On Wednesday, 30th April 2025 at 12 noon Christian Hafner (ISTA Austria) is going to talk about “Yes–No Questions in Computational Design” –
Computational design problems are often phrased as optimization problems: Given control over certain design parameters, how well can we accomplish an objective? For example, how well can we realize a target shape in a parametrized physical system? Numerical methods help solve these problems in practice, but they have a distinct disadvantage: If the outcome is not as expected, we will usually not know why. Was the numerical method unsuited to the task, or was the task impossible to begin with?
In this seminar, I will discuss how to frame this question more formally, leading to a flavor of inverse problem that focuses on questions of solution existence and decidability. This is in contrast to classical inverse problems, which usually treat solution existence as an assumption, and study uniqueness and well-posedness. The key question is this: Can we hope to settle the existence question for the same broad range of problems that classical inverse problem theory has studied?
The seminar will be held in hybrid form – at TU Wien, Favoritenstr. 9-11, seminar room FAV01A – as well as online via zoom – you may ask for link to join under “contact”.
