IFDS members Stephen Wright, Rebecca Willett, and Rob Nowak, together with colleague Tamara Kolda of Sandia National Laboratory, organized a workshop on “Beyond Convexity: Emerging Challenges in Data Science at the Casa Matematica Oaxaca in Oaxaca, Mexico from October 22-27, 2017. The event attracted about 32 enthusiastic participants, who shared various perspectives on a vital emerging issue in data science: formulation of data science problems as nonconvex optimization problems, and algorithms for solving them. Planning for the workshop started two years ago, and the topic has grown greatly in importance since then. The format of the event allowed a lot of interaction, including discussion and recording of open problems in the area. Preliminary indications are that the participants found the event extremely rewarding, and we look forward to new collaborations and followup activities, that will become part of IFDS’s research portfolio. More…
