Title: On Optimal selection of fixed-size populations: an application to tree breeding
Speaker: Dr. Pietro Belotti
Affiliation: FICO company
Location: CPSE seminar room (C615 Roderic Hill)
Time: 4:00pm

Abstract. One of the problems that tree breeders face is the selection of a pedigree of trees with two aims: 1) conserving genetic diversity; 2) maximize response to selection. We tackled the problem of selecting a fixed-size breeding population while imposing a constraint on relatedness of the population members. The problem is expressed as a Mixed Integer Quadratically Constrained Optimization (MIQCO), in which a function is maximized subject to nonlinear quadratic constraints an discreteness of some variables, and solved using a variant of the branch-and-bound method that uses a linear relaxation of the original problem. I will discuss details of the problem and of the algorithm (including a fast heuristic to find feasible solutions). I will also illustrate case studies of the selection of breeding populations for Scots pine and loblolly pine (Joint work with Tim Mullin, Skogforsk, the Swedish Forestry Research Institute).

About the speaker. Pietro Belotti received a PhD in Computer Engineering in 2003 from the Technical University of Milan with a dissertation on optimal network design under survivability constraints. He has subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, a Visiting Professor post at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Lehigh University, and then an Assistant professor position at the department of Mathematical Sciences of Clemson University. He is currently working at Fair Isaac, in the development team of the Xpress Optimizer. His research interests lie primarily in mixed integer nonlinear optimization, robust optimization, and discrete bi-objective optimization.