Winner
Zikai Xiong (Georgia Tech) for the paper titled "Accessible Theoretical Complexity of the Restarted Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient Method for Linear Programs with Unique Optima"
Citation
“Accessible Theoretical Complexity of the Restarted Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient Method for Linear Programs with Unique Optima” by Zikai Xiong.
This paper develops the first accessible iteration bound for the restarted primal-dual hybrid gradient method (rPDHG), a method that has emerged as a particularly successful alternative for solving large-scale linear programs. The bound is expressed in closed form using quantities tied directly to the optimal solution and basis, making it both theoretically rigorous and practically computable. The analysis sheds new light on the method’s two-stage performance, sensitivity to perturbations, and practical heuristics, and is further supported by numerical experiments. This single-authored student paper stands out for its accessible analysis, important results, and current relevance, making it a deserving recipient of this prize.
Second Place
Tianjiao Li (MIT) for the paper "A Simple Uniformly Optimal Method without Line Search for Convex Optimization"
Honorable Mention
Siyue Liu (Carnegie Mellon University) for the paper "Approximately Packing Dijoins via Nowhere-Zero Flows"
Honorable Mention
Ayoub Foussoul and Chengyue He (Columbia University) for the paper "Minimum Cut Representability of Stable Matching Problems"
Honorable Mention
Jingye Xu (Georgia Tech) for the paper "Sensitivity analysis for mixed binary quadratic programming"
Prize committee
Albert Berahas (chair), Ben Grimmer, Aida Khajavirad, Carla Michini, Gonzalo Munoz, Soroosh Shafiee, Daphne Skipper