” award from University of L’Aquila, Italy, 2003, the “Higher Education” award from Abruzzo Region Government, Italy, 2004, and the Junior Research award from Swedish Research Council, 2007, the Silver Ear of Wheat award in history from the Municipality of Tornimparte, Italy, 2012. He has chaired or served as a technical member of program committees of several international conferences and is serving as referee for technical journals. Meanwhile, he also has offered his advice as a consultant to numerous technology companies such as Berkeley Wireless Sensor Network Lab, Ericsson Research, Synopsys, and United Technology Research Center. He is co-funder and CTO of the sensor networks start-up company Aukoti. He is Member of IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), and Ordinary Member of DASP (the academy of history Deputazione Abruzzese di Storia Patria).