From October 30 to November 1, 2017, Professor Kok Lay Teo (Zhang Guoli) of the University of Curtin, Australia was invited to our school for academic exchange. The seminar themed Unconstrained Optimization Techniques was conducted in classroom 102 of the Management Building of Business School. The seminar was chaired by Professor Bi Wenjie, with the participation of dozens of school faculties, doctoral students and post-graduate students.

In this academic exchange presentation, Professor Kok Lay Teo introduced relevant concepts and theories of unconstrained optimization and explained relevant methods to deal with unconstrained optimization. Professor Kok Lay Teo pointed out that optimization problems are frequently encountered in economic management, scientific research and social life, such as resource allocation, production planning, transport schemes and so on. Unconstrained optimization is one of the most basic forms of optimization problem, which makes unconstrained optimization problem the basis of studying optimization problems. For the treatment of non-optimization problems, Professor Kok Lay Teo proposed a series of solutions, including Gradient method, Steppest Descent method, Newton method and Newton correction method, Line search method, Conjugate Gradient method and Quasi-Newton method. Professor Kok Lay Teo explained in detail the advantages and disadvantages of the above methods, and explained the convergence of unconstrained methods vividly by using actual cases.

In this lecture on optimization, Professor Kok Lay Teo analyzed and explained the optimization problems in fluent Chinese, and suggested that students should base themselves on practical problems in future research and put what they have learned into practice. At the same time, Professor Kok Lay Teo encouraged students to attend academic conferences and have in-depth exchanges and cooperation with other outstanding scholars. In this seminar, Professor Kok Lay Teo communicated with teachers and students, formed a good learning atmosphere and benefited students a lot.

Professor Kok Lay Teo (Zhang Guoli), Ph. D. of the University of Ottawa, Canada, was chief professor and dean of Applied Mathematics Department of Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 1998 to 2005 and chief professor and chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Curtin University from 2005 to 2010. Now he is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Department of Curtin University. Professor Kok Lay Teo is mainly engaged in research on optimal control, optimization theory and application, communication signal processing, and financial optimization decision-making theory. He has published five English monographs and nearly 400 high-level scientific papers. Once hosted research projects worth about 4.7 million Hong Kong dollars and nearly 2 million Australian dollars, he serves as a chief editor for Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization; Dynamics of Continuous, Discrete and pioneering Systems, Series B, Numerical Algebra and Control and Optimization, or region editor and editorial board member of more than 10 international periodicals.