This is the first semester of an advanced topics course, for students seeking a more in-depth exposure and practice in state-of-the-art techniques and research topics. This course completes skills and background (beyond that which can be presented in a standard numerical analysis course) for students seeking to do research in the subject, and introduces current research areas, to help students choose topics for dissertations. Course material includes current research papers. The course varies from semester to semester, depending on interests and the instructor; the course may be retaken for credit if the topics are different.
This fall, we will concentrate on nonlinear systems and optimization, starting with a review of classical necessary and sufficient conditions for constrained optima, then proceeding to degree theory, interval-based existence and uniqueness tests, epsilon-inflation, and global search. Actual topics will vary according to students' interests, and students will present some of the topics. See the course outline periodically for details.