A science and technology workshop on optimisation of expensive functions was held in June 2008. The workshop focussed on hard industrial problems in optimisation where the high computational cost of each function evaluation is a barrier to the use of standard techniques. The workshop provided an opportunity for industrialists and academics to share experience and knowledge of approaches.

The workshop programme included a diverse range of industrial presentations on oil reservoir simulation, weather forecasting, car design, aircraft design and shopping basket analysis. A keynote presentation described the state of the art in the science base underpinning the design and optimisation of engineering systems. The presentations stimulated a facilitated discussion in which participants examined key differences and similarities between hard optimisation problems in different application domains.

The workshop was initially motivated by the findings of a CASE project sponsored by Schlumberger. KTN associate Jari Fowkes is studying for a DPhil at Oxford on optimising oil reservoir simulation and oilfield operations. The workshop provided an excellent opportunity for him to present his research and further understand its relevance to a wide range of industrial challenges.

"The workshop succeeded very well in meeting its objectives. With the input from the Mathematics KTN we were able to assemble a varied and high quality set of speakers and the professional facilitation of the meeting helped ensure this success." - Dr Chris Farmer, Scientific Advisor, Schlumberger.